The Barbie movie

I recently persuaded my husband to see the Barbie movie, and honestly, I was disappointed.

The plot

Warning: spoiler alert.

The movie starts in Barbie Land and it has all kinds of Barbies, you know, Barbies of all ethnicities and occupations. There are also Kens but they are only there to make the Barbies look good. Then there is ‘the’ Ken (Ryan Gosling) and he is in love with stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie).

Stereotypical Barbie starts having problems, like having anxiety and thinking of death—things that are unusual for a Barbie to have. She goes to Weird Barbie to find out what’s wrong and get fixed. Weird Barbie tells her that the person playing with her is projecting her feelings onto her. Barbie must go to the real world, find the person playing with her, fix her problems and then Barbie should be back to normal.

She and Ken travel to the real world and Ken finds out about the patriarchy and takes books on it back to Barbie land. Meanwhile, Barbie finds the woman who played with her and takes her and her daughter back to Barbie Land. There, they find that the Kens have taken over and they make a plan to get it back.

What I thought

There have been so many mixed reviews about it. It seems like people either loved it or hated it.

First off, I loved the sets and outfits—it’s all very Barbie. I love how they went through the different Barbies and even had an Allen, and there is no one better to play him than Michael Cera.

I like Ryan Gosling’s bimbo (himbo?) character, because I guess that’s all that Ken has ever been portrayed as.

However, I didn’t like the preachy tone of the movie. Yes, we know men rule the world. Yes, we know that women are treated like dirt. However, most people are treated like shit, no matter what they identify as. The worst of it was the speech that America Ferrara’s character gives about the double standards that women face to zap Barbies out of their patriarchal spell.

It also seems like such an anti-man movie, which I hate. We’re all human and face struggles for various reasons. The men are portrayed as total idiots. They’re all bimbos/himbos.

I feel bad for the little kids who had to sit through the movie because it wasn’t even a kids’ movie. It was all for nostalgic adults.

You know what? I think the biggest problem was that this movie has been hyped too much for too long.

I should have seen Oppenheimer instead.

Lastly

Have you seen the Barbie movie? What did you think of it? Am I being too harsh?

Meh.

Michelle

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