Damsel (Netflix)
Several things in this movie require you to suspend your disbelief. The first, and most incredulous is that Angela Bassett is married to Ray Winston. The second is, well, talking dragons.
Hollywood is still trying to make Millie Bobby-Brown happen, or her parents are. There is something about Millie that is annoying. She is not a bad actress, but she's annoying. This makes it difficult to root for her in anything she's in. In Godzilla, you wanted him to step on her by accident.
In Damsel, she gets thrown down a pit and you hope she stays there. She survives of course. This is some next-level survival though. It's Natasha Romanov in Black Widow falling from that building but on steroids.
At the bottom of the pit, Millie, very helpfully, for those few members of the audience that didn't understand, informs us she is a sacrifice.
“I'm a sacrifice, I'm a sacrifice!” She yells. Yes Millie, we all know you were a sacrifice, we knew when the Prince carried you to the end of the pit ready to throw you off. The only person that didn't know was you.
The movie begins with Millie and her sister gathering wood, Millie is Captain Americaning the wood chopping when a procession arrives. Her father is marrying her off because he is broke, and he probably knew she would be sacrificed to the dragon, but that's Ray Winston for you.
They managed to get Robin Wright in here as well. She's the evil mother-in-law. It turns out the dragon made a deal that as long as he gets a sacrifice of a royal bride once in a while, he won't burn the whole town down and eat everyone in it. It's a fair deal, to be honest. Needs of the many etc. I'm sure Millie going to mess things up for them though.
The rest of the movie is about Millie trying to get out of the dragon's lair. No really, they spend an extraordinary amount of time on this. Millie is supposedly being chased by the dragon. I say supposedly because the dragon seems to give up very easily when all it has to do is fill whatever nook or cranny Millie is in with its lava fire. Millie, who is gradually tearing her clothes off bit by bit, travels to different parts of this underground cave network. The ripped-off pieces of her clothes symbolise her transformation from a princess to some sort of warrior queen, but what she does next will make you hate her even more. She kills a horse. Yes, she kills a horse. Once out of the cave, and after using this poor horse to escape, she sets it off as a distraction so the dragon will chase it and cook it like a burger. Oh, she also traps these light bugs, which helped heal her wounds, in a pouch. After taking them from their natural habitat and using them as a light source she doesn't set them free. No, she leaves them trapped in this pouch, nicely tied shut. Like I said you'll hate her even more.
Before she becomes a horse killer though she has to find her way out of the cave. Luckily for her, all the Princesses who had been previously sent as dragon food had drawn a map for her. One by one the Princesses added their parts to the map before they got fried. One was even so gracious as to draw the way out of the cave. This meant she found her way out of the cave, went back in to draw the exit and went back out. But this wasn't very bright of her as we see her charred remains at the foot of the exit. Maybe she should have left when she had the chance.
After we have spent half the movie watching her get out of the cave, guess what? She goes back in again. This time to save her sister. At least she was bothered about her sister. She didn’t care about poor Angela Bassett who, bleeding to death, travelled to find Millie and tell her the sister had been given to the dragon as a sacrifice. No, Angela Bassett can bleed to death in the mountains. Maybe it’s because she is her stepmother, which we keep getting reminded of each time they meet. I think it's so we don’t get confused because Angela Basset is black and Millie is white, you know because we are stupid.
Millie's dad does try and come and save her along with his motley crew, but they all get killed quite quickly. We find out that the king from centuries ago killed all three of the dragons' babies. The king asked for mercy, and the dragon granted it but the king's penance was a sacrifice of three royal girls every so often.
Now we come to the elephant in the room, or should I say dragon. This dragon, who looks a bit like a blown-up gremlin from the movies in the 80's can talk. She can talk really well. Her English is better than most of the United Kingdom right now I would say. So how did she learn such great vocabulary which has a decidedly British aristocratic feel? Did she take a lesson? Did she kidnap a damsel and make her teach her English? Did she steal a bunch of GCSE books? These are questions that need to be answered but alas will be forever remained unanswered.
Millie has a grand battle with the dragon. You would have thought a thousand-year-old dragon would make quick work of an 18-year-old princess, but no, this is Stranger Things Eleven we are talking about. Despite being burned, stabbed in the side with a dragon claw, and thrown around God knows how many times, Millie manages to win this battle, getting the dragon to reverse burn itself to death. Then because the movie needs its Daenerys walking with a dragon Game of Thrones moment, Millie places those glowing bug creatures which healed her earlier, over the dragons injuries and miraculously the dragon is healed,
The Prince’s final wedding to the third wife he was going to send to her death, is rudely interrupted by Millie, who must have found a Boots chemist in the cave, as she has managed to redo her lipstick and foundation, and the dragon. The dragon burns everyone to death and destroys the castle. For some reason, Millie and the dragon are now best friends and sail off into the sunset together. Yes, like that scene from Game of Thrones.
