By Johnathan Jones,
Reviews from director Greta Gerwig’s live-action “Barbie” film are starting to come in, but unlike the doll that American girls have played with since 1959, they are anything but glowing.
I refused to take my daughter to see the film with a good, old-fashioned father’s “Maybe next week,” which is almost always a softer way of telling a child “no.”
But others have boldly gone to theaters, paid for tickets for the film and have done a lot of us a service by taking one for the team.
The consensus is that “Barbie” is every bit as “woke,” anti-man and pro-feminist as one might have predicted for such a Hollywood creation in the Year of Our Lord 2023.
A story about a diverse cast of Barbie dolls where the lead escapes a fictional paradise could never rely on plausibility in its story. It wouldn’t need to, if it simply made itself entertaining and perhaps avoided forcing a “trans woman” on its viewers.
No one complained that April’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” was unrealistic — like the game, it is a story of an Italian plumber designed by Japanese people who saves a princess from turtles.
But that story was fun, true to its subject matter, loyal to its fans and was the antithesis of “woke.”
According to film reviewer Christian Toto, “Barbie” had an opportunity to similarly cash in on its position as an institution, but took a predictable feminist route, spoiling all the fun.
Toto is a rational cinephile with a great eye for details and a nose for agendas, so his review was all I needed to read.
According to Toto, the film ultimately throws nostalgia and fun out the window for an opportunity to force its audience to hear an unrelenting message about “patriarchy.”
Toto was generous to a few individual performances and complimented some of the movie’s visual effects.
But he concluded, “Don’t let ‘Barbie’s’ dreamy, Day-Glo visuals fool you… This movie hates men so much it hurts.”
Toto added:
“Gerwig, along with [writing] collaborator Noah Baumbach, have an agenda to push that drains the joy from their creation time after time. And it starts from the opening minutes with a cringe-worthy close-up of the all-female Supreme Court (where’s Amy Coney Barrett?).
“Feminism! Empowerment! Down with the Patriarchy!”
Toto concluded the movie, which he said “runs on hate,” had numerous chances to become fun, but derailed itself every few moments when another character delivered a predictable speech with political undertones.
Writing for The New York Post, Johnny Oleksinksy also panned the 114-minute flick.
While awarding the film one star out of a possible four, Oleksinsky described “Barbie” as “an exhausting, spastic, self-absorbed and overwrought disappointment” that attacks consumerism and mentions the alleged fascism of its leading character.
Laughably, this film was produced while someone, somewhere at Mattel probably rubbed their hands together and thought of all the incoming sales.
Oleksinsky said the film’s numerous Ken dolls are all portrayed as imbeciles.
“If you’re hoping to experience a multiverse of unique, strong-personality Barbies, you’re better off going to Toys “R” Us after a few martinis,” the reviewer stated.
As Jack Posobiec, the film might be “the most anti-male film ever made.”
Here is Ken singing about 'blonde fragility' in the insanely woke new Barbie
This is possibly the most anti-male film ever madpic.twitter.com/7Lr98Cy4h0
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) July 21, 2023
In short, “Barbie” is not a harmless children’s story about a doll every American girl either owned or was aware of while growing up.
The film is another “woke” propaganda engine that focuses more on the agenda of those who made it than potential box office returns.
That is the same mindset that has cost Disney an estimated $900 million over recent flops that insisted on forcing identity politics into stories that are supposed to be an escape for the moviegoing public, Marca reported.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
