But my main objection is that Barbie is not really a film about Barbie at all. It’s one hour and 54 minutes of extended misandry, dressed up with a few fun dance routines and one or two (granted fairly decent) jokes.
It’s a deeply anti-man movie, an extension of all that TikTok feminism that paints any form of masculinity — other than the most anodyne — as toxic and predatory, and frames women’s liberation not as a movement based on achieving equality between the sexes but as a cultural revenge vehicle designed to write men out of the story altogether.
Every male character is either an idiot, a bigot or a sad, rather pathetic loser. If the roles were reversed, and a male director made a film about how all women were hysterical, neurotic, gold-digging witches, it would be denounced — quite rightly — as deeply offensive and sexist.
It is this kind of popular media that is infecting the minds of the young. On the surface it celebrates women, but it does so in a very shallow and toxic way. And it reinforces the misandry that has been spreading through Western society for the past 50 years.
I can’t give a full assessment - my niece has asked me to see it with her this weekend.
I think much of the criticism has to do with the hypocrisy of filmmakers being so concerned about how women are portrayed, and then “forgetting” to include a male character in this film who is either kind or has two brain cells to rub together.
As for the messages about men not being defined by women and male solidarity, I’m curious to see how this is presented. The cynic in me feels like it will be presented as kind of a joke, but we’ll see.