Barbie Movie Review
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00:00 Yeah, clearly I'm the target audience of this film, so let's review it.
00:03 Barbie.
00:04 So Barbie stars Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, directed by Greta Gerwig, and it's...
00:14 based on Barbie.
00:16 Everything's going fine in Barbie land, things start to go awry,
00:19 and that adventure takes her and Ken into our world, she enters the real world, so it's a whole...
00:25 it's that, kind of.
00:26 I thought the beginning of this movie, like the first half hour, I thought it was...
00:29 it was interesting, if not visually compelling.
00:32 It did look like a Barbie world come to life, they have some fun
00:36 with some of the tropes of the Barbie world, some of the cliches.
00:39 Barbie land felt like an episode of Tales from the Trip, but not the scary ones, you know, the fun ones.
00:44 At first it's a little jarring, but you kind of do fall into it.
00:47 Now is Barbie a smash the patriarchy feminist film?
00:51 Yes it is, it's worth addressing, it's in the makeup of the film.
00:55 To its core, to the bone marrow of the film, reviewing Barbie and not even addressing that fact,
01:02 it's kind of like reviewing Oppenheimer and not even mentioning the bomb.
01:05 How is the movie good or bad?
01:07 Here's the thing, if you do what I do, if you review movies...
01:10 the dude next to me when the movie got over, he literally looked at me and he goes,
01:13 "Good luck reviewing that."
01:14 But I know something he doesn't know, there are ways you can preface,
01:18 bullet points, as it were, things you can say to soften the internet blows.
01:23 Things like, "Look, this movie wasn't made for me."
01:26 Or one that's derivative, "I'm obviously not the target audience for this."
01:29 A solid 7% of the time, those work 100% of the time.
01:34 All that said, how was the movie?
01:35 I was meh about it.
01:37 As much as the introduction I thought was nice and clever,
01:39 I thought, "Okay, we're going to get some pop culture movie references wrapped into a Barbie
01:43 package of sorts."
01:44 The first 20 minutes or so, it was actually falling into this whole Barbie land acid trip
01:50 fever dream that I was in.
01:52 By the end, the movie felt like it had too much going on in it.
01:55 Maybe it's because it really felt like it wanted to hammer home the message.
01:58 But the movie just felt too crowded.
01:59 You know, you have Will Ferrell and his crew of suits.
02:02 It would have been fine if it was one boardroom scene with them,
02:05 but they just kind of are dragged along to the end of the movie.
02:09 You forget about them, then it reminds you they're kind of trailing along.
02:13 You're like, "Oh yeah, them."
02:14 Then you forget about them again, then it'll show them again.
02:17 Just felt like the movie had reshoots and pickups,
02:19 so they were like, "We did not film enough with Will Ferrell.
02:21 Let's have a minute more."
02:23 But you already had enough going on in Barbie land.
02:25 You didn't need Will Ferrell in it that much.
02:28 And that's an example I'll use where the movie didn't know where the cartoon ended.
02:32 Like when you're in Barbie land, it kind of feels like a cartoon.
02:35 It feels surreal.
02:36 Then they get to the real world and it feels like the real world,
02:39 but Will Ferrell and his crew, when they're chasing after Barbie,
02:42 they feel like cartoons.
02:44 I know not in that way of cartoonish CEO and his cartoonish suits created Barbie land,
02:49 which is a cartoonish place, so it kind of makes sense.
02:51 No, it just feels totally uneven.
02:53 Margot Robbie was great as Barbie.
02:55 She's great in that way you know she's going to be great
02:57 from the announcement of Margot Robbie being live action Barbie.
03:01 I think we were all like, "That makes sense.
03:03 She is a live action Barbie."
03:05 But Ryan Gosling as Ken, he was a standout in here.
03:07 I was glad this movie got to show his comedic side.
03:10 We've seen his comedic side before, absolutely.
03:12 But he was perfect as this just...
03:15 Well, he was just Ken.
03:17 Then he was douche Ken and he makes all of it work.
03:19 The most I laughed in the movie was specifically when Ryan Gosling was doing stuff.
03:24 Rest of the time, crickets from me and the rest of the audience.
03:28 It's fun at times.
03:29 There's clearly talented direction and art direction behind the camera.
03:33 Also talent in front of the camera, but the cast is too packed.
03:36 Some characters feel like props, but you're dealing with dolls,
03:39 so maybe it's supposed to make sense like that.
03:41 There was a mother-daughter dynamic in here that worked by the end.
03:45 But I say by the end because the road to getting there was a bit of a grind
03:50 because the daughter was a really broody, grumpy, angry tween for most of the film.
03:55 But all in all, there were too many irons in the fire, too many characters to care about.
03:59 I don't necessarily even think alcohol is what you need,
04:02 but there's definitely something you can take that can aid in the experience.
04:06 - Yeah, now it's a party.
04:09 But this movie does hammer home the point of its message.
04:11 That message is a man should love the power to take over the world.
04:14 The moment he stops pathetically simping for that girl, he has no shot with.
04:18 Oh, that's not supposed to be the takeaway.
04:23 All right, so Barbie, have you seen it?
04:24 What did you think about it?
04:24 Whatever you thought, comment below, let me know.
04:26 And as always, if you like what you've seen here and you want to see more,
04:28 click right here to see more.
04:30 [Music]