Champion of Hyrule

It’s clearly just a re-skin of the doki doki panic movie

Yeah Barbie was amazing, that's basically the central thesis of this little review of mine, it was an amazing movie. It has a surprising amount of insight into real issues and self-awareness. Here's my thoughts on it:

The set design and well, obviously, the costuming was amazing. You can immediately tell this movie put effort into it's world by how it's laid out and details like a shower not working or water not existing, and not showing the process of characters moving a place. This is kept up through out the entire movie (the Mattel corporates just showing up at the beach battle is a good example of this) and this doesn't seem like a big deal, but the amount of effort in general put into this movie is incredible. My sister sometimes watches these videos analyzing characters based on their outfits, with movies like Mean Girls or Heathers and I actually really want to see one for Barbie. Oh also there were a ton of references to the Barbie Lore and I love that - I feel like comically obscure references to a franchise's history is usually reserved for stuff like star wars or superheroes (stereotypical masculine IP's) so doing it for ****ing Barbie is really cool.

The story does not take itself too seriously (that of course isn't to say it isn't serious at moments) and its themes were very unsubtle. I don't mind this at all, and enjoyed the jokes and thought the writing was very insightful. I would say at times the lightheaded, jokey tone was maybe a little tiring but it's not too big a deal and there were plenty of serious moments that grounds the film. You know, like a powerful patriarchy rant. There were multiple jokes that made me clutch my stomach laughing and almost rolling on the floor, it was consistently hilarious (my favorite joke was when Will Ferrell says all the reasons Mattel totally values women and says "all of us love women", which kinda just sounds like he's saying they're all straight.)

From a meta-perspective Barbie was very insightful. We had Barbies in my house in my childhood but I felt like my sister "grew out of it" before coming back to them later. I imagine gen alpha might not have that connection to Barbie either. The "adult was actually the one playing with Barbie" twist as well as the kid's "destroying" of Barbie both show this in a pretty meta-way which shows a genuine understanding of how the IP is currently seen. The ending of the movie (the stuff with Ruth not the gynecologist visit) was a very powerful examination of the idea of Barbie and what it represents in our society. It's actually a complicated topic so I think that needs its own post, although I can say the fact that it's even so big is indicative of something.

Okay I wanna talk about Ken. It's really sad but in a lot of spaces the negative affects on patriarchy on men isn't really examined and genuine issues from men are met with resentment and a "just don't be sexist". Young men aren't really reached out to, ending up with them turning to sexist ideas. Ken does what he does because of genuine greivances in the movie which is an effective plot point doubly because Ken's are actually treated like that in marketing and public perception of the brand. The Ken's aren't treated as inherently bad people, and unfortunately there are a lot of misinformed feminists who actually do seem to think men who go down right-leaning paths because of actual grievances are inherently bad. Ken is met with care (while maintaining Barbie's independence) and respect, and both men and women were treated very well in the plot. Also the first thing I did when I came home after the movie was add I'm Just Ken to my playlist.

I didn't go too in-depth with specific stuff and points I made, but overall Barbie was incredible and I honestly hope it changes feminist discussions to be more positive in the future. Okay it's 11:20 PM yeah going to sleep now I need to stop talking about Barbie.