Damsel (M, 110 mins). Three stars
The Hollywood studio system as it once was, where an actor would be "signed" and paid a good wage to work exclusively in whatever films the studio placed them, doesn't really exist any more.
But for the breakout star of Stranger Things, the young British actress Millie Bobby Brown, Netflix is doing its best to approximate that arrangement by placing a series of tasty projects before her that might keep her delivering exclusively for the online platform.
She's already enjoyed some success with two films in the Enola Holmes series where she plays the younger sister to detective Sherlock Holmes, and she's already turned down a proposed Stranger Things spin-off series for her character Eleven.
She must have loved the pitch Netflix gave her for Damsel, because here it is on the streaming service, but what's not to love for a young actress who gets to play both a princess and a kind-of Lara Croft action hero in the one film?
Millie Bobby Brown, and I cannot say that name in my head without making those last two words sound like Whitney Houston, strung out and screaming the name of her husband in their reality television series, plays Elodie, eldest daughter of a medieval land presided over by her dad, Lord Bayford (Ray Winstone).
The lands have seen better days, with every tree felled for firewood and a scarcity of food. So when the Lord and his Lady (Angela Bassett) receive an invitation from a wealthier neighbouring kingdom to present Elodie to their wife-seeking Prince Henry (Nick Robinson), they smell the chance to reverse their miserable fortunes.
On arrival in this kingdom, Elodie and her younger sister Floria (Brooke Carter) are charmed by the greenery, the abundance of food, and the elegant beauty of their Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright). The Queen must like what she sees, because a wedding date is soon set for Elodie and Henry, and Lord and Lady Bayford are sent off with their purses full. After the wedding ceremony, however, Elodie learns the awful truth behind this kingdom's prosperity, due in part to a sacrifice of its young women, and Elodie is the latest addition to the kingdom to fit that profile.
Beneath the kingdom, Elodie learns that a golden, fire-breathing dragon demands the sacrifice. It stalks her through its cavern, but doesn't reckon with a young woman who knows how to live by her wits and becomes more than a match for this nightmare come to life.
We've all loved the girl-and-her-dragon story that was Game of Thrones, final season aside, but the target audience for this film is far too young to have seen that. It's a mature fairy tale for that Enola Holmes audience, girls maybe 10 to 15. Though it's rather violent, it's no more so than of the Brothers Grimm stories it nods to.
What I liked most about Dan Mazeau's screenplay is its interplay between its two leads, Brown's Elodie and the dragon, voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo.
I feel I've been complicit over the years in spouting film PR drivel about the voice work of actors in animated films, which is sometimes great stuff but often just big-name television actors banking a cheque for blandly reading lines into a microphone. Aghdashloo is the benchmark against which future voiceover work should be judged, so endlessly sad and tortured does she make her dragon sound.
Brown gives Netflix its money's worth, being a noble princess and a solid action hero, particularly as she must have been acting against a green screen for most of the film.
The costuming is sumptuous, really turning up the faucet on the Netflix money tap, and the young girls are going to love the pageantry and the colour of it.
