Today I enjoyed: Damsel.

Damsel is a Netflix Original, that was released just a few days ago. Starring a strong cast with Millie Bobby Brown, Robin Wright, Angela Bassett and the voice of Shohreh Aghdashloo it follows the odyssey of Elodie. I am not going to spoil the plot for you, but I bet you can foresee most developments, dear reader.

Overall I have mixed feelings. The story is nothing new, most elements are well known for this kind of movie. Some decisions of characters (including the dragon) feel dumb, and sometimes our main character gets very lucky, so the rest of the plot can happen. The CGI ranges from poor to pretty good, poor more in the begging, with huge landscapes and castles, but later, when the dragon makes an appearance, it looks pretty decent. But I was watching on a rather small screen and Netflix is punishing me with mediocre quality for some time now. So take my visual rating with a grain of salt. Now one thing I will say about the dragon: It has an interesting spin to it. For one thing, half of the time, we do not really see it and only hear Shohreh Aghdashloo's deep, rasping voice, bringing it to life. And when we actually see the dragon, it has a slight horror touch if you will. It looks like a hybrid between your average majestic and broadly loved dragon and something more dark and slimy. A muskrat comes to mind. I liked that (sort of).

One remark towards the title: While it is obviously a play the well known 'Damsel in distress' and obviously Elodie fights instead of needing to be rescued, she screams a lot and actually seems in distress half of the film. Until she suddenly becomes the hero and single-handedly fights the dragon. It is a bit much and hard to believe.

This is in all honesty an average movie. It is neither terrible nor great. If you are in the mood for some imagery, gold and jewels, dragons, princesses, and a few swords, then go for it. There are worse ways to spend roughly 109 minutes. But there are also better ways.

_Originally posted on my blog: https://robingierse.de/blog/tie-damsel._