Disclaimer: This is a review, and as such will contain opinions, spoilers and (often) general shit talking. (If you talk about what you don’t like about a work, you learn a lot. When you think through a work with the stakes presented to you by the creator, by the context of the work, you learn a lot. I review things, not because I love to dislike things, but because dislike contains rich and vital information for the process of experiencing something, but I cannot access it without interrogating it.) So, if you don’t want to have this thing spoiled for you, or don’t know how to behave when a person on the internet, that you don’t know, has opinions that don’t line up with yours, this review is not for you. It’s also not for the author/creator of the work. Please and thank you.
Damsel is a fairy tale movie that breaks away from the typical storyline of a damsel in distress, because while Elodie (Millie Bobby Brown) is a damsel and in distress, she gets herself out of it.
But Damsel isn’t as subversive as it sets out to be in the trailer.
The story takes too long to get underway, the first plot twist is even revealed in the trailer, so slogging through half and hour to get there doesn’t make it more interesting.
In fact, the beginning feels hopeless, like fantasy films with female leads have come to nothing but sound bites and hot takes.
The prologue opening of the film, set centuries before, was completely unnecessary backstory that could easily have been added in later (such as when the Queen Isabelle [Robin Wright] explains it to Elodie).
When we jump to the present day in the story, Elodie (Millie Bobbie Brown) and sister Floria (Brooke Carter) are gathering wood in a frozen land, but my immediate question is why are they doing it when no one else is? It’s a lazy set-up for Elodie to be a “good daughter”.
And the film’s quick to be PC when we see the princesses’ mother is black, when neither of the daughters are, and has Elodie address Lady Bayford (Angela Bassett) as Stepmother.
She continues to do this throughout the film, awkwardly, so that in the end she can call her Mother to demonstrate her acceptance.
The meet cute with Elodie and Prince Henry (Nick Robinson) is as weak as anything before it; for a foreign dignitary to notice a lapse in their stable management would be more an insult than anything. It would have been better if Prince Henry would have suggested a ride after a really awkward start, since he knows the castle better than Elodie.
The dialogue throughout is overly clever and comes off stilted rather than witty. It’s also packed to the gills with exposition and we know how much I detest that.
There’s a lot of modern shorthand which adds to it feeling shallow.
Yes, the film does have a PG-13 rating, which explains why the plot moves from beat to beat in such a precise manner and why the dialogue is more explanatory. I do think that had I seen this at around that age, I would have liked it more than I do now, because it works more as a blank canvas for you to superimpose your own imagination onto, picturing yourself in the film instead.
However, I do also thing that the PG-13 audience deserves well crafted films. If we’re looking at fairytale fantasies, Stardust is a much stronger film.
In Damsel, the horror elements seem out of balance with the rest of the film. The trailer also promises a film that is rooted in fantasy horror and I got a bit of a whiplash from it changing so drastically between sections. This makes it feel like the story was rushed, simply to get to the horror parts.
The story is at its strongest in the cat-and-mouse between Princess and Dragon.
Fantasy heavyweight Shohreh Aghdashloo as the dragon is sublime. Oh, I smiled in such delight when I heard her voice and was ready to forgive this film all its missteps on the spot!
Aghdashloo as the dragon is even better than Cumberbatch as Smaug in The Hobbit. Yes, Smaug has a bigger budget behind him and many more animator hours, but I got chills down my spine listening to Aghdashloo’s performance.
In The Hobbit, Smaug is a smaller part of the story, whereas in Damsel the Dragon is a main character, which gives the Dragon a stronger story, and one that will appeal to those of us who love seeing tales of female rage on the big screen.
The CGI in general isn’t that great, you’re often too aware that the characters are wandering around on nearly completely green sets, with most things built in later.
This film works best when grounded in the main conflict, powering through on the momentum of the endless chase. Before that it limps along with backstory and lead-up we could have lived without (the film could have started with Elodie already at the castle, waiting to get married, and we wouldn’t have lost anything important on the cutting room floor). Once the chase ends, much too soon, the film loses steam in the third act and the plot starts meandering again.
I also think it would have been more charming had Elodie been written as a more delicate person. Now Elodie’s arc is that she goes from a good daughter, who is dutiful and proactive, to a good daughter, who is a more mature leader and proactive. It isn’t a very good arc and the “I’m through with doing what I’m told to” at the end doesn’t feel earned.
There is some element of Elodie not getting by with physical power alone, using logical deduction and survival skills along with some dumb luck to survive another hour. And I do see the value in having women wielding swords and winning fights on screen, don’t get me wrong. I’d still have loved for her to rely more on wit and cunning, simply because we’ve seen so many sword-wielders win the day by wielding swords already.
Since the ending doesn’t hinge on her becoming proficient with a sword anyway, that part could also have been left on the cutting room floor, and the story wouldn’t have suffered for it.
In fact, it would have demonstrated an even more intelligent and mature approach from Elodie by reaching straight for empathy, forgoing the physical violence altogether.
Damsel doesn’t effectively subvert the old storybook, but makes a competent attempt at reworking it.
At the core, this is a revenge saga that aims to provide an encouraging message — however thin — for a younger female audience. The strongest part of the message is undeniably Millie Bobbie Brown and her performance as Elodie. She elevates the writing to a whole new level, even if she’s unable to escape it.
The beginning and ending of the film both drag on, and the writers would have really benefitted from embracing the “arrive late, leave early” principle to get a tighter story that focused most of the run time on the things that work best.
If this film was written and produced by a couple of 14-yea-olds, I’d think it was an excellent student film. Like on paper, it tracks: Princess gets her HEA, but it turns out to be a lie so the Prince can sacrifice his bride to a Dragon to save his people, and then she has to use her cunning and wit to survive.
But somewhere along the way, something went horribly wrong. Like the first, second and third act all seem to be from different films. It introduces a shit-ton of stuff, but never truly explores one thing fully. Characters show up out of convenience and past transgressions are just glossed over (or not, depending on if it’s a villain). It jumps around and just leaves you with more questions the further in you get.
As it stands, I guess it’s a way to pass a few hours if you really love fantasy and fairy tales — and have a high tolerance for movies that like to dump exposition on you often and in the most confusing way ever (Like how did Elodie find out the story of the dragons by seeing the eggs? Why not just have the Dragon tell her? And why have her dream about the ghosts if she’s just gonna have this vision transmitted into her totally awake brain later?).
In its construction, this film resembles network TV movies.
The purpose of network television is to sell advertising, and to be as inoffensive and mindless and infantilising as possible.
— Nicholas Meyer, Turning Point: The Bomb and The Cold War
Damsel certainly tries to spoon-feed you everything from the plot to the message, but if you can get over the tropey construction and the expositional dialogue, I think it’s worth the watch. Just don’t expect it to be amazing, and maybe watch it while you’re doing something on the side, like cooking dinner or folding the laundry.
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