The Barbie Movie came out in 2023 and was greatly celebrated as an amazing feminist anthem.  It was written by Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach and directed by Greta Gerwig.  It was greatly dominated by the color pink throughout the movie.  It also got into some of the history of the making of the famous doll.  The movie can pretty much be summed up as a revenge fantasy type of story.

Stereotypical Barbie played by Margot Robbie and Stereotypical (?) Ken played by Ryan Gosling live in Barbie land.  The Barbies have nice houses, careers, and all the things that stereotypical men have in the real world today.  The Kens hang out on beaches waiting for Barbies to pay them some attention, play volleyball and nobody in the movie knows exactly where they live, nor do they care.  (I assume this is supposed to represent stereotypical females who chase after stereotypical males?)  In any case, the main Barbie character develops an existential crisis and discovers she must travel to the real world because the problem is linked to her real world counterpart doll.  So, she and stereotypical Ken do so, and he learns about patriarchy in the process.  They return to Barbie Land separately and this Ken has become a stereotypical good ol’ boy who has stolen her house, car, land but failed to steal her heart.  The movie then becomes a quest to reestablish the matriarchy that once existed in Barbie Land, which is equivalent to modern day patriarchy here in the real world.  In many ways this is done through playing head games with romance and flirting and the heart.  The acting in this movie was excellent, but the actors could not save the plot.  There was also a gross overabundance of pink.  As far as revenge movies “9-5” which came out in the 80’s was a much better movie, and “Brave” by Disney was a much better example of a female wanting to stay unattached.  I was not impressed with Barbie, just like I was not impressed with all the stereotypes in Avatar

I think Barbie was an alright movie.  It wasn’t awful.  The cast was well balanced and they all did an excellent job with an awkward script.  It just wasn’t the great and powerful wizard of oz of a film that I was told I was going to be seeing.  Three stars.