For some women in China, “Barbie” is more than just a movie — it’s also a litmus test for their partner’s views on feminism and patriarchy.
The movie has prompted intense social media discussion online, media outlets Sixth Tone and the China Project reported this week, prompting women to discuss their own dating experiences.
One user on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu — a photo-sharing site similar to Instagram that’s mostly used by Gen Z women — even shared a guide on Monday for how women can test their boyfriends based on their reaction to the film.
According to the guide, if a man shows hatred for “Barbie” and slams female directors after they leave the theatre, then this man is “stingy” and a “toxic chauvinist,” according to Insider’s translation of the post. Conversely, if a man understands even half of the movie’s themes, “then he is likely a normal guy with normal values and stable emotions,” the user wrote.
Nothing against female directors, but the movie went from pretty damn good to pretty damn boring after a while.
You’ve got a fun and quirky beginning that makes light fun of barbie, mattel and patriarchal society. Then you’ve got the bits where
spoiler
Barbie and Ken get to the real world, get arrested twice for doing stupid shit.
This part was funny and for a bit there I felt like it was mainly not about driving a message home, but still had SOME things to say. Great! Then you’ve got the parts where
spoiler
Ken went on his own journey to discover patriarchy (which he thought had something to do with horses and was disappointed to find out it didn’t), Barbie meets her owner’s daughter, goes to Mattel HQ, then gets chased out and rescued by her owner.
Many hilarious moments here, poking lots of fun at patriarchy again, but it never felt like it was too on the nose. I mean I kinda expected that from the trailers and everything.
Where the movie started changing for me was when
spoiler
Barbie, her owner, and the latter’s daughter went back to the Barbie world to help fix the balance, only to find out that the Kens had completely taken over.
While the twist was predictable, it was still interesting because I wanted to know how they would resolve it. But it just kinda… fell off after that? At this point you have the expected low point in the protagonist’s life, and then they figure out how to fix everything, but it was just so… boring and uninspired somehow. By this point, the movie’s quirky and fun nature has worn down its’ course and the
spoiler
battle of the Kens
just did nothing for me anymore.
What’s worse, I was expecting
spoiler
the Mattel board of directors, particularly Will Ferrell’s characters to be villains and instead they just… arrived by the end of the movie and had a change of heart.
That subverted my expectations for sure, but not in a good way whatsoever. Slightly reminiscent of the last seasons of Game of Thrones.
And lastly, I really expected the resolution of the plot to have something to do with horses and I was sorely disappointed about that too.
TL;DR: Movie starts out great, but foreshadows things it doesn’t follow through on very well, ending is boring and sappy.
How dare you, that dance-off between Simu Liu and Ryan Gosling (and the other Kens) was incredible!
Ken was alright, but Ken really stole the show in that scene.
Eh, I think I liked Ken more.
I believe the term is “beach off”
I’ll beach you off right now!
I was just waiting for them to kiss tbh
based
About at the part where ::: spoiler spoiler Barbie is comforting Ken on the bed ::: I said to my partner “It feels like this movie has been ending for a while now,” and that was still a good way off from credits. I did appreciate that ::: spoiler spoiler Barbie and Ken didn’t end up together, it was a good message that men and women both need to be okay with themselves before they pursue a relationship. I loved the “I am Kenough” shirt. :::
A few issues I had personally (oops wall of text lol): ::: spoiler spoiler They really hold their punches on toxic masculinity. There are no men who are outright misogynistic and believe women to be subhuman. They’re all just dumb and misguided. They also made a small attempt to point out that patriarchal society is negative for men too with the “sometimes I wish we could all have tickle fights” bit, but I do wish they would have dug a little deeper into how awful it is that men are expected to never have emotions and bottle up. It was also really weird that the kid called Barbie a fascist… It almost felt like they were using that word wrong on purpose to reduce its meaning, or get Republicans in the audience to roll their eyes at the stupid SJW calling everything they don’t like fascist. Also weird that at different points the movie claims Barbie saved women or set them back 50 years…like, it’s just a doll. Yes, a popular doll, but it’s weird to claim women gained or lost power in society solely because of a doll and not through the actions of feminists and antifeminists. :::
I’m general, I’m happy with the film’s lessons, although it feels weird for Hollywood to be the one preaching them to me.
Most of the scenes were pretty enjoyable in isolation. The problem I see is that it feels like they tried to combine two scripts to address the same issue from opposite directions. Either approach could have been good, but each one undercut the other so it just wound up confusedly sabotaging its message.
I can agree with this, the messages got super muddy. They tried to say something about being a woman, being a man, and being a human, but all three were dulled from being stacked on top of each other.
I don’t think this at all. It’s a very dense movie, but I don’t think it suffered for it, and if anything actually enhanced the message that a lot of social expectations are murky and arbitrary.
I’m planning on seeing it again.
Yeah, I overall liked the movie but there were a lot of questionable moments in it. The point where they recognize that using Margot Robbie for some of their points kinda undercuts the points was odd to me. I also didn’t like the child of the movie, I didn’t feel like she was really a character.
I really like the fun energy of the movie, it feels like a giant music video and I love that. But the social commentary moments are just so on the nose it just feels weird that it’s coming from a movie about Barbie. It feels like it can’t decide whether the audience is supposed to be children or nostalgic adults.
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That’s not what I meant at all and have adjusted the text to hopefully be more clear.
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As someone who watched it high, too many drastic vibe changes. From a fun laughably corny movie, to this serious 10 minute diatribe about every possible challenge a woman could potentially face in her life really killed the mood. Many of the scenes with the mother/daughter really detracted from the film honestly.
It’s like putting jar jar in star wars.
Sounds schizophrenic
I fully agree. It was a fun movie to see but that’s about it… they could have made such a good ending and set up a sequel
Ehhhhh, sequel??
You really wouldn’t want to see a barbie vs he-man movie? Or some other ridiculous set up? I’m not even a big fan of the movie… just seemed like a good financial idea for Mattel
I find your criticism of the parts of the movie you don’t like to be super weak and unspecific. The crux of the entire movie is the juxtaposition between what’s it’s like in Barbie ruled barbie world vs ken ruled barbie world. It’s literally the lens though which the movie criticizes patriarchy.
Ken bringing patriarchy back to barbie world I don’t think was a twist, it was the clear narrative arc from the moment ken fell in love with patriarchy.
Matell being villains is a clear misreading of the plot from your point of view. Matell is the butt of the joke the entirety of the film. They don’t drive the plot, and were never in control of anything that happens. Why would you expect them to become the villains? That’s your own internal biases leaking (and maybe putting too much of Mugatu onto will Farrell)
Lastly, in much the same way that the opening of barbie is an homage to 2001 a space Odyssey, (that scene they are parodying specifically in the original movie is about the death of old paradigms and the beginning of new ones), the beach battle is an homage to patriarchally driven war media, specifically D-Day scenes such as from saving private Ryan. It’s the death of patriarchy subverted through a traditionally patriarchal approach.
It’s been 2 weeks and the latter half of the movie wasn’t good enough to remember every detail tbh, I just remember which parts I enjoyed and which made me sleepy. I watched Oppenheimer right after and have a much better recollection of that. I’m also neither a movie critic, nor even a native English speaker, so I don’t really know all the jargon I should be using instead of saying things like “boring”.
Cool, I didn’t criticize that at all though, I said it got boring when they started SOLVING the issue.
Did we watch the same movie? The Mattel board was incompetent for sure (of course they would be, they’re men who only got their powerful jobs because of the patriarchy), but they were antagonists in the first half of the movie, would’ve caught her if she hadn’t been helped by America Ferrera’s character, and it was foreshadowed that they would at least… DO something in the second half of the movie. They literally started marching to barbie world to grab her as she could move between worlds and they obviously had a problem with it. Then they get there and it was resolved with essentially no conflict, they just had a change of heart. I could’ve seen them cutting a deal of some sort with the Kens to stop Barbie or something like that. You know, men conspiring to keep women down (which of course is exactly what the Kens were doing, I’m just surprised that the Mattel board didn’t try to do it in barbie world).
I guess twist isn’t the right term. I didn’t put much more than 5 minutes of thought into writing the original comment, and as mentioned, I’m neither a movie critic, nor a native speaker. You still get what I meant though.
Sure, and I don’t disagree with the idea of it, it’s just that by the time we get to it, we’re used to everything the movie throws at us and it feels too weak to save the end of the movie, which other than this scene is just slow, emotional and boring compared to the setup. Going by the first half of the movie, I just wasn’t expecting that much sap and speechmaking towards the end. Traditionally movies start slow and then speed up, but Barbie started fast and then kinda slowed down and that just doesn’t sit well with me.