I'm not sure who the target audience is for this film yet, but this is a pretty clever teaser homage to Kubrick

Gerwig did a good job with Little Women and Baumbach is good at writing this sort of thing (Madagascar 3) so likely to be one of the better releases of the year.

watched this over the break on recommendation from my son. i was extremely reluctant, but did so anyway since it's streaming. i thought it was great! many, many LOL moments, extremely well-written, not overly preachy, tons of nods to other very adult things (like the above trailer, the entire sequence of which is great). it really makes me wonder why do this film as a barbie property, but i also don't have a great argument for why not. i'd happily rewatch this, and i'll happily recommend it to any of my friends. it's really quite funny and well done. movie of the year? pfft, not remotely. but it was very good.

Okay, it was well marketed and made a lot of money, but at the end of the day it's a two hour commercial for plastic dolls. If people enjoyed it that's fine - people enjoy Transformers and Sonic, etc, movies too and this is comparable.

Outside of one mom speech, I don’t see where it really had anything to do with the dolls. “Inspired by” yes, but “commercial for” is questionable. If anything, it was about her trying not to be a doll. She wouldn’t get in the big box.

Multiple scenes where they're like "this barbie" and "that barbie", just showing you all the different barbies you can buy. And of course the whole thing overall incl the marketing raises awareness of the brand. Deserves a Cannes Lion.

Obviously it’s based on the toy, so you if you want to argue that then, by extension, its existence is a commercial for the toy, sure. I could see that angle. But as far as the film feeling like a commercial or constantly referencing the toy, I just don’t think it did. I’ve seen way more egregious examples of that in other films. Happy Gilmore was one creative and amusing way to handle product placement. I stopped watching the Transformers films after the second one, but I assume they are probably the worst examples of shoving characters in there just to sell new toys. Star Wars films are probably the worst example of this approach.

Star Wars no, because the films came first. Transformers yes, but no-one is claiming Michael Bay was snubbed for an Oscar (in a year in which Miyazaki released what is very likely to be his final feature film).

klimov wrote: 24/01/24, 00:50:50 Star Wars no, because the films came first.

singular, yes. but plural? no. at least half of the content of episodes 2-9 exists (or at the very least was created) solely to sell new toys, not to mention all the spinoffs.