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Okay just returned from an early screening of Barbie, here's some thoughts Evening showing not too late (although everything ends late now), mostly youngish (late 20s to early 30s) crowd of women, gay men and boyfriends + 1 family with two tiny ~5 to 6 year old girls. One of the girls asked very loudly before the movie started "Why are there no kids here? It's about Barbie". Excited at the start, she scowled through out the whole movie. The 2001 moment from the trailer went down like a lead balloon. "Why are they destroying their own dolls?" was asked. So yeah, not a film for kids, but a film kids can see (even though there's more than a couple extended double entendres and the thematic heart of film is not interesting or really relevant to kids). Probably as good an attempt at a feminist Barbie film as you can get without completely destroying the BRAND. (side note: they talk a big game about the idea of Barbie but you can feel Barbie the brand really squeezing the movie). A surprising amount of leeway given to joking/commenting about Mattel's and Barbie's flaws. The movie tries over and over again to have it's cake and eat too but really can't resolve the internal contradictions of a feminist Barbie movie. It can't satisfactorily change Barbie, her world, or the real world so largely settles for conflict and changing things within the logic of the film. Unfortunately, one of the big pieces of world building/plot logic that the film is based is that Ken and Barbie do not have a romantic or intimate relationship, which if you've seen how children play with Barbie and Ken is not true (especially as they get older). Someone above mentioned the 90s Brady Bunch and Addams Family movies as comparison and that stands up. But imagine a completely neutered version of those and one which aggressively tries to remove all possibilities of camp from the movie. There's camp stuff in there (kind of) but it's buried rather than overt like the 90s movies. For example, Alan, Ken's "buddy" is kept as far a way from Ken as possible, I can't remember if they even interact. It's weird and probably indicative of how brand controlled this movie actually was, that a Barbie movie feels as conventionally heterosexual as this one does. I found it enjoyable but not much more than that. I did see a number of watery eyes during the sappy bits, so clearly people will get more out of this one than I did. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Jul 19, 2023 |
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Jul 19, 2023 14:15
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 15:27 |
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Baronash posted:The Kens haven’t been kept stupid by the Barbies. Everything in Barbieland exists in a stasis created by Mattel. In the same way that Doctor Barbie has always been a doctor, and Supreme Court Justice Barbie has always been a Supreme Court Justice, the Kens just exist as they have been designed. The Barbies aren’t the ruling class, the Mattel board of directors is. No, it's a little more complicated than that. Barbies and Kens are simultaneously reflections of how they are played with (this is the inciting incident remember!), cultural zeitgeist (why else would stereotypical Barbie exist), and Mattel's product decisions. But also what happens in Barbieland alters what toys get made (the Ken dojo starts being mass produced and sold without any active effort by Mattel, they're surprised it's happening!).
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Jul 24, 2023 23:47
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