I remember in my early days reviewing the Netflix romcoms, that Noah Centineo and Lana Condor from the To All the Boys movies were the big movie stars the streamer generated. While I like those two, they’ve struggled since Peter and Lara Jean went to college, and I completely, stupidly, overlooked the streamer’s biggest, baddest, movie star, Millie Bobby Brown. After resurrecting two franchises from the depths of IP hell, Brown takes her turn at an original but familiar tale, Damsel. For Brown, the master of the demogorgon, it was only a matter of time before she had a chance to tame a dragon, right?
Princess Elodie (Millie Bobby Brown) lives in the harsh northern realms in a medieval fantasy world. With fewer and fewer resources for her people, Elodie agrees to go Aurea, the biggest most beautiful kingdom in the land run by Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright), to marry Prince Henry (Nick Robinson) at the behest of her father Lord Bayford (Ray Winstone). While younger sister Floria (Brooke Carter) is excited for big sis, Elodie’s stepmother (Angela Bassett) is more wary, getting strange vibes, especially from an ominous pitch black mountain that has fire emanating out of it as if expecting something to happen soon.
Damsel is the movie where I for sure know Millie Bobby Brown is a movie star. Stranger Things is great, and even Enola Holmes is also well thought out and quite good. Damsel, unfortunately, kind of stinks. It has ambitions to be something really special, but mostly gives us half baked characters and easy to see plot twists gussied up by beautiful landscape cinematography and lush costumes. Even the best scenes in the movie are in places so dark if your resolution is set up poorly, you won’t feel scared or anything at all. And the dragon CGI is a lot like Jaws here: the more you see the less scary it gets.
And yet, Damsel works, because of Brown. This is a movie star performance. Alone, against CGI or nothing, we’re with Elodie, as she navigates her way out of her dark mountainous prison, as well as her wide eyed innocence towards the world. Through simply her enjoying some water, or tearing off a piece of her murder dress, Brown turns Elodie into the movie’s avenging angel, setting right things that were cruelly done in the past. You can’t take your eyes off her, as she wills her way out of her harrowing predicament, only something the great movie stars can pull off regardless of the material around them.
Damsel leaves off at a point where there could be more sequels, if Netflix wants em. Now that we’ve learned from our mistakes, let’s give it a shot. This time, no more dumb distractions around Millie Bobby Brown. Just let her cook, visiting all the realms across the world, getting in all sorts of new adventures where she’s the star attraction wherever she goes, so you know, art imitating life a lil bit.