Damsel (2024) review

To "save" her "harsh and barren" homeland, Elodie (Millie Bobby Brown) reluctantly agrees to be married off to Prince Henry (Nick Robinson) from the Kingdom of Aurea - which is ruled over by Queen Isabelle (Robin Wright) and King Roderick (Milo Twomey) - but immediately after the two exchange vows, Elodie is launched off a bridge as a sacrifice to a rather tenacious and vengeful lady dragon (voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo) that she has to try to escape from.  As she's shown in both the Netflix series Stranger Things and in Enola Holmes, Brown is quite capable (despite her young age) of doing action scenes with conviction, but there isn't a whole lot going on in this: it's basically a duck-and-run obstacle course movie, with Smaug from Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies serving as an "influence," and then, for the very conclusion, it gives a wink to How to Train Your Dragon, in which Elodie convinces the fire-breathing beast she's been tricked.  If anything, it seems to offer a mediocre message about bad parenting, with wise stepmother Lady Bayford (Angela Bassett) acting as the only one suspicious of the arrangement and despicable Lord Bayford (Ray Winstone) willing to trade his oldest daughter for riches.  For shame, etc.