Damsel is a girl-power fairy tale that will make you think twice about ever entering into an arranged marriage. The movie opens as Elodie (played by Milly Bobby Brown from Stranger Things) is promised to Prince Henry by her father, Lord Bayford. The arrangement is purely financial. Prince Henry’s kingdom is flourishing. Lord Bayford rules over a poor village that is on the verge of extinction.

Robin Wright plays Queen Isabelle, mother of Prince Henry. She is the wicked ruler of that affluent kingdom. Robin Wright is an actress who has not aged a nanosecond. She does a great job of portraying the worst mother-in-law in the history of Hollywood. She forces Lord Bayard into an appalling agreement: in order obtain the resources to save his village, he must hand over Elodie in marriage, which wouldn’t have been so bad if the royal mother-in-law’s post-wedding plans didn’t happen to be horrific.

After hearing the terms of the deal, Lord Bayford becomes distraught, but not distraught enough to return the money. Elodie’s nice stepmother, Lady Bayford (played by Angela Bassett) recognizes bad mischief is afoot. She begs Lord Bayford to spare Elodie and break the agreement, but he refuses.

            Spoiler alert: if you enjoy being surprised by a film, don’t watch the movie trailer. Weirdly, the trailer reveals and thereby greatly reduces the shock factor of the grim event that occurs at the beginning of the film. Without revealing too much, I’ll just say that Milly Bobby Brown spends a good chunk of the movie in a cave, alternately being chased by a fire-breathing dragon and then later, chasing the fire-breathing dragon. By the end of the movie, it’s clear that Elodie’s motto is “Vengeance is mine.”

            In theory, this is an action movie. However, the action did not move quickly enough for me. The film lingers too long on scenes of Elodie scaling great heights in the cave and scenes of her dodging the dastardly dragon. Even though the shots of the cave are beautiful, especially the close ups of the crystals and magic glowworms, I’d have preferred that the film move at a quicker pace.

            I enjoyed the acting, especially Robin Wright, Angela Bassett, and Milly Bobby Brown. The dialogue was clever and fun, especially the scenes with Elodie’s family and also the scenes with Elodie and Prince Henry. The dragon moved well and created havoc in a convincing way.  The dragon also spoke but she delivered her lines in a hushed and flat tone. Maybe the director was going for creepy, but I needed a little more verve in the voice to be as scared as I wanted to be.

            This movie might be too frightening for young children, unless you want to use it to discourage the kiddos from playing with fire. The fire scenes are graphic. Many humans and small creatures burn to a crisp.

I think older children and middle school kids would be entertained by the girl-power aspect of the movie. After she discovers that her little sister is in danger, Elodie transforms into Avenger mode. Bad stuff goes down for everyone who has crossed her including the dragon and those pesky in-laws. 

Even though I wished for pacing that moved more briskly, I found the movie entertaining and probably a good pick for a family movie night with the middle school crowd.