The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
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Critics Consensus: The beautifully filmed Damsel injects the western genre with a welcome dose of humor and some unexpected twists, although its stately pace may frustrate impatient viewers.
Critic Consensus: The beautifully filmed Damsel injects the western genre with a welcome dose of humor and some unexpected twists, although its stately pace may frustrate impatient viewers.
All Critics (102) | Top Critics (27) | Fresh (70) | Rotten (32)
Damsel spends its second half literally wandering in the woods, with no clear destination or objective in mind.
As an indie film with a clever gimmick, it's worth seeing, though it never quite sustains the sweeping feel of its first two scenes.
"Damsel" takes most of the elements you've ever seen in a Western and tweaks some, twists others and comes up with something unusual and mostly satisfying.
"Damsel" owes just as much to the absurdist tone of the Coen brothers, possessing the same visual and verbal japery and, occasionally, absurdism for its own wearyingly ridiculous sake.
Damsel is designed to be a deliberately out-of-joint comedy about a woman forced to endure an exasperating ordeal. After two hours, I could relate.
Like everything else attractive to the eye in "Damsel," this image of happiness is a cruel illusion. It's also an unilluminating one.
Even with a bizarre public hanging and some animated shootings, the action scenes felt insipid, while the humor didn't improve.
...it's unclear if the Zellners believe there's a tragic romance in wanting a woman who doesn't want you back or they understand that's just patriarchal BS.
A definite stumble for the usually fantastic Zellners.
The Zellner have long cherished strangeness and it comes in no shortage here.
This gritty little western subverts expectations at every possible turn and turns out to be a funny, twisted take on the tall tales of the American id.
While "Damsel" is bittersweet, it's truly a joy to behold, a showcase for the Zellners' zesty wit.
I'll give the movie props for having a unpredictable sequence that completely upends the narrative, but this is still too ponderous on the whole. I think if the filmmakers were less obsessed with being "offbeat" and put more focus into seriously examining the interesting ideas they raise, then this might have been a more effective revisionist western,
Super Reviewer
In a work with a serious Coen Brothers "nutty" vibe, Mia Wasikowska convincingly portrays a pretty woman out West during the settling days after the Civil War (where women were hard to find ... particularly pretty ones) with a frustratingly endless problem; I.e.; all the men she meets want to "save" her, despite that she herself doesn't want saving. Robert Pattinson does an excellent job as one of her impossible suitors, unwillingly to "not" save her. The work doesn't always score, but charms even when it fails due to it's stars' chemistry.
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