Barbie Review

Review of Barbie (2023) by screenqueeen: 👍 3.5/5

Fun, biting, and focused...until the second half kicks in.

A good chunk of the latter half stinks of studio meddling: the all-male board of Mattel receives no critique of backdoor misogyny, the main argument about women existing in the shadow of the standards of our patriarchy gets conveniently rolled back to continue Barbie's selective celebration of women who achieve & overachieve among thankless conditions (including BarbieLand), and a deus ex machina thread that panders to the complacency of women in the world who have less drive for change than their daughters. Still a fun time, but a conversation starter.

And Ken almost certainly had a sequence cut where he threatened to jump off the top floor of Barbie's dream house.