movies

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 It's also predominantly second wave feminism, so it feels outdated and very much through the lens of white, middle-and-upper class women.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