Once upon a time, a movie based on a children’s toy would’ve been IP slop; or, at best, surprisingly entertaining IP slop. Heck, there are dozens of direct-to-video animated Barbie movies that prove exactly that: they look cheap; they’re there to generate money from little girls (primarily) demanding to see the video of the toy they like; but some of them aren’t actually all that bad.
But that was a couple of decades ago. Now, the majority of our mainstream movie culture is based around originally-for-kids IP that people who have reached adult ages still apparently obsess over. And when it comes to “movies based on toys” specifically, we can look back to The LEGO Movie (released a whole decade ago this month) for a work that transcended what it “should have been” (an expensive 90-minute toy commercial) to become something genuinely entertaining; that used its IP in creative and fun and, yes, even meaningful ways. It’s those footsteps that the Barbie movie seeks to walk in.
And, thanks to some savvy behind-the-scenes choices, it succeeds! Heck, it almost succeeds too well. This is definitely a movie primarily aimed at adults, with enough silliness and bright colours on the side to not alienate kids too much. Though by “kids” I mean “teenagers”. Sure, the 12A and PG-13 ratings are permissive enough to take your six-your-old who actually plays with Barbies, but they’re going to be left floundering — or, worse, bored — as the film debates feminism, the patriarchy, and gender roles in general. This is a film about where Barbie, the toy, sits in our culture; what it represents, and what it should represent, and how successful or not it is at doing that. It’s not an essay film — those themes are smartly addressed along the way as part of a storyline about Barbie-the-toy crossing over into our real world, for various reasons — but nor is it a bright-and-colourful bit of fluff to entertain small kids. Maybe it could have been — that’s what Pixar used to excel at — but it’s not the route the filmmakers chose to go down.
As for the meat of what the film has to say and how it says it… oy, I’m not sure I want to get into that discourse. It’s just asking to have annoying people jump up in your replies. Nonetheless, it’s quite bold for an IP title like this to criticise the patriarchy by inverting it and making a matriarchy the oppressive state; but without feeding into right-wing numpties by saying “see, women would be just as bad!”. People say the film is about feminism, which is true, but it’s specifically about what I’d consider the true meaning of feminism — which is really about genuine equality — rather than what reactionaries imagine it is, i.e. “women are best and should be in control”. It could also have hit that note in a shallow, almost accidental way; for example, if it had been a parade of “aren’t men stupid and annoying?” jokes. Put another way, the film cares as much about the Kens and their right to be individuals as it does the Barbies and their right to be powerful. (I said I didn’t want to write anything particularly ‘risky’ and look what I’ve gone and done…)
Also, thanks to my personal predilections, I particularly enjoyed how the film deconstructed itself; or, rather, the fact it was aware that it’s content based on product and engaged with that to some extent. It sits alongside other recent works like The Matrix Resurrections and Return to Monkey Island as works of art that have an awareness of where they sit in culture and why they exist, and are prepared to engage with that, to deconstruct it and analyse it, in quite an overt and meta fashion within the works themselves. Personally, that’s something I’ve wanted and dreamt of seeing, but never expected to get from studio IP — such self-awareness is kinda frowned upon when it’s saying “I exist for no artistic reason, purely to make more money for the studio”, as The Matrix 4 did most explicitly. What’s great about all three of these works is that they go beyond that obvious point, too.
In something of an about turn, others have criticised the film for not being subtle in the way it handles these issues. My friends, you’re watching a movie based on a toy, aimed at as wide an audience as possible. This isn’t an abstruse Palme d’Or contender — it’s a film that can hit your everyman round the face with a bright-pink hammer three times over and they still might miss the point. Sometimes, it’s the right choice to be, if not “on the nose”, then certainly overt. It’s ok for a story to have a point, and for that point to be clear.
The other point of discourse the film has fired up came after the Oscar nominations, when co-writer/director Greta Gerwig and star/producer Margot Robbie were… nominated, actually, but not in the categories some people felt they should be nominated in. Although, if they’d swapped the nominations around, I expect they’d be annoyed the other way too. So, Gerwig gets a screenplay nod (which she might win, I guess?) but not a directing one (which she wouldn’t have, let’s face it), and Robbie is nominated for producing the film (a definite achievement — she’s spoken a lot in interviews about the efforts that went into making the film they wanted to make, and convincing the studio and toy manufacturers to go along with it) but not for acting (which she probably wouldn’t have won anyway). I don’t mean neither would have been deserving of the other nomination, but the directing gong seems almost sewn up for Christopher Nolan (for various reasons), and actress is a two-horse race between others. Besides, the real achievement is that the film exists as it is, with the content that it has — that’s a feat of writing and producing, not acting or, truly, directing (sure, in many other movies the director is king queen, but you get the distinct impression Barbie was significantly powered by Robbie; and when one person is both (co-)writer and director, surely a lot of their conceptual energy is injected at the writing stage).
Competitors aside, the quality of work can always be argued on its own merits. Gerwig’s direction is pacey and bright and fun, but is it as good as what she did in Lady Bird or Little Women? Which is to say, it fits the material well enough, but is it really special enough for an awards win? And also, who the fuck cares? Awards are kinda arbitrary. She did a good job. When it comes to Robbie’s performance, complaints have focused on the fact Ryan Gosling is nominated. Well, he’s in a different category — the fact he gave one of the five best supporting actor performances in 2023 has no bearing whatsoever on whether Robbie gave one of the five best, er, actressing performances of 2023. But yeah, Gosling does almost steal the film out from under Robbie, because he’s consistently hilarious with just enough introspection to add some character. That’s certainly the initial impression, I think. But Robbie is the film’s emotional core (yes, the movie about the plastic doll has emotions), which ultimately allows her to hang on to her own movie. That’s not something to underestimate: a lesser performer could have been overshadowed. Instead, they’re both excellent, particularly when they’re sharing a scene.
By rights, a Barbie movie should’ve been something inoffensively plasticky for little girls, possibly with some trite “you can do anything you want” message in between all the different outfits designed to sell more toys. Instead, Gerwig and Robbie have gone deeper and further in every respect — taking that “you can do anything”-type aphorism and dissecting it to find how true it is, or isn’t, and why. But they’ve wrapped that up in a movie that doesn’t forget to celebrate the thing it’s about, both by acknowledging Barbie’s good intentions and with piles of references to its history (what we’d call fan service if this was a a boys’ IP with tonnes of Lore or whatever). And, perhaps most importantly for a movie that, remember, is based on a toy — a thing that’s supposed to bring joy and fun and entertainment — they’ve made something full of fun and joy and entertainment.
Barbie is the 4th film in my 100 Films in a Year Challenge 2024.
Favourite Film of the Month
Most of the Doctor Who chatter of late revolves around what happened in the finale — no surprise there, given major revelations were teased in 
All of which means that the series’ penultimate story, The Haunting of Villa Diodati, was on a whole ‘nother level. For me, this might be the first genuine classic of this era. (If you’ve not seen it, spoilers ahead.) The first half is like a proper horror movie, complete with jump scares and other creepy effects (the dead-eyed little girl behind the door, but only when the lightning flashes… brr!) Naturally there’s a sci-fi explanation for it all, but even that was thrilling and chilling in its own way. It was the best use of the Cybermen since… er, 
So the real point of it all comes in The Timeless Children, where the Master finds some new sources to rewrite the Doctor’s Wikipedia entry, then reads that revised version to her. I’m only half joking. Chibnall has managed to rewrite Doctor Who mythology in a way that both angers fans with its radical changes, and fundamentally makes no difference whatsoever. The Doctor used to be a mysterious alien from another planet who travelled the universe helping people. Now, she’s a mystery alien from another dimension who travels the universe helping people. Instead of being “just another Time Lord” who rejected the rules of their society and ran away to interfere, the Doctor is now a Special / Chosen One — the originator of the Time Lords’ ability to regenerate; her DNA copied and pasted into every other Time Lord… and then her memory wiped, so she grew up as just another Time Lord who rejected the rules of their society and ran away to interfere… but, y’know, was secretly special. I feel I should hate it, but, honestly, it was so guessable and so fundamentally immaterial that I just can’t muster the energy to care enough to hate it. It may yet go the way of “half-human” anyway, i.e. we’ll all just ignore and/or rewrite it as soon as someone other than Chibnall gets in charge.
I’m a good few episodes behind on Picard now (episode 7 arrived this week), which is not because I’ve given up on it, but because it hasn’t engaged me quite enough to especially make time for it. It seems to have garnered quite the mixed reaction: the critics’ scores on Rotten Tomatoes are very strong; the user ratings on IMDb aren’t bad at all; but every time I see someone write about the show, on Twitter or another blog or what have you, it seems to be in criticism. I fall in between all these stools. There are things the show is doing well, or at least passably, but other bits that are awful; that feel like the worst of cheap made-for-syndication ’90s sci-fi, rather than the peak TV ‘prestige series’ it clearly wants to be.
Between its short length (four parts), quality cast (Imelda Staunton, Stephen Rea, Russell Tovey), and condensed broadcast schedule (it was on four consecutive nights), this looked like a miniseries… until a last-second cliffhanger (plus some dangling plot threads) suggested there’ll be more to come. I watched it on that back of that cast and some strong reviews, which it only somewhat merited. It’s a decent family drama, about a 60-something widow getting into a relationship with a man her three grown-up children think might be conning her, with the added spice of a friendly/nosey next-door neighbour who might be a proper weirdo herself; but decent is about the extent of it — the cast elevate the material, which is fine but didn’t excite me otherwise. I expect I’ll keep watching if it comes back. 
Normally I’d give a new ITV crime drama a miss, but this one is set and filmed in Bath (they got in my way one day by filming in the park I wanted to sit in for lunch, the bastards), so I had to see. It was… adequate. It’s about a hot-shot London detective who relocates to Bath, and lines like “that may be how things are done in London, but you’re in Bath now” were repeated to the point of absurdity. And don’t get me started on the accents (one local review derided the programme for thinking we all speak like Hobbits). Yet, inexplicably, 
This six-part adaptation of the beloved fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman debuted on Amazon last May, and by rights I should’ve been all over it from day one — I read the book as a kid, and loved it enough that I used to cite it as my favourite novel (the only thing that changed that was the fact it’s been decades since I last read it). But, as regular readers will know, life has got in the way of my viewing choices over the past year or so, and it was in fact that level of attachment that stopped me watching it — it needed my full attention. Obviously, that time has come.
“Holy fork,” I said to myself when I saw that the series finale of this had aired at the end of January — I’d forgotten how much time had passed since I last watched it. If you’ve still not seen any of the show yourself, look away now — it’s the kind of series you want to experience knowing as little as possible, and if you read about later seasons before you’ve seen earlier ones it’s just gonna ruin stuff. (I know that sounds self-evident, but it applies to some shows more than others, and this is very much one it applies to.)
So, I’ve finally caught up on the Fox years of Lucifer — it was here that its original network cancelled the show (Netflix picked it up for a fourth season, recommissioned it for a fifth and supposedly final season, added more episodes to that fifth season, and now are reportedly lining up a sixth season too). I can see why fans were particularly enraged — the season ends on a massive change of circumstance that would’ve been a terrible place to leave it forever. Indeed, the most intriguing thing here is where it will go next, especially given the network change: Lucifer is an old-fashioned network procedural, as much concerned with case-of-the-week crime stories as it is with arc plots and the supernatural goings-on of its angels-and-demons universe; and that was to be expected when it was on an old-fashioned network, but now that it’s on Netflix, the home of bingeing, will it shift its emphasis?
Jordan Peele’s new version of The Twilight Zone belatedly made it to UK screens a week or two back, almost 11 months after its US airing. I still haven’t watched any of it, but I am still going with cherrypicking the best of the original series.
Moving on to 
On a lighter note, in 9th place at TV Guide is Twenty Two. I say “lighter” — the subject matter isn’t as heavy, but this is a creepy episode. It’s about a woman in hospital who has a recurring nightmare about visiting the morgue, but she’s convinced it’s not a nightmare, it’s happening. It’s the enactment of her nightmare that is genuinely creepy (just imagining having to ‘live’ it gives me chills), and the idea of not being sure what’s dreams and what’s reality is a very Twilight Zone concept. Unfortunately, some of the specifics are weak. Whether it’s a nightmare or not would be easy to disprove, considering it includes details like her breaking a glass every night, or that the morgue is room number 22 — if it is, how does she know that? (Her doctor does eventually realise this… after days of hearing about it.) And as there’s nothing else wrong with her, why not discharge her — the nightmare is so location-specific that it couldn’t happen at home. Eventually there’s a twist, and it’s a good’un, pushing the concept somewhere logical (within the bounds of paranormal ‘logic’, anyhow) and retaining the creepiness. (There’s also a question about whether it inspired a much later film series, with which it shares many notable similarities, but to say more would be a whopping spoiler.)
Finally for now, the one outstanding top-ten-er from 
On Twitter in the run-up to the ceremony itself, there was a general acceptance that (a) Parasite was the best picture of the year, and (b) Parasite was not going to win Best Picture. As far as I could see, there was a sort of genial acceptance of these facts, which made a nice change from Film Twitter’s usual condemnation of everything. But then, blow us all down, Parasite did actually win! It’s noteworthy for all sorts of reasons — primarily because it’s the first ever non-English-language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars. It was also only the third time that the Palme d’Or and Oscar have gone to the same film. And director Bong Joon Ho became only the second individual to win four awards at one ceremony (after Walt Disney, and he did it across four different films). As for the rest of the ceremony, most of the other gongs went where expected, leaving 1917 the major victim of Parasite’s surprise success. But it still took home three well-deserved technical trophies, whereas Netflix’s The Irishman (which had the same number of nominations, ten) was shut out entirely.
This month, I have mostly been missing Noughts + Crosses, the BBC’s high-profile adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s beloved alternate-world young adult novels. It seemed to go down very well on Twitter when the first episode aired, and the whole series is already available on iPlayer, so I’ve no excuse not to make time for it next month (other than all those Picards I have to catch up…)
Earlier this month the news everyone had been expecting was finally made official: Netflix was cancelling The Punisher and Jessica Jones, thereby bringing to an end the era of the MCU on the streamer. Altogether it will have produced 13 seasons and 161 hours of television, ending with the release of Jessica Jones season three sometime later this year — which will be a more appropriate time to get into this, I guess. For now, there’s just the second — and, as it turned out, final — season of The Punisher.
The two plots do converge somewhat, naturally, with Frank having to deal with the machinations of Russo/Jigsaw at the same time as Pilgrim is coming after him. That means the series has to juggle the two stories as well, and it does that less than effectively, swinging back and forth between which it wants to focus on. For me, the problem remained the same: the new plot is interesting with a lot of potential, while the season one hangovers feel like little more than unfinished business. The latter become stretched out to fill the season, going round in circles, rather than being dealt with succinctly. Conversely, with that stealing so much space, the Pilgrim and Rachel story doesn’t get the screen time it needs or deserves. It seems like there’s a half decent balance at first, but that ultimately goes awry, and the ins and outs of the new storyline (I keep wanting to call it the “main” story, but that’s only true in a couple of early episodes) aren’t as explored as much as they should be. Considering there’s some interesting potential in there (Frank and Rachel have great chemistry, and the plot shapes up as a kind of political thriller, in a 
You spend years wondering if anyone could re-do the premise behind 
Amazon are adapting Joe Wright’s 2011 film 
The run-up to this year’s Oscars seemed to be mired in a mix of controversy and disinterest. The former was provoked by a variety of poor decisions by the Academy, including fiascoes around a Best Popular Film award, over who would host (it was Kevin Hart, then it wasn’t, then it was no one), and over the decision to present some awards during the ad breaks (which was scrapped, thankfully). This whole palaver is part of what fed the disinterest, along with a slate of nominees that was regarded to be generally uninspiring. As it turned out, plenty of people still tuned in (US viewing figures were slightly up from last year) and plenty of conversation was sparked. Other people can dig into it in more depth than me (and have, of course, considering the ceremony was days ago), but I will say I was overjoyed for Olivia Colman (definitely the best speech, although a couple of others were quite good too) and Spider-Verse, was quite pleased Black Panther won Best Score (I don’t know if it was actually the best overall, but I really liked it), and its other two victories (costumes and production design) were also welcome, and Spike Lee’s ecstatic win was another top moment. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, obviously, with Best Picture in particular being an underwhelming result; though I’m not as miffed about Bohemian Rhapsody’s multiple wins as some people (even if its awards for sound editing and mixing were more about “most” than “best”).
This month, I have mostly been missing The Umbrella Academy, as I mentioned at the start. The trailers look good (love a bit of Hazy Shade of Winter), and it seems like critical and audience reaction has been positive, so it’s definitely on my watchlist. I’m also yet to start the new series of Scottish crime drama Shetland, or The Missing’s much-anticipated spin-off Baptiste. I expect I’ll be saving those up for a little while yet.
100Films.co.uk 