Because it was talked about so much when it came out, I decided to watch Barbie to see for myself.

It’s an easy watch.  Margot Robbie, as Barbie, is gorgeous, dresses cute and doesn’t say anything objectionable.  Almost everything she says is vacuous.  Ryan Gosling, as Ken, is fun and dumb.  It isn’t clear why Michael Cera, as Allen, is even in the movie.  He pops up occasionally and does stuff, but if Ken is a fantasy man and Barbie is a fantasy woman, what is Allen?  An incell?  Gay?  I don’t know.

The important humans are a mom and her daughter.  America Ferrera is the mom and self-described as weird and dark and crazy.  Ariana Greenblatt is the daughter and is a marxist eco-feminist.  She is exceedingly tedious to be around.  Nothing she says makes any sense.

If Barbie is a message movie, the idea is so muddled, it doesn’t feel like preaching.  I expected it to be a girl-boss movie, like everything coming out of Disney.  It isn’t that.  If anything, it’s a feminist parody. 

At the start of the movie, Barbieland is like purgatory.  Kens are treated like appliances designed to fuel Barbie’s ego.  Barbies all have self-esteem titles like president, doctor and Nobel Prize winner, without having accomplished anything.  It is so superficial, it’s like an island of fembots and appliances.  This dystopia argues for not letting women be in charge of anything.

The real world refutes the entire idea of a patriarchy.  Ken reads leftist books thinking that he can be or do anything because he is a man, but nothing works like that in the real world.  For Ken, being treated like a human, rather than an appliance, is so gratifying, he goes back to Barbieland and turns that into a patriarchy. 

The Patriarchy Land is actually engaging and fun for everyone.  Barbies and Kens are having a good time flirting and partying with each other.  Crazy Mom and Margot Barbie hate this happy world.

Crazy Mom gives a speech about how pathetic and incompetent she is, and motivates a couple of oddballs in Patriarchy Land to help brainwash Barbies back to the vacuous life.

When the Barbies get brainwashed, the Kens are kind, attentive and helpful to the Barbies who are acting helpless.  When the Barbies and Kens are apparently getting along, the Barbies emotionally manipulate the Kens into going to war with each other.  That distraction will allow the Barbies to take back the fantasy land.

The message seems to be that women can’t accomplish anything by themselves, but need shady manipulation to get men to do what they want.

After the Kens tussle, Barbies take back everything, and the movie completely lost focus.  It was like  Lincoln freed the slaves and the Civil War was settled by a dance number.  Barbies didn’t want Barbieland to go back to the way it was, but weren’t prepared to grant Kens full citizenship and representation.  Kens weren’t sure who they were now that they weren’t appliances anymore.  Like freeing the slaves and then telling them to compete in a free market economy with no transition phase. 

They didn’t seem to know how to end the movie, so Barbie became a real woman.  Everything up to this point made it seem like women in the real world lived with impossible expectations.  Based on the logic of the movie, the only reason Barbie would want to be a real woman is because she looked like Margot Robbie.

It’s a fun movie and each viewer can make up and support any message they want.  7.5/10.