Barbie (2023)

My wife was raving about this, as have a few friends. Started watching it at the weekend and there were definitely some chuckles but boy am I perplexed where all of this praise is coming from. Mattel's board (men) have to be written really dumb for the plot to move along eh....
 
Watched it last night. It was hyped up a lot but its not a film I'd be rushing to see again. Maybe the hype is over the speech America Ferrera gives to the Barbies because every word is 100% true for a woman.

Towards the end made me a bit emotional because it was relatable in some ways.

Was interesting to see all the Barbies they came up with though. We were too poor for Barbie so I had Sindy doll growing up :D
 
Despite my best intentions to not watch this, I'm a volunteer at the "cinema" on my local military base and we've got it on our BFBS Cinema box so I'm showing this next Monday Night................................yay :eek:
 
Finally got round to watching this. Dunno why I waited so long to be honest, it was better than I thought. With Mario I didn't understand what all he hype was about but with this I can see why it has made so much money. Yeah bits of the film weren't really aimed at me, but there was more than enough comedy in the rest of it to enjoy. The depiction of Barbie Land/KenDom was amazing. Really good CGI and/or practival effects (it was so good I couldn't tell!) and a really good contrast to the real world scenes. Music/soundtrack was very good and the dance numbers were enjoyable. I was quite amazed at the ensemble cast and it was quite cool Otis/Ken and Maeve/Barbie from Sex Education are together :) . Will Ferrel wasn't as annoying as I thought he would be and wasn't even in it that much. Would watch again.

Solid 7.5/10


rp2000
 
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Watched this today I came away largely confused as to what message it was trying to send out. Some of its obvious exposition was on the money but the show don't tell parts were all over the place despite clearly trying to make a point.

Ryan Gosling was easily the star of the show and all the best parts went to the Kens which was a bit surprising. The Barbies were all a bit too "little miss perfect and wonderful". To the point of it being the sort of happy clappy, fake positivity that society seems to think is a good thing despite its obvious shallow imitation of genuine emotions.

Overall its a fun film. 6/10 I think is probably fair.
 
fez said:
Watched this today I came away largely confused as to what message it was trying to send out. Some of its obvious exposition was on the money but the show don't tell parts were all over the place despite clearly trying to make a point.

Ryan Gosling was easily the star of the show and all the best parts went to the Kens which was a bit surprising. The Barbies were all a bit too "little miss perfect and wonderful". To the point of it being the sort of happy clappy, fake positivity that society seems to think is a good thing despite its obvious shallow imitation of genuine emotions.

Overall its a fun film. 6/10 I think is probably fair.
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… surely, surely you understood that the film was very much intentionally satirically mocking the sort of ‘happy clappy’ types you are describing, and indeed the entire ‘superficial fakeness’ over how the Barbie brand has presented itself for decades? Shirley!?! :confused: :p
 
Nitefly said:
… surely, surely you understood that the film was very much intentionally satirically mocking the sort of ‘happy clappy’ types you are describing, and indeed the entire ‘superficial fakeness’ over how the Barbie brand has presented itself for decades? Shirley!?! :confused: :p
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They never went beyond that though and no, the Barbie brand has been trying to move away from that superficial fakeness for decades. Thats why you have every skin colour and profession in Barbies now. The film was made by Mattel as well... I don't imagine they were satirically mocking themselves quite as much as you are suggesting.
 
fez said:
They never went beyond that though and no, the Barbie brand has been trying to move away from that superficial fakeness for decades. Thats why you have every skin colour and profession in Barbies now. The film was made by Mattel as well... I don't imagine they were satirically mocking themselves quite as much as you are suggesting.
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The characters within the film were bitingly critical of how, despite the ridiculous promises of the Barbie brand, women can’t become an astronaut or whatever insane fantasy job they could have, nor have impossible figures with easy happy lives. This comes up in a number of scenes but most obviously in the scene where Barbie gets a dress down by the school girls.

I mean, here’s the scene:


The “happy clappy fake positivity” is absolutely what the film was intentionally addressing, amongst other things. Just look at how Barbie announces that all the girls should be thankful for her being empowering, only to be told that she actually just represents “sexualised capitalism” and that she “set the feminist movement back 50 years.”

In the film, Barbie learns that being a human is beyond the shallow depictions of womanhood that originally she believed were inspiring. The young girl likewise learns that it’s OK for people to draw inspiration and happiness from things even if they are (from a certain point of view) shallow and imperfect, if it’s a meaningful human experience.
 
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