this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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That's funny because my wife hated it and said it was just a two hour complaint session while I thought it just did a mediocre job of conveying its message (which I agree with) at best. She absolutely hated the rant about being a woman while I thought the message was just done in the Hollywood 'character rants at a crowd' cliche instead of being done in a better way. A better way would have been ranting to her kid after something immediate prompts it instead of in a group rant removed from any immediate conflict. It just felt forced.
All of the Barbies and Kens were Hollywood movie stereotypical dumb. Yes, I know they are supposed to be dolls who are influenced by their owners or something (per stereotypical Barbie), and mostly cared for by children. But it could have had some nuance. And why are some of them smart, like Allen and Weird Barbie but not the doctor or president Barbie?
Some of the jokes seem like punch lines without any setup. Like the 'I don't have genitals' came out of nowhere and since she seemed to be confused by catcalls it made no sense for Barbie to blurt that out at that point in time.
They did not actually explain the patriarchy besides 'only men in charge'. They didn't cover how even women can prop it up, unless the Kens just saying Patriarchy over and over without any explanation was supposed to convey that. I don't know, that scene made zero sense too. Like the Kens being possibly homeless only needed a line about where they stayed at night like maybe camping on the beach and the Barbies thinking they were fine with it. Or even a two second moment of them packing up their tents at the beach in the morning. No time is needed, just context for why they might want to take over other than not being invited to girl's night.
Apparently men being in charge was bad, but they just ended up going back to only women in charge. They didn't do anything with the suggested possibility that the Kens were homeless, or that the matriarchy is just the reverse of patriarchy and they seemed to just go back to the Barbie world status quo at the end. Was that supposed to be a happy ending as an alternative to the children's understanding of how the real world is a patriarchy? Addressing that would have been great! That would at least make keeping Barbieland a matriarchy a somewhat happy ending.
So many things just came out of nowhere. Why did president business know about previous Barbies coming into the real world? Was that a bad thing? Was there something that came about from it? Are we supposed to just assume that he wanted to sort things out to avoid something? That was very unclear.
So in summary, I think all of the events of the movie could have been done far better with better writing with the exact same message, jokes needed better set ups or at least some context for them to land instead of seemingly out of nowhere, and a few things that were implied could have been addressed with a single line or a second or two for visual context.
Thanks for writing this out, I can only disagree with how much exposition was actually necessary, as I think most people in the audience got the gists pretty quickly. I'm glad your wife has an opinion on it too, humans as a group are not monoliths.
Patriarchy is becoming less of a problem, the tricky part has been elevating women without weakening men. We're all still good at what we do, and should be allowed to do what we are good at if it's beneficial to society. I add that last part as a stfu to the dunce who talk-shouts "but what if they're good at murdering???".
The plot has serious holes in it, as is customary for a lot of silly Hollywood movies, hell I think a few of the holes were purposeful for the sake of absurdity. I'm not trying to make a silly movie seem deep and pretentious by enhancing writing mistakes, just laughing at the result whether intentional or not. Maybe it was a little hammy. Meh, as is customary for pop films, especially ones with retro-80s-90s styling.
I mean you've seen some of those movies from back in the day, right? All to say, your analysis is probably valid, so is mine, who cares, it was ridiculous and I laughed because of it.
I was honestly hoping for something closer to Lego Movie which did an excellent job of balancing absurdity in the context of the toys with emotional moments about relationships while also being a feature length commercial. Trying to pass off obvious plot holes as being intentional when they weren't lampshaded is just giving the movie far more credit than it deserves.
Honestly there are a ton of movies that have the same basic approach of an oblivious person in the real world learning something fairly complex while balancing silly and emotional that were done so much better.
Speaking as a man, there should be zero concern about weakening men while elevating women. It is not a zero sum game and men who think that it is can go fuck themselves.
Cool. At least you gave it a shot, and from how much attention you paid the movie, seems like you at least appreciate how much work went into making it.
Not everyone's gonna be happy with a final product. That's all that can be said.
I'll point out, btw, your last paragraph was the primary thrust of the movie, in my opinion.
The movie did a terrible job of conveying the last sentence in my opinion. I know that is what they were trying to convey, but I think the execution was terrible.
To be clear, I loved some parts of the movie and laughed a lot.
To be honest, I wouldn't have even written any of these posts if I had not had high hopes for the movie and just assumed it would be generic Hollywood pandering.