There is no denying that Millie Bobby Brown is one of the biggest stars of my entire generation. Hell, I’m less than a year younger than her and I’ve been seeing her face stamped on everything ever since the first series of Stranger Things blew up back in 2016. Stranger Things is one of the most popular shows of all time now and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a massive fan, but I must admit that Millie Bobby Brown and her character Eleven have never been one of the main reasons why I love it. She’s great in the first series (which is still the best) but later series have, in my opinion, always found her overshadowed by some of her co-stars like Sadie Sink and Gaten Matarazzo who really blow her out the water in terms of acting range. So the fact that she is the one who has become such a massive presence is a little baffling to me.
To be fair to her though, she is picking some interesting stuff when she’s the lead actress. The Enola Holmes films, while nothing spectacular, are really good fun and are great for those who want to see Brown as a plucky feisty female protagonist, and Damsel takes a similar young empowering female character but this time drops her (literally) into an old-school pulp fantasy story where she’s got to battle a huge-ass dragon.
To jump forward prematurely for a moment, I don’t think Damsel is as good as the Enola Holmes films, and there are some major scripting issues that come to play in the film’s second half, but ultimately I’m a simple guy and if you give me a huge talking dragon and a fight to the death against it, I’m going to be at least somewhat happy. And the dragon is probably the best thing here. Voiced by the very commanding vocal presence of Shohreh Aghdashloo, it’s a solid CGI creation and it makes for a surprisingly compelling villain, albeit one where you can see the benevolent reveal coming from a mile away. All the best moments here are when Millie Bobby Brown is either charging at a dragon or running away from it screaming, because it’s simple but classic fantasy action that delivers the thrills in safe but satisfying ways.
The problem is, there’s not much else going on here to sustain this film as a consistently fun watch. The second half is considerably weaker than the first, and that’s mainly because the film reveals itself as a bit of a one-trick pony.
The film starts out at a generic but nevertheless enjoyable fantasy romp. Millie Bobby Brown is the daughter of Lord Bayford, a ruler of a struggling civilisation who agrees to sell his daughter off into marriage to help their people. Princess Bride legend herself Robin Wright stars as Queen Isabelle of Aurea, who arranges a marriage between Millie Bobby Brown’s Elodie and Nick Robinson’s Prince Henry. It’s the normal fantasy setup basically, but it’s changed slightly when she’s thrown down a massive chasm and forced to do battle with a dragon.
The first half-hour is enjoyable if a little unremarkable. The over-reliance on CG to create the castles and lush environments is something that bothers me, and the character of Elodie is basically what would happen if Enola Holmes was a princess rather than the precocious sister of Sherlock and Mycroft – however, Robin Wright is clearly having fun here and the actual moment where Elodie is dropped god knows how many feet into a cave system is definitely intense. Even if it’s impossible to laugh at the absurdity of her surviving the fall after getting brutally dragged through loads of trees.
In fact that’s actually something I think is quite notable – how bloody this gets. OK, it’s a 12 and you can get away with some more hard-edged stuff than your normal family fantasy, but this dragon is digging its claws into people’s bodies and burning their legs beyond recognition at any chance it gets. It’s something to bear in mind if you’re watching this with your kids, but sometimes it can feel a little desperate. It’s like the scriptwriter Dan Mazeau is thinking that the plot’s getting a little boring so a dragon stabbing Millie Bobby Brown in the side will make the viewer feel more alarmed, and I suppose that’s true (since it’s the only time in the film where I gave a damn), but the fact that a bit of extra violence is the only thing Mazeau can think of as a little worrying, especially when he’s trying to pad this out to feature length.
He has a lot of material to work with. Well, a lot is perhaps overselling it but he still has more than he thinks he does. The initial setup of Elodie being from an impoverished society, that Robin Wright’s wealthy royal family are using as bait to feed to a dragon with a grudge, is a good one and it can definitely work with this rich-poor divide. As it stands, the rich family gets what’s coming to them but not for the reasons they should. There’s very little time to feel sympathy for the situation of Elodie’s people, nor is there enough time to work up hate for the kingdom of Aurea so that the moment they’re inevitably roasted alive feels anything close to satisfying.
It’s because of this that the third act just fizzles out. You can tell exactly where it’s going and the film doesn’t really offer much to spice things up or elevate it. It’s also because of this overly simplistic screenplay that some of the final developments end up feeling somewhat rushed and hackneyed. Perhaps it was because I felt emotionally checked out by this point, but I felt like the script was simply making things up as it went along.
Damsel is frustrating. It’s very fun in spurts, the fantasy angle makes for some exciting moments, and Millie Bobby Brown is somewhat entertaining in this role. However, once we get to the halfway point, we realise that Damsel doesn’t have enough underneath the surface to make for an especially memorable experience. The supporting cast are left frustratingly underdeveloped, the action scenes can become tiresomely samey, and Elodie herself is not an interesting enough lead to stick in the mind.
Despite my feelings on Millie Bobby Brown as an actress, she is definitely good at playing fun and empowering female characters in solid family entertainment, as proved earlier in the Enola Holmes films. Sadly, Damsel doesn’t give her as much to work with and, as a result, doesn’t give the audience as much to enjoy.
Damsel is out now on Netflix
