I finally watched ‘Barbie’ (2023) last night. I guess I’m not the target audience, but I really don’t understand what all the fuss was about. It’s quite a generic and bland film, with very few interesting or developed characters and the plot is all over the place and quite difficult to follow. Despite attempting to satirise large corporations, the film lives constantly in the shadow of them and struggles to not feel like one giant marketing campaign.
Really the only interesting thing about it is the feminist message, which is delivered in such a preachy and crude fashion that it becomes annoying very quickly. It’s also predominantly second wave feminism, so it feels outdated and very much through the lens of white, middle-and-upper class women. It seems like maybe the point here was to critique this type of feminism, but the film doesn’t do it with any depth or spend anywhere near enough time on it so the main theme just defaults to “yay woman CEOs and presidents”. The most interesting character is Ken, but unfortunately he and his story arc never feel like anything more than a plot device for Barbie and feminism, which is very ironic considering this is the exact opposite of where the storyline leads
I’m not sure what the actual target was, but the actual audience broke down like this (source):
the audience was 66.2 percent female and significantly younger, with 74.6 percent under the age of 29. In stark contrast, the film’s blockbuster counterpart that premiered on the same day, “Oppenheimer,” had an audience that was 70.7 percent male and 52.9 percent over 30 years old.
My favorite part was near the end when certain things had to be explained to each person, so we hear it again and again. It made me chuckle because it felt so true to life. Ugh, hafta explain to the next person, too…
I finally watched ‘Barbie’ (2023) last night. I guess I’m not the target audience, but I really don’t understand what all the fuss was about. It’s quite a generic and bland film, with very few interesting or developed characters and the plot is all over the place and quite difficult to follow. Despite attempting to satirise large corporations, the film lives constantly in the shadow of them and struggles to not feel like one giant marketing campaign.
Really the only interesting thing about it is the feminist message, which is delivered in such a preachy and crude fashion that it becomes annoying very quickly. It’s also predominantly second wave feminism, so it feels outdated and very much through the lens of white, middle-and-upper class women. It seems like maybe the point here was to critique this type of feminism, but the film doesn’t do it with any depth or spend anywhere near enough time on it so the main theme just defaults to “yay woman CEOs and presidents”. The most interesting character is Ken, but unfortunately he and his story arc never feel like anything more than a plot device for Barbie and feminism, which is very ironic considering this is the exact opposite of where the storyline leads
I’m not sure what the actual target was, but the actual audience broke down like this (source):
My favorite part was near the end when certain things had to be explained to each person, so we hear it again and again. It made me chuckle because it felt so true to life. Ugh, hafta explain to the next person, too…