Last night, right on the way out, I went to see Barbie, the movie.
Let me start by saying that I saw the film after a couple of attempts, because the first cinema I went to was full in all the theaters where Barbie was shown, and at all times. With the second cinema it went a little better: I found a place practically attached to the screen, so much so that at one point we were afraid of being included in the screenplay.
History
It doesn’t take many lines to talk about the story of this film: the screenplay was definitely written in doll size.
Barbie lives in Barbieland, a world that can only be reached from the real world under certain conditions. It is a place where all the Barbies ever created live and it is a society where males are relegated to small extras and where Barbies can be anything: Nobel laureates, doctors, dance experts and much more.
To act as supporting actor for Barbie indeed, as supporting actor we have Ken or rather we have hundreds of Kens who compete for the love of hundreds of Barbies. One day Barbie (the protagonist) begins to have strange thoughts and not feeling well: she goes to “Barbie Strange” who is a Barbie who has had some problems with her.
From her he learns that the reason for her discomfort is that the human child who is playing with her probably has problems which she reflects on the doll.
He goes in search of this human child, he thinks he has found her, in reality it is her mother. Meanwhile, Mattel realizes that Barbie has arrived in the human world and tries to send her back by locking her in her box.
Together with Barbie in the human world there is also Ken who realizes that our society is a male-dominated society commanded by patriarchy. He collects some books about this and goes back to Barbieland to talk about it with the other Kens. Meanwhile Barbie escapes Mattel contacts the person who had problems they become friends everything is resolved and they all return (including the two humans) back to Barbieland, to realize that Ken has changed it profoundly and is now a male society. In a fairly obvious and phoned way, the Barbies regain control: Mattel arrives, everything ends for the best, but Barbie is now dissatisfied with her role as Barbie, and she wants to become human: her creator will help her…
Comment
Room full of mediocre films. There is little laughter in the film, too little to be a film dedicated to families. The comic part is entrusted to the genius of Will Ferrel, who loads it on his shoulders, without other supporting actors, perhaps a little bit? A lot of pimps about patriarchal society, a lot of pimps about a girl being anything she wants, a lot of seriousness about all of these things.
In some parts the film also proves to be moving, but there are more parts where you want to instill concepts or remove pre-concepts, rather than those where you laugh or where you are moved. The film flows by quickly, but in the end it doesn’t leave you with much. Maybe pipponi are useful in a society like ours? is there still a lot of work to do to really have equal opportunities? And does Barbie have to take on the task of filling this gap or is it just a fantastic publicity stunt? All legitimate questions. As a child I played with He-man and Skeletor and in the horrible film they made for the role of he-man they didn’t choose a valid and prepared actor and also very similar like Margot Robbie in Barbie, but a gym guy who knew more or less about acting as much as I did about nuclear physics: Dolph Lundgren.
And while in Barbie the girls were discussing male chauvinism and patriarchy in a low voice, 35 years earlier, in the hall of the rulers of the universe, one and only question repeated by word of mouth: “why doesn’t her hair have a bob?” To show the level.