Georgia Christine

I went to see Barbie last night and came away feeling utterly confused, a little sad and amazed. Three different emotions you don’t usually see together… 1) Confused = the film had many different themes and points it was trying to get across such as feminist rights, patriarchy and female body issues. I feel like neither theme ever got solved, they kind of just accepted what was going on and moved on, it would have been nice for them to really change the patriarchy in the real world and Barbie world, but nothing changed. The Barbie’s went back to being in charge and we never really did see Ken becoming “just Ken and finding himself”. This would have been nice to see. 2) Sad = There was a moment when they jokingly advertised a depressed Barbie that came with panic attacks and OCD (sold separately). A lot of people were laughing in our cinema room and I myself chuckled, but afterwards it hit me, this is real Barbie. And that realisation was quite sad… again like I mentioned before many of these moments popped up in the film but they never really did anything about them, they just moved on and it was hard to process. 3) Amazed = I always try and see the good in things even if I am left with feeling confused and a little sad. The set, costume, character choice and everything to do with the technical elements were fantastic! I had a lot of Barbie’s and accessories when I was younger, they honestly really nailed them! They were perfect and so accurate.

I enjoyed the concept of this film, I found it very interesting (spoiler alert) that Giselle turns into a wicked stepmother and the story becomes a little like Cinderella. I love the change between real life and animation, the magic is still there the same as movie 1. The only issue I had with this film was the cringy music and songs throughout, every 5 minutes they would sing and they definitely weren’t as good as the first film. None of them were that catchy… I think maybe it’s just because I loved the first films songs so much I was expecting the same but I was a little disappointed.