Started this because I didn't see it in theatres and can't find the og discussion thread.
I finally watched Barbie after a full year of heavy PR campaigns to see the best movie of the year that was saving theatres and driving studios to go back to original IP for film ideas. And after all that my reaction is a solid....meh.
It was fine. I felt other movies have done the same themes but better and more cohesively. And I'm not sure what the final message of the movie even was. It felt like there was some boardroom interference in the final product because you could see the story aiming at something, then changing course before they got to a satisfying conclusion.
Acting and set design was good, it just overall felt like a miss that was made bigger by the giant campaign they launched to sell the movie as great.
You don't know what the final message of the movie was? That barbie has been at the front lines of what it means to be a (Western) women for 60 years, and that you should keep buying them. If conservatives who hated it had watched til the end, they would have realized it's message also included the idea that an over correction to matriarchy would not be a true resolution to centuries of patriarchy.
The movie may have been over hyped, but it was pretty good. I mean, we didn't expect Barbies and Kens teaming up to build a guillotine and execute Will Ferrell at the end did we?