Reviews

Blah Adam is just poor. The scriptwriting is utterly atrocious. The dialogue just lurches clumsily from one cliché to another and the plot line is predictable. The moment they say something is unbreakable, you know know it's going to get broken - and sure enough, it does. The biggest weakness is that the characters just have no depth. As a result, you just don't care if they live or die.

The CGI is good. It works really well. It's such a shame to see such good visuals wasted on such a bad film.

Of the main characters, you hardly even see two of them. Embarrassingly enough for them, they seem to pop up in fights with no discernable effect. One can control wind. Even trapped wind after a bean supper would be more dangerous.

As always, the rock is almost adequate. He's not terrible, he's just not very good.

Perhaps the novelty of a younger sister to Sherlock Holmes has worn off? The basic premise has so much potential. That may have been part of the reason I preferred the first film. Sadly, this second outing was a dissapointment.

The main character talks directly to the audience through the camera. That's the key to these films. Enola Holmes talks directly to you and takes you into her confidence as if she were talking to a friend. But that's also the problem. You have to like the character for this to work. I didn't. At times, she just seemed to prattle on..... and on. She never stops. All the way through the film she drones on about something or other. The overall effect was that I just got fed up with the incessant sound of her voice. Coupled with that, she just wasn't convincing. For someone who claimed to know Jujitsu, she seemed to be remarkably inept. In general, the fight scenes were frankly awful. Nobody would accuse the actor playing Lord Tewkesbury of being a bodybuilder. He gives a decent performance in the film, but in a strong wind, the poor lad needs to be tied to the ground in case he blows away. Yet, somehow he manages to win a fight against a larger, stronger and far more experienced fighter. The guy was twice his size and we know that the reality would have been - one punch - lights out for Lord T.

It felt like Henry Cavel struggled with a weak script. There are only so many ways in which you can frown at someone. He managed them all with great aplomb. But, he was underutilised.

In the ultimate cliche, at the end of the film, the 'villain' even stopped to explain the evil plan. Short of accusing some meddling kids and a Great Dane of interfering, it verged on becoming a Scooby Do ending.

The main problem with the film.... the constant repetition of the women's rights theme. Yes! We know! Things were dreadful then and they're still not right now. Few would disagree. But to be constantly reminded actually got in the way of the story on several occasions. Even the villain took time while outlining her evil plans to tell us about the inequalities in the world. To then link the match factory in the film to the real factory where a group of very brave women made history by standing up for their rights.... felt like they were trying to steal some of the credit.