I just saw this on streaming. I don't get why it is getting such high praise. It is exactly as was advertised by the woke marketing. It's female led boring trash. The main character was carried the entire movie, primary the butt of jokes and is generally useless. In fact other than a few specific scenes, nearly all the male characters are useless.
Sam Rigel's Scanlan was a way better character than this crap.
The plot was so lame, especially with the intended victims easily running out of the area of effect at the end.
This deserved to bomb at the cinema.
Everyone was expecting it to be a completely unwatchable dumpster fire filled with massive woke propaganda. But then it it turned out to be "only" mediocre and its woke propaganda was "only" subtle, so critics heaped high praise on it for surpassing their abysmal expectations. In other words: just more celebration of mediocrity.
Was the woke subtle or it just threw a bone to the male characters?
I haven't seen it, so I can't tell you myself. I'm just going off what the critics say, which is that the female characters are universally more competent than the males, with the lead being a useless idiot bard who fights with his instrument and doesn't cast spells (which goes against what bards can do at least in 5e).