Diya Patel

A bright, beautiful, and funny film! I highly recommend everyone watch it! For women and some non-binary folks, this will be a really personal and emotional movie looking into the female identity. For men and the rest of the non-binary folks, this movie will offer a valuable view into what it is like to be a woman with dreams under the patriarchy. For those of you complaining that it is "anti-man", please consider the centuries of anti-woman media male-dominated institutions promoted and continues to do so because as they say in the movie, it's just hidden better now. Now you should realize how silly your complaint is. Although there is some room for further improvement, the overall aesthetic and message was so touching and meaningful to me as a woman that it instantly became a new favorite movie. The movie is an overall joyful and vibrant movie that takes a critical look at how women's childlike dreams (manifested in the form of Barbie) try to fight to exist in the face of reality's many more upsetting aspects, mostly the patriarchy. It is appropriate for kids but the movie does address a lot of more complicated topics and reference more mature themes like cat-calling, anxiety, and fear of assault, but it is unlikely little kids will understand those implications because it's subtle. The movie was very satifying and happy to watch because of the amazing job they did with addressing the above conflict, but there were a few things that the movie sort of referenced but then sort of let fall off, which was a tad disappointing. For example, the theme of body image/ ageing was something that would have been great to address and could be a great thing to address in the sequel. Another could be struggling with mental health. Margot and Ryan did a phenomenal job enacting their roles!! They both embodied the sterotypical and sort of shallow ideas of their respective roles of Barbie and Ken very well! Margot enacted Barbie's growth from an idea to something more perfectly. Finally, the white savior Barbie line was hysterical :)