It's hard to word that question without it sounding sarcastic. But I'm actually curious.

The movie is quite a Rorshach test, and similar people pull very different things from it. You can almost tell something about people's personal struggles by which things they laughed off and which things set them off. And if people can put judgement aside, that starts some really good conversation.

But like, I went in already expecting a preachy "rah rah girl power" movie. So perhaps that's why I wasn't immediately put off when that's exactly what I got.

So with that as my baseline, I was pleasantly surprised by some areas that were more nuanced than I was expecting, and I wanted to talk about some of them.

So first of all, they Greta went with an overwhelmingly campy tongue-in-cheek vibe that I think really helped. When a film is self-serious, the stereotypical characters come off as "this is what these people are like." But with a bit of camp, it makes it more obvious they are stereotypical because of intentional cheesiness.

The important bit here is that they extended this camp into how they portrayed the "real" world. Which I think was helped by having Will Farrell as one of the lead "real world" characters.

Also the "Barbie feminist dream world" was intentionally very fake and flawed. "All the problems of sexism were solved and everything was perfect". You don't throw a statement like that in there unless you are actively foreshadowing the flaws that are about to appear.

KEN

I thought the Ken stuff was pretty great. Like yes, it is yet another portrayal of a man as buffoonish. But it was matched by Barbie's buffoonery. But like if you look into Ken's stuff, there is a surprising amount of critique.

Ken walks into a business showing a montage of men in history. I fully expected this to be degrading or accusatory as it often is in similar films. But it was actually....kinda celebratory. Like "look at all these things in history men accomplished."

So he comes back to Barbie like "Men rule the world!" based on his first impression.

So what does he do? He finds more about it...by going into a library and picking up some college-style books about patriarchy. Based on these books, he comes to this conclusion that "Men have total control and can get anything they want."

So he goes to try it out. He tries to get a job without qualifications and gets turned down left and right. WIth one guy, he says "I'm a man. Isn't that enough?" "Actually, it's kinda the opposite". (They do backtrack this with "We're just better at hiding it", which is meh.)

So it becomes clear these books weren't exactly depicting reality. Upon discovering that the real world isn't the "overwhelming patriarchy" these books made it out to be, he's like "Well, I'm going to go back to Barbie land and do it the right way."

Then, let's be real, the Mojo Dojo Kasa House stuff was kinda cool. Most people I knew were like "yeah that place seemed pretty fun." And that appears intentional, as later they said the "Ken's MDKH sets are flying off the shelves." And that it "must be stopped because it is taking the spotlight from Barbie", which I interpreted as another potential critique. Such as how some groups will take a dump on things people just enjoy.

The Barbies then pit the Kens against each other. I could go either way on how they did it. Perhaps its portraying men as jealous and insecure. Or perhaps it's critiquing the idea of men seeing each other as opponents.

I personally think the latter was the intention. Because when the Kens go to war, they break into a rather hilarious musical number where they discover they have too much in common to be fighting each other for attention. That they are "enough" as they are, and should instead have each others' backs. Which I thought was a genuinely wholesome message for men.

And then another message I liked was more of how Ken's arc concluded. That he was tying himself in knots because he was basing his sense of self-worth based on what barbie thinks.

But to me, this is the big kicker: Audiences all over the place absolutely loved Ken. And they seemed to understand his frustration.

The Speech

So I had mixed feelings on America's big speech. Like, I ditched my ego to just listen, and took it more as the exasperated outlook of a woman frustrated with life. Not necessarily as blaming me, nor claiming that men don't experience these things. Just general frustrations. And for almost all of them, I could relate. Either directly or as something similar.

I will say the "everything is always your fault" line took me back. I was thinking "OK. Now imagine growing up with an entire body of academia telling you everything is your fault. Then come back to me on that."

But I think what helped is that I did some reading beforehand. Greta Gerwig wanted to give Ken his own speech from her male colleagues. "It was frustrating because I knew men have their own speech they want to give, and I wanted to give them that." But ultimately it had to be limited to Ken's "No, you failed me" scene.

The Conclusions

They definitely didn't end on "the world would be much better if women ruled", that's for sure.

The conclusion was almost literally "reality is messy and confusing. Big stories like patriarchy are things we use to try to cope and make sense of it all. Reality isn't so clear-cut. But that's what's great about it." and Barbie rejects her dream world and chooses to live in reality.

My Conclusion

Do I have criticisms of the movie? Obviously. Particularly with throw-away lines like "we're still in cahoots, we're just better at hiding it." or "Kids never take it out on the father." or the "Everything is your fault" line of the speech, which I was able to at least see from her perspective. Or that the barbies had to be brainwashed to enjoy being basically Hooters girls. (I think the goal was to portray internalized misogyny. But it kinda missed the mark.) I'm also critical of them injecting "It's exhausting being on top" into Ken's arc right at the end, since it completely missed that most men don't exactly feel on top.

And then from the leftist side of things, I thought the opening was hilarious, but it came off as "ditch motherhood and embrace consumerism and vanity."

But I think a lot of those issues have been voiced quite a bit, so I wanted to focus more on some of the gems I got out of it. And remind people that the audience generally did understand and respond well to the gems.

It seemed way more self-aware than other movies with a similar message. And it didn't really strike me as "anti-male" as some say. Perhaps if you thought Ken was supposed to be hated and "the villain". But they didn't really write it that way. And the audience overwhelmingly didn't see it that way.

I mostly just thought it was a fun campy movie. If a "tad" preachy. (Even my super-feminist cousin warned me that it got super preachy at times.)

I thought it was perfectly cast. Kate McKinnon's "Weird Barbie" was easily my favorite of the Barbies. And my god was Ryan Gosling born to play Ken.

So like, I do think it deserved most of its success. (Remembering that a lot of it also came from Barbenheimer memes and nostalgia).

It sparked some really good conversations between me and my girlfriend as well, about gender issues from both our perspectives.

And if you don't agree with a lot of my take, I think we can agree on one thing: It basically was the final nail in the coffin for the narrative that "X movie with a female lead failed because of misogyny, rather than just lazy writing."