I am Kenough

10/10, no notes.

Well actually no, some notes. I didn’t fully buy into the Mattel/Will Ferrell part of the story and generally found those scenes superfluous.

But everything else was kind of perfect. Production design was amazing. Greta Gerwig’s also got such a keen eye for these dazzling set pieces that were fun and exciting. Screenplay needed a bit more punch-up, as I thought some jokes fell flat, but honestly most of it was clever and delightful. The movie also had no business being as emotionally-affecting as it was.

Margot Robbie crushed it. What a vibrant but introspective performance. Her best work so far I think.

I know the movie was good coming in, but I didn’t expect it to be that great. I love these self-aware movies.

Haven’t laughed this hard at the cinema since Hot Rod. Absolutely brilliant film.

So I loved this movie.

It’s not often we get “wake up Neo” genre movies with so much tongue and so much cheek that it made me question a shit ton.

I’m I reading too much into it? And/Or the sheer creativity of opinions and agendas (bar the main one) just created this beautiful pink mess but in a relatively right script. They got away with so much simply because all the plot threads were resolved in Barbie land.

One example: A lot of people are annoyed at how power was portrayed and think this movie is a tantrum. But that was well addressed in the film. E.g. that the Barbies took back control from the Kens reverting power back in the feminist hands. If you have an issue with that, you need to look at history and go wait a minute, that’s what happened to women! Almost as if power corrupts and no one is immune. But as a counter point, they had the message of “don’t let your ego or hurt drive you to make ‘powerful’ decisions”. Then to add to that, everything went back to the status quo which was “perfect” and no one else really questioned things.

It was so powerfully self aware that either it was brilliant or I’m severely deluded and reading too much into it. Anything you are mad at, can be resolved by simply holding a mirror and asking “if I flipped the roles, does it not make sense?”.

Some people find it interesting that so much time was spent on Ken’s development. It was so cleverly done. He went from " I exist only in relation to X. My sense of worth is derived from X and no matter how hard I try, I can’t get enough attention from X"… to a nice “You don’t need X to be powerful, you can simply exist and create your own meaning”. I wonder why that’s a topic they spent so much “feminism movie” time on.

It feels the only way you can critique it is where the mirror doesn’t apply. Like how the mother daughter relationship could have been a little more developed. Like how Barbie so quickly developed her sense of self. I can excuse those because they had to make choices and it wasn’t their story.

One critique was: this wasn’t even a successful feminist movie as they didn’t change anything in the “Real world”. It was just a feel good celebration of women and solidarity which didn’t actually do anything of consequence. That was the point? Like the monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey, the invention of Barbie to represent women back in the day. It simply was… and it made you question everything. Here is a movie with a core message (it was, fight me) of “awaken and look around”, “please allow yourself to feel” and finally “you have power, don’t be mean”. That was the core message… there really isn’t much else. Hero with a hundred faces but this one wore pink. The hero was Ken. The hero was Ugly Betty. The hero was her daughter. The hero was Alan? (Alan was perfect, fight me).

Little moments of shared awakening and they changed “their” world with what “little” power they had. Not a bad message to handle the “real world”.

Serious question. Why are some saying Barbie is woke?

serious q don’t yell at me: why was there one (1) single ‘obese’ barbie then everyone else looked literally perfect? if it’s a utopia or whatever why not people of varying sizes?

This will be the big summer blockbuster.

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