BARBIE
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A wrench and a cat walk into a bar.
Ouch!
Preachy, insipid, wrongheaded, mean-spirited, and fossil fuel-driven, "Barbie" is by far the worst movie (or more accurately, commercial) I have ever witnessed.
"Barbie" is to feminism as a wrench is to a cat.
This plastic character has no charm, no grace, no sense of romance or inner beauty of mind.
To be clear, "Barbie" is not a movie; it is a rip off.
Evidently, it would have taken John Waters or Trey Parker and Matt Stone to properly trash the capitalist monolith of Mattel with a transgressive movie based on a sex doll turned pop toy icon.
And yes, Mattel (the toy company) produced this overlong commercial.
Could anything be more obvious?
And, yes that's right, the creator of Barbie based this popular landfill ingredient on a sex doll.
They probably should have left the sex doll parts intact, at least then it could have been used for sex education.
Too late now.
Corporate cult pap. Unrelenting dystopia.
Vomiting all of the time.
You've heard of "cult of personality," well this is cult of image, used to dumb down society in the service of profit. Forget about life imitating art, here life follows toys.
Gross. Really, really gross, and sour.
Toxic.
"Brave New World" indeed.
Aldous Huxley was right all along.
Here is narcissism, infinity squared.
Let's put it this way, "Barbie" is the exact opposite of "The Wizard of Oz" in every square centimeter of quality, metaphor, and nuance.
"Barbie Land" is a gated community inhabited by lesbian Barbies and gay Kens.
How do we know this?
When Ken asks Barbie if he can stay over one night for reasons he can't explain, Barbie says, "no."
Barbie is a Breadcrumber.
"Every night is girls' night" at the Barbie house of endless fun. This is not to say that sexytime doesn't happen between consenting plastic girl/women with no vajayjays. Feet are the operative sex organ here.
In response, Ken usurps that long revered animal of teenage girl fetish obsession, the horse, as his personal connection to all things manly.
Choke.
Barbie's red or blue pill moment. She chooses the one she has to buy on Amazon.
Oh the ugliness of its sickly sweet set designs. This commercial looks like Mattel spent $1000 to make it. And yet, they still spent way too much.
At least Mattel got their money's worth out of their herd of actors. Here is a perfect example of why Alfred Hitchcock called actors, "cattle." Ryan Gosling, Margot Robbie, and the rest, are nothing more than mindless props.
Meanwhile, Barbie (Margot Robbie) has thoughts of...wait for it...death.
The death of capitalism, or the death of Mattel's profitable practice of polluting the globe with plastic?
Not so much.
No, we would have needed John Waters, or maybe even Todd Haynes, for such grounded satire.
Nevermind that David Lynch already gave us the movie that addresses female stardom lust, namely "Mulholland Drive."
This is more, battle-of-the-sexes Barbie. Equality, as a benchmark human value, is never mentioned. Take that, Simone de Beauvoir.
Valley Girl baby. Like, "literally."
"It's like barf me out. Gag me with a spoon," as Frank and Moon Zappa put it.
Anytime you hear someone utter the word "literally," I suggest you exit the room immediately.
"Barbie" is nothing more than a (nearly) two-hour commercial, designed to send hordes of potential customers to Amazon to purchase an endless array of plastic toys. And you thought only Marvel could play in that crap-infested sandbox.
Extermination of rational thought is this commercial's goal. For nearly two-hours, it achieves its mission.
Co-screenwriters Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig stumble over themselves with face-plants of dialogue and monologues that wallow in stupifaction.
"I'm just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing a woman, then I don't even know."
What is this "us" bullshit?
The crux of all nature's beauty springs from the female form. This commercial doesn't know what beauty — female or otherwise — looks or sounds like.
Immaturity and idiocy go hand in hand. In Barbie Land there is no such thing as individuality.
A trip to the OBGYN substitutes for a sexual encounter.
Where is John Waters when you need him?
"Barbie" is a chunky diarrhea stain on humanity.
Notice how you feel sick to your stomach just from looking at images from this worthless commercial.
Peter Bogdanovich was a skilled and informed master filmmaker and screenwriter. Check out "The Last Picture Show," and compare it to this filmic (sic) turd called "Barbie."
What a fecking embarrassment and insult "Barbie" is to society, and to Cinema.
Greta Gerwig is a hack screenwriter, and a remedial filmmaker at best.
You wanna see post-modern feminism in cinematic action, check out "I Am Curious, Yellow and Blue," and tell me how that beautiful piece of cinéma vérité art compares with Gerwig's commercial garbage.
I could go on but why should I. — Note the absence of a question mark.
I will say that anyone calling themself a "film critic" has no business giving "Barbie" a passing grade; if they do, they should turn in their credentials and quit because they haven't the first clue about Cinema, film, or movies — to pretend otherwise is just wrong.
Rated PG-13. 114 mins.
LESS THAN ZERO STARS
