Is it weird to have had too high expectations for a barbie movie? I originally did not, I mean I was intrigued by the fact that two of my favorite creators Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig were making a movie about this subject, but I figured it would be a train wreck. Then I was sidetracked by a bunch of things happening in my life and was unable to see it on opening weekend or even for the first three weeks. By the time I got to see it this week it had become the biggest thing, had made almost a billion dollars and there were reddit posts about it ending toxic relationships. So, when I went to see it finally, it had gone from a silly movie about a doll to this moment in cinema. And it was … and it wasn’t.
Now let’s get one thing straight I did not hate the movie. It was super funny, genuinely touching in a couple spots, the performances were great, and I think it elevated what could have just been another toy movie the vein of transformers or battleship. But at the end of the day, it was still a toy movie made by Matell. It should be noted that Matell has decided that they are going to become not a toy company butt an intellectual property studio so at the end of the day this was still about selling stuff just selling things to the 25–40-year-old crowd and not the pre-teens. It felt like one of the live action Disney movies that seemed to exist more for nostalgia than to say something. Now I am not really complaining, it had a lot of great moments and apparently expressed patriarchy in a way that a lot of people understood it like they had not before (which is a little spooky) plus the moment where the narrator called out the fact that Margot Robbie was perhaps not the best person to portray a ‘just average looking barbie” was gold all by itself. I just think that maybe it had been built up in my head. So, don’t let me stop you from going out to see it if you haven’t, I think you will enjoy it but remember it can only be a part of the system that created it and no more.