Although I have developed an aversion for trying to find something worth watching, my wife and I often watch a movie beginning around dinnertime. Browsing movies on streaming platforms is sufficiently unpleasant that we usually disagree as to which of us has to control the remote. Example: to browse the offerings of the premium channels (HBO, Cinemax, Starz, etc), one must choose A - Z (alphabetical order, beginning with the many movies with numbers in the title). Even if you limit it to a single genre (drama, sci-fi, etc), you must still scroll through screens of 5 movies or so per line of thumbnails ad infinitum. One of them used to allow the reverse, Z - A, but I think thatâs gone now. In any case, by the time I get to E or F, my viewing desire has become a bit flaccid. You get the picture.
Yesterday, in our usual desperation, we landed on Enola Holmes, produced by Netflix Originals. It began comfortably enough, as we learn of Sherlock Holmesâ younger sister, Enola. That, of course, is associated with the first atomic bomb, which impression - that of a bomb - only grew as the film progressed. Early on, I predicted to my wife the message is going to be âsocial justice warfareâ.
How right I was. As the story opens, we are instructed how Enolaâs relationship with her mother was wonderful, that her mother and she were inseparable and her mother saw to her complete education; right up until her mother disappears without warning. To spare both writer and reader unnecessary suffering at this juncture, it behooves us to cut to the chase.
It was the time of agitation in England for womenâs suffrage. At the (merciful) conclusion, the mother explains that she had to abandon her teenage daughter to fight for womenâs right to vote, because she could not bear to leave her daughter the world as it was. One need not be clever to infer that the generalizable narrative is that parental responsibilities are in second place compared to Social Justice Warfare - and we learn, mid-film from observing a large cache of weapons and explosives - that the term âwarfareâ is not an exaggeration. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, in the 2020 production, Netflix manages to work in (too) many episodes of cross dressing and androgyny. I think there is presently a quota, a minimum number of such scenes, is now de rigueur.
Although I donât encourage you, gentle reader, to suffer this âentertainmentâ, I suggest that, if you do, keep a basin handy - as this flic is a surefire Emesis Award© winner.