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

It's a shame because I love Little Women and Lady Bird. Barbie did not serve.

It's a long ramble about how matriarchy is perfect and patriarchy is stupid. I'm agreeing with the latter, but the execution is just awful. The CEO and corporate people of Mattel started as a mock on men having all the top positions in a company, as the movie goes they're just there at the back of your mind and it's unpleasant experience because they did not do anything after. So many unnecessary scenes that could've been meaningful. For example, what's the scene Allan fighting other Kens for? I'm also surprised that there are no gay Barbies and Kens. I thought this was supposed to break the gender norms? There are so many seeds planted at once but none of them grew into their fullest potential. Here are some examples:

1. The mother and daughter relationship: It started well, the daughter is disconnected with her mother. You thought the movie will revolve about fixing that problem? No. The daughter has no problem. She's just a teenager.

2. Mother's longing for her daughter: The reason why barbie became curious about death is because the mother is playing with her barbie *differently*. She's drawing *weird* (sigh) Barbies. You thought it was because she had a rough childhood and now is the time to heal her inner child? No, she misses her time playing with her daughter. While it is an alright backstory, I see no reason how it is related to Barbie getting curious on death. 3. Patriarchy: It's always shown that patriarchy is for stupid men and their horses. The corporate people who are all men tries to catch Barbie so they can send her back to Barbieland. But barbie went to Barbieland and 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? Oh, it's because men are stupid? No, I'm not gonna laugh anymore. 4. Barbie wanting to be human: This should've been the theme of the movie. The point of the movie should've been about what Barbie saw to make her realize she wants to be human. But no, it was only a few minutes when she's seeing people laughing and some people are sad. After that, there was no more of it. They tried to push this in the ending but it just doesn't feel right because of the lack of motivation. Although it was expected. They wasted the whole time with cameos and other meaningless scenes.

I am disappointed in this movie. It's not worth the hype. It's incoherent. I really tried to make sense of the scenes I saw. If you want to see sisterhood, watch Mean Girls instead. At least in that movie they found sisterhood by letting each one of them know their worth, not by *unbrainwashing* them by a method very similar to brainwashing. They also did some weird things in Barbie like they manipulated the Kens by cheating on them. Men are stupid and it's the girls doing it so it's okay, I guess.