Jesse Francis

The movie was decent, it was pretty funny and mostly light hearted, but I feel like there were two main problems: #1. Patriarchy for Matriarchy. Basically the whole plot of the movie is that patriarchy is bad and leads to a society with inequality and unreasonable expectations for women. Barbieland, however, is an exact opposite: a matriarchal society where women rule and all the Kens only live to be smiled at by a Barbie. After the Kens take over and replace Barbieland with a patriarchal Kendom, there is this big plan to create a civil war and the Barbies sieze control again, but instead of continuing the trend that the whole movie has been pushing for this entire time (equality) they refuse to let any Kens have representation through a supreme court justice, making yet another unbalanced political system. Maybe the hidden message is that Barbieland will become equal when the real world does, but the way they casually and flippantly shut down the idea of Ken representation leaves little ability for viewers to assume this is the case. This movie isn't about tit-for-tat bargains, trading one system that is bad for one reason for another system that's bad for a different reason, it's about having equality and justice, and they do a really good job of fighting for that point until the very end when they throw it all away and try to convince the audience that and matriarchal society where men are basically slaves is better than a patriarchal one where women have many of the same rights as men and hold many of the same offices as men. The real world is closer to a balanced utopia than Barbieland is, no matter what the ending tries to tell you. #2. General lack of development. While not as big of an issue as the first, the movie shows a general lack of development for the many moving parts. For example, Sasha barely developed at all, showing no regret for her previous actions and only displaying a slight growth in her relationship with her mother. In addition, the compamy really didn't play that important of a role in the movie after they scared Barbie back to Barbieland, and the only thing they did by following her there was to provide an excuse for Ruth to show up. This movie had a lot of potential, but it threw it all away in the last 15 minutes. It didn't round up its loose ends, and it didn't pull together the true moral of the story. The plot was unsuccessful and most of the characters static, and it is for that reason that I cannot call this a good movie.