Watched Barbie and I have a ton of criticisms of it but I did really like it for what it is. It's about as good as you can expect, if not as good as you might hope a Greta Gerwig movie about the things it wants to be about should be.
Despite all that, I did cry so that's a passing grade in my book.
In many ways, Barbie is girlboss feminism 101 with very little more to add, down to the obligatory 'all women must be perfect' speech near the climax of the film, which is not wrong, but is very much a primer to an introduction to feminist thought.
I cannot remember where I read it originally, but I read criticism that the film falls into the liberal 'bearing witness to sorrow but doing nothing about it' trap and I do very much agree with that.
I'm actually kind of really disappointed in how completely wasted having Hari Neff is as a Barbie when they could have used her to make a poignant point about the missing girlhoods many transwomen never got to have, but for a licensed kids movie maybe that's expecting to much? It's honestly kind of wild that they just let Hari Neff play a Barbie with no mention of her transness at all, which is better than it could have been. They could have stereotyped her as Trans Barbie in the text of the movie, instead of just in the gaze and subtext of the camera.
Also I REALLY don't like the solution to the big conflict of the movie was 'we should do girlboss voter suppression' even if we did get a fun Footloose dance off that played with gendered colors in fun ways that I can't help but compare to But I'm a Cheerleader? I REALLY feel like the film should catch so much flak for Girlboss Voter Suppression, holy shit.
Honestly having the big conflict be Ken Brings Toxic Masculinity and Patriarchy To Barbieland was a fun idea but I am just not a huge fan of it in execution. It does that thing you see happen with heterosexual feminism where it mixes actual misogynistic and patriarchal oppression with grinding an axe against things men het women have dated enjoyed that annoyed them that makes a lot of it come across as hollow and shitty. Brainwashing women to be subservient, systematically disempowering women, forcing them out of private and public spaces and microaggressively belittling women is not the same as a guy telling you about his special interest in Frances Ford Coppolla films or liking beer and horses?
I DID like the resolution for Ken as him having to figure out who he is outside of his idealization with women and the things he enjoys, even if it felt too simplistic and easily wrapped up without actually addressing the way patriarchal toxic masculinity harms men and fucks them up? Then again you could say Ken's entire arc is about that, but you see a lot of that in him before he ever leaves Barbieland so the metaphor and resolution is messy at best.
I also have criticisms for the way the film tries to Be About Gender but ultimately cannot grapple with gender outside heterosexual binarist thought despite the token transwoman in Hari Neff. I feel like it is a massive missed opportunity and a serious problem with the film as a feminist text, and while yes it's a licensed movie about feminism for little girls, it also feels almost dismissive of what the film wants to and does accomplish to let it off easy with that.
I'm of mixed feelings on the final ending scene, with Barbie getting dropped off by her adopted family of women at what you are meant to assume is a job interview. "What job will she go for?" the scene almost invites you to ask, after a whole film of Doctor Barbie, President Barbie, and other Careerist Barbies, which is generally where the toy line is seen as empowering to little girls. Instead she's being dropped off at the gynecologist, showing she's now a Real Woman! A strong example for an assumed cis-girl audience!
But... wait, isn't that part of the problem? An assumed cis-girl audience? If you switch it from Barbie As Careerwoman to Barbie As Real (Read: Cis) Woman, aren't you making an inherent statement that visiting a gynecologist is the marker of what it means to BE a Real Woman? What about transwomen who don't have those genitals? What about transmen and transmascs who DO? It feels like such a limited but unfortunately congruent statement for a film with ambitions at using the Barbie brand as an examination of womanhood and what it means to be a real woman as opposed to an ideal.
As a transwoman it feels like ultimately to engage with this movie I'm forced to accept, as I often am, that to this film my own womanhood is an abberation and an exception to the rule. Like the film's conditional inclusion of Hari Neff, the sole transwoman, being cast as a Barbie but refusing to acknowledge her transness or the existence of transness outside of her casting itself, I feel I'm expected to feel lucky to be included at all and sit down and shut up and I think that's a fucking shame.