Movie review: Barbie (2023)

[Post published by Liviu, on Liviu's [Personal] Blog]

Nota bene: for other movie reviews, click for the dedicated page with movie reviews.

Barbie (2023)

[IMDB; en.wikipedia]

Crazily stupid.
Stupidly crazy.

Shutting down my brain (in order to watch it) feels good, maybe I should do it more often?! :)

Ok, fine, it's not that stupid... it does have some supposedly smart lines / take home messages from now and then... but not that many and they do reveal as superficial if you carefully dissect them.

Sorry, but their approach against capitalism and patriarchy and everything else supposedly wrong with the world we live in... is sort of wrong by itself... but, hey! that’s good marketing for the movie, sells the product, keeps the industry going... :) so it's ok, can we please have some more?! :)

Entertaining overall.

No romance?! Nothing?! Oh, come on!
You have Barbie, you have Ken... and... nothing?!
Are they brother and sister or something?... or is Ken in the friend zone or something?!
That chemistry between Barbie and Ken, that relationship leads to romance either way you take it!
This is not a movie for kids, but for grown ups... right?

Instead of love we get friend zone from Barbie's side and envy & frustration from Ken's side...
...which is toxic both ways...
...but surely explains how & why the storyline develops once they reach the real world...

The original plot - i.e. the mother playing with the Barbie doll and projecting her anxiety & frustrations (regarding being a woman & mother, and cellulitis, and suicide thoughts etc.) on the Barbie doll - leads Barbie & Ken to the real world, which then leads to nothing really... but it's the very toxic relationship between Barbie & Ken which actually builds a real story!

What’s the excuse for the lack of romance?!
They are plastic dolls which have no genitals?!
Oh, come on! Go to a DIY store and make some genitals: just buy a drill and a wooden stick (preferably Pinocchio style if you know what I mean!)

If Barbie had offered Ken love & sex they wouldn’t end up in that mess in the first place.
If Ken weren’t an incompetent & worthless & idiot blonde doll they wouldn’t end up in that mess in the first place...
For the record, the fake plastic sand that Ken walks on on the fake plastic beach is worth more than Ken himself!, in fact that fake plastic sand is worth more than all of Kens combined! :))

Good acting overall.

I really liked Michael Cera as Allan and Kate McKinnon as Barbie - these 2 I enjoyed the most! I wish they had more screen time!

You can safely watch it on TV.

I expected better songs & soundtrack given it’s a musical, right?

However, it's a better musical than Ryan Gosling's La La Land (2016) [Liviu review], which I didn't like at the time and still consider it really bad. So, if that one earned so many nominations and Academy Awards, then this one surely deserves more :))

It will get some Academy Awards nominations nevertheless... and probably some Awards?!
Later edit: got some nominations, only won the Best Original Song - fair.


Spoiler 1: in the end, Barbie becomes human and moves to the real world... (1) to embrace & enjoy her vagina (she has an appointment to a gynaecologist at the very end, ok?!)... and then (2) probably also fully embraces the cellulitis and suicide thoughts she has already got a taste of... and then (3) probably turns on the TV / radio / Internet... that would be new! :) and disappointing?! :))
Oh, well, then Barnie can say “Hello, real world!... Bye, real world!... I really wanna go back to Barbie land!!! :(( Can I go back to Barbie land now, please?!”


Spoiler 2: that mother & daughter & father relationship is weird... Given the way the mother behaves at first I could swear she’s a single mom also having to deal with her daughter’s adolescence... but then the husband/father pops in as an immature & castrated idiot trying to learn Spanish?! I suspect they’ve rewritten that relationship so many times that they’ve lost track of it!


Final thought: I’m not sure whether this movie shall get little girls interested in Barbie dolls, but it shall surely get little boys interested in Stereotypical Barbie! :))

Conclusions

I liked it.
Entertaining, that's for sure... although it displays/exhibits a very superficial message.