I think it’s amazing that something like it exists, it never really excels at what it’s doing but it tries to balance so many different aspects and influences while keeping the centre of its story about this coming to understanding and ultimately accepting that change is good, an idea can linger around for years and ultimately believe it is the one that had this idea that it had and that it’s easier to be a doll but it’s so much more meaningful to be a human.
It feels fragile, the foundations of it but the movie keeps going without caring about any of that and ultimately just says what it wants and I like that it’s committed.
It weirdly reminds me of Everything Everywhere All at Once, both have very similar protagonists, both excel at taking elements from years of film, books and tv to comment on being a person and both take a very wild turn to get to the core message. I do feel like EEAAO is just a better film mostly because the message is more coherent, it feels more emotional and tightly written but Barbie is a rare meta-commentary of the movie that it is, it’s the first time a movie has reminded me of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Doki Doki Literature Club and I love it for that.
7.5/10 also Kate McKinnon was just awesome in this movie
Barbie becoming a real woman in the real world is supposed be a humorous peripeteia to the fact that she has had an aristocratic experience of being the dominant gender/sexual orientation in Barbieland. She has never actually been culturally policed in the way that real women are.
Same as the joke about being called a tankie, Barbie despite being an icon of feminism cannot actually navigate the real world’s complex social structures. Which is also paralleled to real world events like when libs get upset at Chappel Roan for her politics or her reclamation of her own personal experience, rather than being defined by the whims of her fans.