With a cast that includes Millie Bobby Brown, Ray Winstone, Angela Bassett, Robin Wright, and Shohreh Aghdashloo, and with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo in the director's chair, I went into Damsel with as much optimism as I could muster. That was tough though. The trailer didn't really win me over, and all of the reviews seemed to be fairly harsh. Sadly, most people who saw this before me were correct to warn others away from it. It's not good.
Brown plays Elodie, a young woman who is handed over by her father and stepmother (Lord and Lady Bayford, played by Winstone and Bassett) to be married to Prince Henry (Nick Robinson). This will end the money problems for the area ruled over by the Bayfords, but the marriage is not intended to last. It's not long until Elodie discovers that she is to be used as a sacrifice to appease a giant dragon (voiced by Aghdashloo). She's determined to fight back and survive though.
Despite already hearing a lot of negative talk about this, I hoped for something that might subvert some fantasy adventure movie tropes and allow Brown to be a badass able to draw on her courage and intelligence to face off against a terrifying enemy. That's not what writer Dan Mazeau is interested in though, and I should have known the screenplay would be a major weak spot, considering the previous two movies that he worked on. The problem with Damsel is summed up in a scene when the dragon compliments Elodie on being smart enough to stay quiet while it is trying to locate her, immediately followed by a sequence in which it seems as if our lead character makes as much noise as possible while trying to stay alive. Seriously, I wondered if it was going to tip over into parody at this point.
Director Fresnadillo isn't working at anywhere close to his best, hampered by a script that doesn't have enough substance to it and poor cinematography from Larry Fong (who may, in turn, blame others for leaving him stuck with little more than dark caves and tunnels to try and make interesting onscreen). The lighting is too low for most of the runtime, although I will say that things are much better in the scenes that AREN'T set in the dragon's lair, and this has a smothering effect on almost every other department.
Things could have been saved if the cast worked though. I think me saying that already indicates further disappointment though. Brown isn't engaging enough in the lead role, unhelped by a script that only seems interested in building up to different moments and lines of dialogue that are ultimately underwhelming, and Winstone, Bassett, and Wright are all sorely underused. The highlight is Aghdashloo, her unmistakable voice used brilliantly to realise a sly and fierce creature that is equally well-realised visually by the computer programmers working on the VFX.
Not helped by the fact that the few decent moments will remind most viewers of a very popular animated franchise, Damsel is a disappointing and unexciting trudge through familiar territory made by people who seem to think they are delivering something clever and subversive.
3/10
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Someone was bragging that this had more minutes viewed one weekend than Taylor Swift's Eras on Disney+ but it'd probably be interesting to see which has held up better over the last few weeks. Like a lot of movies in theaters, it seems like this would fade from people's memories pretty quick.
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