And your phone
A lot of cool stuff has appeared on Netflix this week, we already talked about The Gentlemen by Guy Ritchie and the bizarre true crime about children in a kind of punishment camp called The Program: Cons, Cults and Kidnapping. We’re still spacing it out a bit from Spaceman, but we also saw another movie: Damsel, and that was one that Netflix itself plugged a lot. Does he make it happen?
International Women’s Day
Today is March 8 and that means it is International Women’s Day. You can have an opinion about that, but it is clear that Netflix released this film today. The Damsel in Distress is the damsel in distress, the Princess Peach for Mario, the Rapunzel who needs to be rescued from her tower by a prince. There are many examples of films in which a damsel in distress is saved by a man. But there is no other way, they must have thought at Netflix. And so Damsel was born.
Netflix has taken a smart approach: they mainly focus this film on Millie Bobby Brown, who made herself immortal in Stranger Things. She plays Eleven phenomenally, but is also a very nice young lady in real life who is, among other things, one of Jimmy Fallon’s favorite guests. She previously appeared in the two films Enola Holmes on Netflix, but now in a new IP, Damsel. Although, it doesn’t feel completely new.
Millie saves the Damsel
That’s because it follows a fairly standard story, with a twist. In Damsel, Millie Bobby Brown plays the role of Elodie, a girl whose parents can use money and therefore choose to marry their daughter to the prince. His mother, played by Robin Wright, seems like a nice but dominant woman, but it doesn’t spoil the fun: after a short introduction, a marriage follows. However, only then does the true nature of this royal family emerge. Elodie is thrown into a cave where a dragon has lived for many years.
Call it a sacrifice, call it bribery, but in principle the girl would not fare well if it were not for the fact that in this film we see how well she can stay out of the hands of that dragon. The only sad thing is that it kind of ends there. We therefore wonder how the script was put together: it must have been wafer-thin. Moreover, walking around in those caves and seeing such a dark animal is a challenge for your television or telephone. Even with the screen turned up to its brightest setting, my phone struggled to show anything. You will also have that challenge on a television screen.
Viewing challenge
The sad thing about this movie is that you actually spend too long watching a dark hole with a struggling girl. We can’t make more of it. As great as it is that the queen plays a major role and the Damsel works herself out of the Distress, it is not a sparkling film or a picture that makes you think. It’s nice that Elodie is such a nice, spirited young lady, because that gives the film some spice, but without Millie Bobby Brown this film would really have gone nowhere. Maybe a strange tip, but this is a movie that you can watch while you build a LEGO set (the one from Stranger Things, for example) or fold the laundry. Unless you don’t have a good television, then you might not even be able to see the movie.
