Review of Barbie (2023) by Clutcher — 21 Jul 2023

Felt like I paid to watch a two hour ad. While the movie is often funny and clever, it was overall disappointing.

Hollow overtures to feminism, overt misandry, and forced diversity were used to clean up Mattel's image and please the uncritical mainstream audience. While graphics were appealing, Barbies character itself is poorly developed & the storyline is incoherent… The story could not be resolved without Greta literally preaching her message at the end.

The movie could have been about feminism and equality, instead, however, it promotes matriarchy as solution to patriarchy. “Barbie” is reinforcing the problem. The movie touches on several interesting themes but never explores them which feels like wasted potential.

- The Mother-Daughter relationship. The daughter is disconnected with her mother and acts hostilely at school. You thought the movie will revolve about fixing that problem? No. The daughter has no problem. She's just a teenager.

- Thinking about death: The mother misses playing with her daughter and starts designing sad or “weird” Barbies. How does that relate to Barbie thinking about death specifically?

- The corporate: The corporate people who are all men try to catch Barbie so they can send her back to Barbieland. But when Barbie went to Barbieland they still followed her. It took them too long to get there for no apparent reason. And when they got there it just gets very confusing. Why are they in there?

- Barbie wanting to be human: A theme that starts with Barbie‘s interaction with an old lady and her observing other people. That motive disappears completely until the end, Barbie has no motivation to become human throughout the movie.

- Kens: The Movie tries to make Ken the bad guy even though he was just trying to be noticed and loved (woman good man bad mentality). You’d expect Ken has any meaningful development after the downfall of Kendom but he remains Barbie’s accessory.