We’ve all heard of the knight saving the princess from a fire-breathing dragon, but Damsel aims to flip the traditional tale on its head.
The feminist spin sees Millie Bobby Brown’s damsel agree to marry a prince, only to find out she was recruited as a sacrifice to pay an ancient debt.
After being thrown into a cave with a dragon, she sets about on an adventure to save herself rather than wait for a knight in shining armour.
Damsel hits Netflix today for International Women’s Day and the reviews are out, awarding the fantasy movie a green splat on Rotten Tomatoes with 57 per cent positive at the time of writing.
The major outlets in particular have not been kind to the Stranger Things star’s new film.
Telegraph
Millie Bobby Brown’s girlboss revenge caper is atrocious. Rather than being any particular person’s bright idea for a girlboss fantasy revenge caper, this lousy romp was obviously hatched by an algorithm, and might just as well have been directed by AI.
IGN
A weak script and boring performances make the Netflix fantasy film Damsel a real slog, torpedoing its attempt to be a subversive spin on classic adventure tales.
Wall Street Journal
There’s a credibility gap the size of Mount Dragon.
However, some critics were kinder to Brown’s Damsel.
The Daily Beast
Has its heart in the right place but little else, starting out competently and then slowly falling apart with each clumsy step along its “Game of Thrones”-lite path.
Digital Spy
This subversion of the usual knight-saves-princess narrative is long overdue, even if Damsel doesn’t manage to avoid all the clichés.
Damsel is streaming now on Netflix.
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