Don’t let “Barbie’s” dreamy, Day-Glo visuals fool you.
The film runs on hate, not affection.
“Barbie,” inspired by the Mattel toy dating back to 1959, loathes men to a degree that would make a Women’s Studies major blush. It hates the Barbie toy itself, dubbing it “fascist” and worse throughout the film.
“Barbie” also hates women with sweet memories of the doll. Just know you supported the “Patriarchy” all those years ago. And maybe even now.
That leaves an ambitious film, scattered with well-earned laughs, that disintegrates during a disastrous third act.
“Barbie” opens with a clever conceit. What if Barbie Land existed as another universe alongside our real, imperfect world? The toys-as-people conceit is funny at first but quickly loses steam.
Stereotypical Barbie, played with panache by Margot Robbie, suddenly finds herself victim to feelings from that other realm. She thinks about death, for starters, interrupting the dreamy existence everyone enjoys in Barbie Land.
Except the men. The various Kens, led by Ryan Gosling, are there to be either ogled or ignored. Mostly the latter.
This Uber-feminist world has no need, desire or empathy for Ken Nation. And the lads are perfectly content because they don’t know any better.
When Barbie and Ken leave their world to visit the Real one, everything changes. Ken discovers the Patriarchy, and he likes it! (The screenplay mentions the “patriarchy” 10 times… 10!) Barbie encounters rampant sexism, like AMC’s “Mad Men” on steroids.
Had “Barbie” been set in the 1950s some of this would make sense.
Mattel has enlisted not only Greta Gerwig but also A-listers ranging from Vin Diesel (Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots) to Lena Dunham (Polly Pocket). J.J. Abrams is making “Hot Wheels,” which he insists will be “emotional and grounded and gritty.” https://t.co/SuZ6VdfNqh
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) July 11, 2023
Can Barbie learn why her perfect life is now not so ideal? Will Ken bring the Patriarchy back home? Will a movie that starts with promise curdle during the critical third act?
The answer to the latter, sadly, is “absolutely.”
That’s a shame since director/co-writer Greta Gerwig establishes inventive ways to bring the toy franchise to life. She even drops references to actual Barbie accessories during the film and uncorks a funny faux commercial about a new, “depressed” Barbie doll option.
The production design is sublime. If “Barbie” were an old home you’d say it had “good bones.”
RELATED: ‘BARBIE’ MARKETING IS CLASSIC BAIT AND SWITCH STORY
Gerwig, along with collaborator Noah Baumbach, have an agenda to push that drains the joy from their creation time after time. And it starts from the opening minutes with a cringe-worthy close-up of the all-female Supreme Court (where’s Amy Coney Barrett?).
Feminism! Empowerment! Down with the Patriarchy!
Every time the film gains momentum it pauses to make a mini-speech The characters can’t move beyond these moments because there’s always another minutes away.
It’s the perfect encapsulation of woke storytelling. The AgendaTM matters more than the narrative and mustn’t be denied.
HATE WOKE? YOU’LL LOVE THE HOLLYWOOD IN TOTO PODCAST
“Barbie” could still offer powerful points about sexism in the western world with a less heavy-handed approach. Show, don’t tell. Instead, it tells, and tells, until the story has nowhere to go. That leaves a finale brimming with poorly choreographed fight scenes, dance numbers that make no sense and conclusions that feel almost anti-human.
This movie hates men so much it hurts. Even a key character’s husband is emasculated in his fleeting screen time by both his wife and daughter.
Gosling’s Ken is alternately cruel and dopey, drowning in a sea of masculine cliches. The rest of the Kens appear, well, gay and equally devoid of any inner life.
Of course, we can’t have so much as a flicker of romance between Robbie’s Barbie and Gosling’s Ken. Ewwwww, gross! That’s not empowering … at all!
“I don’t want you here,” Robbie’s Barbie flat-out tells him at one point. Never mind that little girls bought millions of Ken dolls so their Barbie could have a romance for the ages.
That doesn’t further THIS agenda, so it’s discarded.
America Ferrera, cast as a mother pining for her Barbie-infused youth, delivers a TED talk late in the film that gives the game away. It’s a feminist screed that regurgitates everything said up until that point.
It stops the movie. Cold. “Barbie” never recovers. How could it?
RELATED: GUESS WHAT TEAM BARBIE IS HIDING?
Ferrera’s daughter isn’t exactly pleased to meet Barbie in real life, or are we reading lines like this wrong?
“You represent everything wrong with our culture. You destroyed the planet with your glorification of rampant consumerism … you fascist!”
Oh, and please buy Mattel products after seeing our new movie!
Will Ferrell looks lost as the Mattel CEO trying to track down the runaway Barbie. Is he a cold, cunning capitalist? A man sworn to uphold the Barbie legacy? A male feminist eager to make the world a better place?
Darned if Gerwig and Baumbach can tell, leaving the great comic actor lurching from scene to scene in utter confusion.
The only thing missing from “Barbie?” Those blood-red Handmaid’s Tale costumes. They’re saving those for the sequel, most likely.
HiT or Miss: “Barbie” smartly adapts the iconic toy to the big screen but does everything in its power to destroy it.
Such a brave, feminist movie that Gerwig had her husband help with the script. Take that, Patriarchy! It sounds like an inferior version of The Lego Movie with an agenda.
This comment is such a shame! This is exactly the point the movie is making. Being feminist is not anti-men! Being feminist is creating space to understand everyone’s experience and injustices, and not fight one another about it so that one has power and control over the other.
The opposite of patriarchy is not women ruling as men do now. The opposite of patriarchy is women enjoying the same freedom and opportunity as men do without either having power or control over the other. It is all of us living and experiencing the world in ways that allows us the same opportunities to be who we want to be.
You already have that freedom, you’re just too dumb to see it.
I’d like the freedom to speak my mind without a man needing to compensate for his insecurity by insulting a women to feel more powerful.
You’re gonna have to toughen up.
We already are. Economy’s being strained by us refusing to participate.
The woke hate it when they have to say “The pen is blue…”
You sound highly triggered
ironic
And you sound like you didn’t graduate high school
nice job Mr. Toto you kicked the alt-left hive mind with this one. lotsa comments
keep up the good work
Tell you are insecure without saying you are insecure
Tell me you can’t have a rationale debate without saying you’re incapable of doing so.
Women that use words like misogyny, insecure, toxic, patriarchy, etc etc, are never capable of having a rational debate. They’re always the first to start calling names and get hysterical. As a woman, we don’t claim them! I bet they’re a real treat at parties
With a name like Smashley, you think i’m not fun at parties?!
And I use words like misogny, insecure, toxic, and patriarchy all the time. They are just words. And they represent a lot of what is happening in our society.
Women being against other women is also a result of the patriarchy.
What’s it like living without a brain?
On a final note blaming everything on patriarchy is just a sign of a weak ass woman who has no real intellect and no argument. We are a generation of men raised by women and considering how bad the crime rates are in black neighborhoods and 70 percent of those don’t have fathers, it sounds like women are bad at their jobs.
You could have put some logical and rational points to explain your position. But instead you chose to attack and name-call. Not good.
If everything you describe is even half true, then my god, this will be a failure and scandal even more than the Ghostbusters of 2016 or Velma.
Once again, the sensitive, weak man who can’t handle strong portrayals of women (as they can’t handle being proven even more less than then they already are) thinks a movie that’s already out-sold almost every major blockbuster this year will fail because feminism/gender equality/“woke” (really whatever you want to say) has proven to be much more successful than ignorant, misogynistic hate. Let’s go Barbie!
You’re really bad at this, aren’t you?
I never said the movie would fail. The b.o. projections are huge, in part, because the marketing tricked consumers into thinking it WASN’T a screed. My wife is a warrior who beat breast cancer and continues to bully past the symptoms she suffers from the medication keeping cancer at bay. Do better. Read better. Argue better. Try again!
This is going to put a sour taste in a lot of “normal” people’s mouths. The expectation from families is so far divorced from what’s actually on the screen that it’s impossible to ignore. This will worsen gender divides, and I’m honestly happy about that.
I guarantee that if the women in a hypothetical toy movie were as one-dimensional as the male dolls are in this movie, paid shills like the ones trolling this review would be the first to scream “misogyny”.
It’s ironic: the ones who say men needs to express their feelings more shout men down when they complain.
I guess you don’t learn from Little Mermaid, Indiana Jones 5 and other woke movies that ended up flopped.
As a woman, there’s probably no one I dislike more on this planet than women who use terms like “misogyny, patriarchy, strong powerful women, blah blah blah” in their daily conversation. Constantly feeling the need to knock men is pitiful. If we erased every contribution men have made to society tomorrow, we’d go back to living in the stone age.. I appreciate that the reviewer had the nerve to call it like he saw it, even though I’m sure he knew he’d end up with people like yourself calling him a misogynist.. maybe you’d be more happy living in your barbie dream world where only girls rule. I’m happy to help you pack.
I’m a woman and I thought it was so miserably nauseatingly preachy.
We just want to see entertainment. We don’t want to feel like going to a movie is like going to church.
You do realize that humans CAN love something AND be able to criticize aspects of it and its past as well as certain of its larger social and economic influence? When you love something it isn’t a blind cult. But I guess you wouldn’t know about that. People like you like joining cults. You’d think a critic would know that. I guess that exposes what you are NOT.
Maybe. But it is unlikely that I will make a documentary about my grandmother, calling her a fascist along the way and portraying my grandfather as a loser who broke her life. Because I love them.
Because when I go see a movie for a beloved character I want to lectured to and called a POS for ever loving it! That’s exactly what a summer movie should be!
Says the man who obviously hates himself.
Where do you get *that* from? Or do you just say random things in a smarmy voice, and then assume you sound smart?
Man hates himself for reviewing a man hating movie?
Oh, you poor little incel. Time to grow up little boys.
Would you like to thoughtfully disagree with my review or just hurl some slurs around?
Don’t you find it ironic that people who ostensibly fight for gender equality use dehumanizing slurs to attack the gender of those who don’t like their media?
You said it!
I happily and thoughtfully disagree with your review and I encourage everyone who resonates with this review, to not necessarily go see the movie, but just start talking to people who are different from you.
Seeing “woke” as something problematic is the exact perspective that prevents you from understanding this movie. “Woke” is being informed, educated, and conscious of how different people experience injustice in their day-to-day existence. That’s it. This movie is predominately about how women experience the world. You appear to be a man, and you aren’t interested in educating yourself about the experiences of anyone else. If you aren’t informed and educated, then this movie is beyond what you are capable of understanding. You lack both the knowledge and lived experience to be skilled enough to write a review on this movie.
This review will not change the way women feel in this world. This review will surely not change women’s experiences for the better. Your review, at most, will empower other men, like you, to use anti-wokeness a a cover to feel better about their insecurities in a world where men do not dominate women.
The biggest oversight in your review, is that the movie is really about men needing to take a look at the patriarchy and how it negatively impacts women, but also men. We can work together, not fight one another, to create systems and opportunities that help everyone.
Appreciate your thoughtful reply. I would respect the woke revolution a tiny bit if this were true:
“Woke” is being informed, educated, and conscious of how different people experience injustice in their day-to-day existence. That’s it.
It’s not. There are many examples of the woke mob standing down because it doesn’t help them politically. The best? Hunter Biden. He may be the greatest example of White Privilege in modern history, yet that label is never attached to him. Ever. He gets a pass. Why? The D- in front of his father’s name. One more. Morgan Wallen saw his career nearly end after he was caught saying the n-word in private (and not against a black person). Yet Hunter Biden repeatedly used the n-word in texts. The woke didn’t call him out, didn’t cancel him … they did nothing. Except scurry to pay thousands of dollars for his art work. Oh, and the press all but ignored those texts, too. The press is woke… unless it could hurt a Democrat.
Need more? GOP women can be attacked, slandered … you name it. It’s never framed as misogynistic. The woke mob never rallies to their side in their defense. Why? The R- before their names.
Your frustration with how “woke culture” has paid attention to Hunter Biden, or not paid attention to certain GOP women only distracts from this thread.
Barbie movie elevates the day to day experiences of women, and how women are often treated in ways in which the feel like they are the supporting characters to men – to be “ogled or ignored.” It is a privilege to have a voice on the subject – you could have chosen to lift up this experience, and with the power you (still) have within the patriarchy (that still exists), you have the opportunity to encourage others to become aware and question the role women are asked to play in society. One that they are largely unhappy with.
You could have also given attention to how the movie is asking men to become more aware of how the patriarchy hurts them too and is built on power and control which incites constant conflict (ie. you vs. hunter biden, you vs. feminism, you vs. “the woke mob”, you vs. Democrats).
You don’t even know what that word means.
found the femcel fellas lol
Their user name is YO Mama lmao thats says it all
What’s with the incel insult in all of this? Do you really think everyone who disagrees with this kind of content from Hollywood is an incel? Many men happily married and in love with strong women disagree similarly because Hollywood can’t be subtle about empowering women and is mostly just writing scripts that have no nuance. Even some actresses who have done powerful roles have a problem with the poorly written female characters of modern Hollywood. Stop with the insults and try to understand why people might complain about some things. Some hate because they just wanna hate, but that’s a very small part of the population.
This movie was written as a vehicle for Amy Schumer, so none of this should be a surprise. I doubt any writing was changed when the casting directors came to their senses.
ok ❄️
I see the goon squad is out in force today.
What a pointless and stupid review.
Did you minor in Debate at college?
Man I’m such a victim that everyone and their mom could have known I was gonna be such a snowflake and write this review.
In collage *
Touche! LMAO 🙂 I thought this was a great writeup. Kudos!
I think you are what happens when students avoid the hard classes.
Says the emasculated leftist.
How so, Peter?
“Math is hard” — Barbie
Thinking is hard. — Peter
And yet, you read it… AND commented.
How would he come to the conclusion that it was stupid and pointless if he hadn’t read it…???
Women are never happy. Barbie is now a horror movie in pink.
That’s bc we’ve had to deal with all the sexist crap from men for centuries! now with Barbie treating Ken this way in the movie all the conservative men are freaking out, what a ‘twist’ lol!
Western storytelling has become joyless. “Where your heart is, there your treasure will be also.”
What an excellent point, especially when contrasted with Caviezel’s message at the end of Sound Of Freedom. He spoke about the importance of storytelling, and how the kids were the heroes, bcoz telling their stories is what moved the men to action. (I finally saw SOF last night. I am blown away and still processing. I can’t wait to see it again.)
We went to see Sound of Freedom two nights ago because of 1) friends said we had to see it and 2) the media were freaking out about it. We thought it was amazing. Just a great, non-sequal, no-super-power, good story about a good man doing a great thing for helpless children. I look for these kinds of films at this stage of life and will skip Barbie.
I’m shocked. I’m stunned. Give me a few moments to pick my jaw up off the floor.
IKR???!!! After the amazing & honoring success of all the latest franchise entries, I am…. flabbergasted that they could get this franchise wrong. Ah well, at least it’s in the hands of intellectually curious people. They will learn from their mistakes and make a quality sequel.
Hope it bombs go woke go broke
It’s unfortunately going to make a ton of money because parents are only seeing the Barbie logo and taking their kids to see it. Then it will die off after they realize it isn’t for kids.
@John doe
“Weekend Box Office: BARBIE and OPPENHEIMER Combine for Fourth Highest-Earning Domestic Weekend of All-Time, Best Summer Weekend on Record”
– BoxOffice Pro
https://www.boxofficepro.com/weekend-box-office-barbie-oppeneimer/
Clearly, Barbie is immune to “Go Woke, Go Broke.”
And the rest of your body as well.
My god, it takes nothing to get the conservatives riled up and SCARED of a movie.
Im sorry, that is hilarious after a couple weeks of Sound of Freedom being out and every the entire left collectively losing their minds that a movie called child sex trafficking evil. I took my daughter to this movie and this article is spot on. It’s not meant to be empowering its meant to teach little girls that they are victims and that could be anything if not for those terrible boys that just ruin everything. I’m not riled up, I’m just not an idiot.
I wasn’t scared of the movie. I went there and took my daughter. There’s nothing to be afraid it. It wasn’t an appropriate for kids at all. But sometimes you just want to go to a movie and not be preached at.
@George J Kamburoff
This is nothing,
You should have seen the right-wing meltdown over Captain Marvel’s box office success.
It’s part of the left’s attack against American traditions and values, not to mention that it emasculates men.
Emasculates men how? Ken had every opportunity to live his own life go get his own house. Women all over the world LOVED this movie because of how right it is, how spit on it hit every single experience. Yeah sure it’s an attack on old traditions and values that up until recently, prevented women from freedom and autonomy (credit cards, mortgages, voting ect.) to keep us reliant on men, and now that we have our freedom we’re not reliant on men y’all are terrified and actually have to put in effort and acknowledge that we are not lower than you guys. The only constant in life is change, traditions and values can change too.
they’re hurt over a movie about… barbie dolls? conservatives are just adult toddlers.
Someone needs to make another G.I. Joe movie about men making all the sacrifices in the world to protect our freedoms while women sit at home and do nothing. After the feminist meltdown, we’ll exclaim, “Hey, it’s just a movie about dolls!”
(taken from a Ben Shapiro post)
I love how people like you come here just to get triggered over the truth of the content in this movie.. stay naive and blind
You mean like how progressives wet themselves over an indie movie about stopping child sex trafficking? I think you’d better sit this one out bud
Sounds like you’re still sucking on a women’s nipple. Least you forget it was the MAN that built this country so the women of today can have all the present day conveniences.
Your handle and post tell a person exactly what they need to know about you. You exude a false pride of someone deeply unhappy with himself and the world in general, Anyone who does not accept the equality of other people is uncertain about his place in the world and unsure about his own equality to others. Your cockiness is a mask for a deep insecurity about yourself. Your resentment towards other people is a reflection of the resentment you hold towards yourself.