Just watched this for first time

My rating: 6/10

The good: the acting, visuals, sets, costumes, musical numbers, some funny moments, some tearjerker moments

The bad: it’s cartoonishly, objectively anti-male and manages to dehumanize both men and women. The Barbies are portrayed as flawless and the Kens have no redeeming value whatsoever. A matriarchy could have been portrayed without portraying all the men as petty, dumb, and useless. When Barbie gets to the real world, she’s immediately constantly sexually harassed until she’s arrested for punching a guy who grabbed her butt. The Mattel board in real life is about 50/50 along the gender line, yet is made up of a bunch of bumbling, pigheaded males in the movie. America Ferrera’s speech about how “all” women are constantly neurotically worrying about being perfect and being liked by everyone made my eyes nearly roll out of my head. I didn’t relate to it at all and wish the movie had at least refrained from claiming to speak for all women. Almost forgot to mention the disturbing opening scene where the little girls smash their baby dolls when they discover Barbie. I guess women are also oppressed by our biology. Infanticide FTW.

This movie had a lot of potential but was one giant eye roll with a radical message that isn’t at all reflective of reality. Most men are not constantly being oppressive and dumb- even ‘bad’ men can play the role of a decent person. Women are not flawless creatures who are good at everything they do and never have malicious intent. A lot of women are toxic, especially in today’s society.

Overall, the message is that matriarchy is a utopia for everyone, unlike patriarchy, which is the cause of all of women’s unhappiness. This had a lot of potential to be purely entertaining and send a good message, but alas, we are in the year 2023.