I think it’s amazing that something like it exists, it never really excels at what it’s doing but it tries to balance so many different aspects and influences while keeping the centre of its story about this coming to understanding and ultimately accepting that change is good, an idea can linger around for years and ultimately believe it is the one that had this idea that it had and that it’s easier to be a doll but it’s so much more meaningful to be a human.
It feels fragile, the foundations of it but the movie keeps going without caring about any of that and ultimately just says what it wants and I like that it’s committed.
It weirdly reminds me of Everything Everywhere All at Once, both have very similar protagonists, both excel at taking elements from years of film, books and tv to comment on being a person and both take a very wild turn to get to the core message. I do feel like EEAAO is just a better film mostly because the message is more coherent, it feels more emotional and tightly written but Barbie is a rare meta-commentary of the movie that it is, it’s the first time a movie has reminded me of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Doki Doki Literature Club and I love it for that.
7.5/10 also Kate McKinnon was just awesome in this movie
My issue with Barbie’s structure and main plot comes from the fact that it essentially feels like we have two very different films and a bridge between them. The “coming to terms with being “broken” and helping her human” and “Ken establishing patriarchy” are always overshadowing eachother. First the former plot is on the front with the latter being slowly germinated and grown and then the latter is in full force and the former is given a ig almost silent sort of conclusion and the movie doesn’t do a compelling enough script or pacing to make these parts feel whole. I agree that it does all the things you and others have been talking about and I might enjoy it better a second time because I won’t have to worry about the plot structure and where it’s going
See I disagree, that’s actually a good feature. Many “movies with a point” can only take on the perspective a sole protagonist as a totalizing force. The split protagonists in Barbie show that the actual antagonists are the systems under which the protagonists exist both in Barbieland and the real world. It’s a true solidarity movie in the sense that Barbie not only does what is good for Barbie but she also learns to make space for Ken in a society that is a gender mirror of our own. Ironically Barbie in this way does have an apotheosis as an avatar of corporate feminism (woman savior) in but in aesthetic only, because in action she is showing solidarity along intersectional lines within her own society. Something that she ultimately wants to bring to the real world. Barbie doesn’t start the movie with all the answers as an all knowing intersectional socialist, she develops that on screen by bouncing off her deuteragonist in Ken. Ultimately not only does this structure make a fun movie, it makes a good movie with a point. Very often I have a hard time watching movies with a point with other people because at one point the “fun” of the movie falls apart for the “point”, something that doesn’t happen with the complexities of Barbie.