I honestly don’t know what all the hype is about. I’d give the film, at most, two, or three, out of ten stars. And the ending is so bad, that my daughter and I both thought it meant something different, so she looked it up, and read what the director said it meant. Neither one of us had guessed that’s what it was. People should know what the movie is trying to say…we did not. Terrible ending.
Lots of pink. That was to be expected. Her dream house and car, to be expected. As soon as the film started I thought I may have to leave, since EVERY single woman is called Barbie and they kept saying hello to each other, so it was BARBIEBARBIEBARBIEBARBIE…and on and on. None of the “dolls” were called by their store names, they were all BARBIE.
Again, all this talk about Ken. Don’t understand the hype. Just more glorification of men, I guess. Barbie did all the work. The movie tried to show what patriarchy was like but didn’t really pull it off.
The “Kens’,” yes, all the men were named Ken, showed that the two main Ken dolls, were still rivals, trying to outdo each other.
Barbie goes into the “real” world and immediately feels “unsafe.” Ken, when went with her, feels empowered, since he sees that men are in charge and women are more or less servants and not in charge of anything. Barbie goes to male dominated MATTEL and pleads her case but is forced to run from the men, who want to put her in a Barbie box.
To skip ahead, when Barbie goes back to Barbieworld, Ken has taken over. The Barbie’s are servants and their Dream Houses, along with everything else, belong to the Kens.
Barbie falls apart, the humans she has picked up along the way (a mother and daughter), help pull her together. The three of them come up with a plan to wake up the Barbies. The Barbies snap out of their patriarchal spell, and take back what was theirs, and the Ken boys are back where they started, but with a couple of perks.
The woman who created Barbie (played by Rhea Perlman), met Barbie when she was at Mattel, running from the men. Now she’s back at the end. Barbie wants to be a human woman and Rhea asks if she knows what she’s getting into. She takes Barbie’s hands and we see a fast montage of mothers laughing with their children. Barbie is not shown a single thing, other than that. No battered women, no women working for a few dollars, not getting child support, exhausted…etc. She sees nothing about the actual truth and reality, concerning the lives of actual non-doll females.
And then the dumbest ending of any movie I’ve ever seen. I won’t tell you what it is, but if you can guess what the director meant, good luck. Even after reading what she meant the ending didn’t make any sense at all and was actually pathetic and insulting. You couldn’t even translate it into anything a male could possible do. Not empowering in ANY way at all. It was so bad.
The hype about Ken, and people thinking he should get awards for his acting, is pure madness, in my opinion. Way too much Ken in the BARBIE film. Poor Ken. Boo hoo. And to make it worse, Barbie throws Ken a crumb toward the end, and he’s so happy. All the Ken guys are thrilled.
I did like the “Weird Barbie,” a doll who had been played with a little too much…LOLOL
This film may change a few girls. Make they wake up a little. But all in all…still don’t know what the hype is about, but you’ll have to see it and decide for yourself.
Rethinking Life 
Recent Comments