Barbie

This movie has its pros and cons. It's very philosophical/insightful regarding human life and the relationship between the two sexes, or at least of the patriarchy and what it's like to be a woman (but of course it's not philosophical in a pontificating way), but I found the "real world" in the movie to be disappointingly unrealistic and even hokey in some parts. 

I don't like unrealism in general, but it's especially important when you're introducing fantasy characters or other elements into the "real world" for the "real world" and the reactions of the people in it to the characters/elements to be realistic, because that makes it all the more satisfying and fun.

Also, I would have liked if they'd gone more in-depth about men's troubles and not just women's troubles to balance things out, but perhaps that would have been beside the point of the movie. I don't know, I think they could have worked it in. I think the movie was reflecting our cultural bias toward recognizing women's hardships and not men's, which are equally significant, or even if they're somewhat less so all added up, they're still significant, they're unique to men, and they go largely unacknowledged.

I also found it disappointing that even in the ideal land of Barbie, they thought it okay to restore the matriarchy and the subjugation of men through underhanded subterfuge, manipulating and undermining the male sex. It's like our minds are so encultured by the ubiquity of evil in this world that such a thing was seen as a part of an ideal or pat story.

I also found the part where Ken has his catharsis and realizes that "Ken is me!" to be more than somewhat clumsy, incoherent, forced and rushed.

I also found the whole scene where all the Kens are dressed in black and dancing to music in a blank room to be pointless.

I did like that Mattel was willing to engage in a fair amount of self-criticism in the movie.

It was nice to see Margot Robbie as the star of the film because she's so beautiful. It was also cool to see Rhea Perlman for the first time since Cheers. I usually love seeing movies with Will Farrell, but in this case he played the hokiest character of them all in the "real world," so his character was disappointing.

I liked that they made a lot of songs specifically for this movie rather than just using pre-existing songs, and they weren't bad. I particularly liked 'Closer to Fine' by Brandi Carlile and Catherine Carlile. I also like that they had a Karol G song in the movie—I love her song "El Barco", and Barbie's song "Watati" has some of the same charm. 

This movie also has its funny parts. My favorite was when Weird Barbie was explaining to Stereotypical Barbie how to get back to Barbie land. She said to do the same thing she did to get to the real world but in reverse, and Barbie said (something like), "So do I go forward but do the steps in reverse, or..", and Weird Barbie said, "Don't overthink it." To my mind, it highlights the overly simplistic nature of such TV and film tropes where important details are glossed over.

At the risk of making this review too long, one other thing I liked about this movie was the ambiguity in whether Barbie actually wanted all this disruption to happen or if it just happened because she was emotionally intertwined with her real-world owner. Twice, somebody said to her that she must have wanted it to happen, and she emotively responded that she didn't want any of it to happen, and the person said that either way, it happened because she was intertwined with her handler. This kind of open-ended existential ambiguity is very atypical of movies, which tend to be heavy-handed or pat in a way. It's very Eyes Wide Shut-ish and philosophical in a way. 

One thing that bothered me about the movie was the glaring illogicity in it that Barbie had exactly one real-world handler she was associated with that she had to find and that she would just know who it was when she saw her, even though Barbie was apparently the only one of her type in Barbie land (and, according to the movie, she was an embodiment of the very idea of Barbie). Obviously, there are millions of Barbies out there with millions of handlers. But I guess hey, whatever, it's just a movie.

Overall, I'd recommend watching this movie if for no other reason than to hear Gloria's insightful spiels on the contradictory expectations and hardships placed on woman, because being aware of a sociological situation goes a long way toward transcending it.