The Movie Thread - General Discussion Forum - Page 414

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@Kidfried The concept of the film is muddled and confused. It's filled with themes and ideas that conflict and never really cohere around anything meaningful. Character arcs feel forced and inorganic. The film is filled with weird, dumb humor that doesn't work. And, without getting too far into it, the film's gender politics are, I'm sorry, abominable. It's a feminist message film that seems to think women are inherently stupid and likes to ridicule several of its male characters for no particularly good reason. The scriptwriter clearly didn't understand how to imbed themes within the context of a plot and character development, so characters just obnoxiously have to state the themes of the movie ham-fistedly within the dialogue.

And it's all the script, because it's not like this movie has nothing good about it: the actors are fine as far as they go, and the set design and visual aesthetic overall is frequently delightful. Even more frustrating is that you can see echoes of really good movies in here: Pleasantville, Enchanted, and The Lego Movie in particular. But those films were focused and well-written, whereas this one can't decide what it wants to say or do, and when it tries to, it just ends up feeling insulting.

It's not like you can't write a feminist message film and have it be decent, either. Don't Worry Darling, for example, is a recent example that works in that regard. But that film, whether you liked it or not (and a lot of people didn't; look at the RT score lol), had something concrete to say. The Barbie movie feels like it was written by someone fresh out of a single gender studies class who has never written a script before.

Unfortunately, right-wing troglodytes seem to have declared war on this movie