Category: Movies (Page 4 of 4)

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.

Ant-Man 3 earns worst reviews since The Eternals.

Ant-Man wasn’t a super super hero, but usually fun, if not memorable.  Sounds like the MCU is about as dead as Star Wars.  Both franchises may produce a decent TV show, but a great movie is too much to ask.

This is what female scientists looked like in 1966.  Raquel Welch in the Fantastic Voyage.  Credible, smart and courageous, while looking fantastic.

Raquel Welch passed away today, and we’ll miss her.  Smokin’ ass hot, but never slutty.

Note:  I wrote this two months ago.

When it first came out in 2005, I didn’t much like Mr. & Mrs. Smith.  There was too much bickering.  A decade later, I liked it much better, and having just rewatched, found it to be about as good as a movie gets.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith work for competing spy organizations, but neither one knows it.  They are both very capable assassins.  Six years into their marriage, they come into conflict on a job, and their cover is blown.

Brad Pitt is an amiable, charismatic and competent executive who is just coasting along in the marriage.  Angelina Jolie is an ice princess doing something in commercial real estate who acts like a good wife, but with no real warmth.  They are bored in their conventional suburban cover identities.  Both do a great job with their characters.  Vince Vaughn works with Pitt, and is his usual, irreverent self.

As their covers are blown, they remember why they were drawn together as they try to assassinate each other.  The entire time, they are doing the conventional “yes dear” bickering of a young couple.

The casting is perfect and the dialogue is funny and poignant.  The action scenes are plausible.  Jolie fights smart, but without the physical strength of Pitt.

If this movie were made today, Pitt would be bumbling, and Jolie would be smarter, quicker and stronger than the man.  I guess we will find out.  In February, a Mr. & Mrs. Smith TV series will be coming out on Amazon Prime.  It is supposed to be a TV adaptation of the Pitt-Jolie film, and I am not optimistic.

Donald Glover was fine in Community, but he doesn’t have much charisma.  Perhaps he has improved as an actor.  Brad Pitt was four years younger than Donald Glover is now, when he did Fight Club.  I don’t see Glover bringing that intensity to the series. 

Maya Erskine has done a lot of voice work, but no action TV or movies.  She was in a strange series called Man Seeking Woman in 2015.  She showed some charisma and may be able to help the show.  Initially, Phoebe Waller-Bridge was going to play the part.  She is the weak tea from Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.  She would have ruined the series.

I will try the series when it comes out, but without much optimism.  Since they did the race swap for diversity, even if it isn’t good, the actors will get a few seasons worth of work.

On this watch, I’d give the movie, Mr. & Mrs. Smith a 9/10 because there isn’t much that could be changed to improve it.