It was good.
I'm sorry, I'd already discussed liking it in another thread. I thought this was just the thread about the great decision of out time: which movie to see.
The manosphere melting down over Barbie being a feminist movie is possibly the best marketing for the film yet.
What, exactly, did they think it was going to be?
I mean, of the various tensions the movie had to balance it was the one where no balance was deemed necessary, very understandably. It is a little ironic given Barbie's long history as object of feminist ire, but this is a movie primarily by and for women built on a brand that claims to be about female empowerment and there was only one way it could have gone. I personally found it a little too on the nose with the feminist applause lines at times, but I'm not the target audience. I think one's mileage on that point makes the difference of whether it is a good film or a great film. Of course if you're some sort of men's rights activist it's doubtlessly the worst film of the year until they get upset over something else next week.
How the movie navigated the tensions of satirizing Mattel while being a Mattel product and being an exercise in crass commercialism while also being art in its own right, are both more interesting stories I think, pulled off with a more subtle and graceful hand. I'd say the same about how it handled the
brand's (as opposed to the movie's) relationship with feminism. But I won't get into spoilers.
The resolution to the rather silly tension over how to deal with the song
Barbie Girl by Aqua, was least impressive. The song's opening line of "I'm a Barbie girl in a Barbie world" is clearly a major inspiration for the initial set-up of the movie, and its sexually predatory take on Ken also seems influential. But the song, as a whole, is very brand unfriendly, there was major Mattel-Aqua legal beef back in the day (it's actually a textbook IP case), and many people find it a deeply annoying song. The solution was to have a lame hip-hop remix over the closing credits that basically just used the chorus. It was not nearly as good of a match for the film's aesthetic as the original.