Harry and Sally love the hell out of each other, but it takes a while to kick in. It’s not love at first sight. It’s total bafflement.

Their lives are unrecognizable to one another. Harry is a cynical romantic who hits on his girlfriend’s best friend the day they meet; Sally takes it for granted there are no Sunday underwear because of God. Her earnestness is only matched by her specificity. When Sally sweetly lists out exactly how she wants her food prepared, she somehow isn’t annoying, and you can tell that people have loved to accommodate Sally her whole life. Harry should be immune, but he’s not, and he’s self-aware enough to find Sally’s effect on him queer. His gaze says “How the hell am I so attracted to this naive nutball?”

Harry tries to put this complicated charming woman into a box he knows how to handle — like a one night stand — and she resists. Sally is so offended that he isn’t constrained to the same boundaries she respects.

“Why can’t we just be friends?” asks Sally, to paraphrase.

“Men and women can’t be friends without involving sex,” replies Harry, to state the main question of the movie.

When they move on from that strange road trip, it’s years before they see each other again, but they do not forget.

~

Sally and Harry meet again when both of them are in committed relationships. Harry is married happily, sort of. He’s still a cynic, but he has decided to engage with life in good faith, and Sally admires that about him.

Despite his bluster and bark, Harry is such a good guy that he’s not taking any serious look at Sally yet. They’re a pleasant chance meeting on a flight from one place to another. They’re just traveling between places again, and they brush up against each other, and it couldn’t possibly turn into anything. They determine that means they can be friends. Just friends. At long last.

But they’ve also been wondering that about one another for years. What would have happened if they had hooked up that night? Could it have changed the trajectories of their lives?

~

Friendship love is my favorite love. The Greeks had a bunch of words for all the different kinds, but philia is the kind held between equals; it is brotherhood, it is your pinkie-locked bestie skipping beside you at the mall. Imagine spending a whole lifetime with your childhood best friend. If those endless summer days where the two wasted time, like, crawling around in a ditch, and playing hopscotch, and throwing rocks at fences could really last forever, what would that be like? Wouldn’t it be better if the two of you could also kiss sometimes? And make babies and a family and have a life together?

~

Harry and Sally get close to one another after major breakups. Both of them thought they had forever. The next step should have been houses, kids, dogs, paying for college, grandkids…

Instead, they find themselves facing their thirties mutually single. Harry and Sally aren’t traveling anymore, either. They’re both in New York City.

At this point, they’ve bickered over the offensive idea of a relationship between the two of them so much, it almost feels like a challenge to stay platonic. And they really *like* the friendship. They don’t want to lose it.

It seems impossible to conceive of the friendship coexisting with a romantic relationship. They’ve both been hurt by love. Harry’s wife left him for an accountant; Sally’s long-term guy married his secretary shortly after their breakup. As far as either of them are concerned, relationships are where love goes to die.

Still. They have been enjoying their friendship enormously. Their conversations are play. They’re always walking together, confiding in one another, and sharing experiences.

When Sally tells Harry she’s going to date someone else, she wants him to have a problem with it.

When Harry tells her it’s okay, it’s obviously not.

“We’re just friends,” sayeth Harry. Because that is something men and women can do now.

~

Is there anything more satisfying than seeing a couple of idiots realize they’re in love?

Harry and Sally can’t be with each other until they reconcile all their weird relationship ideas. They have to see their friends, General Leia and Bruno Kirby, have a relationship where they enjoy one another *and* have the love bits. They have to lose the friendship and realize that’s what they wanted from love all along, not so much the sexier bits or the romantic bits.

How many heterosexual romances are so openly uneasy with the perceived cultural demands of heterosexual romance? Sally’s a Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus type, and if Harry were 35 (ish?) in the modern era, I’m scared to think about what his podcast subscriptions would look like. They’ve been told that whole parts of their selves should belong to friends, not lovers. Lovers are the people you try to escape before they wake up in the morning. Lovers are the people you take skiing trips with. Lovers are the ones you fake orgasms for.

These adorable fools are all heart, no matter how many walls they put up. Harry is sickeningly in love with Sally. All of her, especially the quirks. He thinks that it would be great to be friends who make out and have a family. Of course he does! Sally is Meg Goddamn Ryan.

And imagine. Once these two finally get their shit together, they get to spend the rest of their lives with their best friends.

~

He and I met in 2006. I was starting at my new job as a computer operator; he was already working there as a student worker. It was so naughty for a full-time employee like me to date a student worker, even though I’m several months younger than him. When I walked away from him, he chased; when he caught me, I was the one who said, “Ah ha, I’ve got you.”

It must have been inevitable. We were the only two young people working in that building. There was no reason for the two of us to be such a perfect fit. I wasn’t a perfect fit anywhere, sticking out like a sore thumb. He blended in anywhere, but wasn’t a fit inside of himself. I helped him be naughtier. He tied a weight around my ankles so I wouldn’t float into the clouds as often. But we had so much fun. We ran around like children getting into trouble–we were children–and he loved me so hard, I eventually forgot to hate myself.

~

In my eyes, When Harry Met Sally eclipses and predominates the whole of its genre. The story is very dear to me, but When Harry Met Sally is also just a really well-written screenplay in the hands of a great director. Rob Reiner is a genius. Nora Ephron is at her vibey best.

Then we have a flawless Billy Crystal, who gives a performance with pining eyes that rival Colin Firth’s. That’s right. You wouldn’t necessarily expect that from the guy who wrote America’s Sweethearts, a black comedy take on romcoms. He manages to bring so much charisma to a character who should be nothing but caustic. The way he plays Harry’s cynicism softening for Sally should be cinematic legend if it isn’t.

I couldn’t sing Meg Ryan’s praises enough. Apparently her character’s picky qualities came from Nora Ephron. There’s a lot of fondness in the screenplay for the kind of woman who knows what she wants, and I’m not sure Meg Ryan is capable of playing someone I wouldn’t want to hang out with. She’s just so cute. And it’s fun seeing her in this movie, because she looks a whole lot like her son Jack Quaid wearing a wig. They have the same smile.

You should also remember that Rob Reiner is the cowriter and director of This Is Spinal Tap. The comedy is *outstanding*. The dialogue snaps along, and it still makes me laugh every time.

Since I’ve been watching so many new-to-me movies and enjoying the heck out of them, I wondered if I wouldn’t like my “old classics” as much. Like, would having a broader view of the genre change my extremely intense feelings about this? And the answer is no. When Harry Met Sally remains the perfect movie for watching any time in the period between autumn and New Year’s Eve, and it makes me love these two neurotic weirdos even more every time.

Hallmark-style Christmas romances are probably best framed in that way, rather than actually summarizing the plot. This is one of those genres where predictability is considered a feature rather than a bug. I tell you it’s a Hallmark-style small town Christmas romance where an heiress visits her dad’s hometown and falls for an artist/innkeeper, you can imagine every beat.

All of the expected occurs. The movie stands on its marks when it’s supposed to, and there are no major disappointments. Indeed, this is the rare small town romance that acknowledges unhoused people. Usually small town romances seem to happen in a fantasy land with no relation to reality. This one peeked into reality long enough to say, “Maybe we treat everyone like humans who exist in our idyllic small town?” and I appreciated it.

Otherwise there is really nothing to be said about this. It’s a Hallmark-style movie about a Hallmark-style heiress and they live Happily Ever After. It helped me realize I definitely prefer Christmas romance movies that have an emphasis on the com, though. My personal taste is for louder comedy. Or any comedy. This was a pretty sedate romance.

I really liked this hero, though. Dudeface is a normal looking- and acting-dude on the outside, but he’s a deranged little Christmas weirdo and the actor doesn’t seem to realize it in the portrayal. It’s objectively hilarious to get sad about your ex and listen to “Silent Night” loudly in the office. He sits around sadly drawing Christmas stuff, like reindeer. He’s kind of a little defensive shit when he learns the heroine kept a secret, but it feels appropriate to this man’s emotional coping level. When someone is angrily drawing kitschy Santa Clauses… I don’t know man. That’s weird. I love weird. The Hallmarky dedication to a Christmas theme has entered such surrealist territory that I had to get on board.

His main appeal to the heroine is that he’s really caring toward his community, and I love a nurturing hero. Plus, our heroine gave a really good performance that seemed naive but sincere, rather than spoiled, so they were a cute match.

It’s important to note that Andie MacDowell accidentally brings smoldering lesbian bakery energy to the kitchen with Clarke from The 100. Of late, Andie MacDowell has taken up the career of a working actor, and she appears in all sorts of commercial projects to do a professional, sexy job, looking hotter than I’ve ever seen her, and it’s actually possible there’s no chemistry between them but I’m just feeling gay for Andie MacDowell.

As I always say, a movie is queer cinema if it gives me queer feelings, but again: our heroine is Clarke from The 100 (pronounced “The Hundred”), who is a bisexual icon. Just because Clarke (both the heroine and actress have a name too) is only in a wispy brief love triangle with two men in this movie doesn’t erase the fact I know Clarke wanted to scissor Andie MacDowell the whole time. Bakery milf/heiress energy? Anyone on board with me? No? Just me, as usual? Okay, cool.

Anyway, I’ve been watching so much Christmas romance lately that I feel comfortable saying this is a mid movie in the genre, no matter how often it lets me see Clarke’s muscular thighs and Clarke’s generous rack and think about Clarke ~baking ~cookies with Milfy MacDowell.

If you wanna see a woman transform her environment with kindness, pop over to Last Holiday. If you want small town, watch Single All the Way because it’s gay and it has Jennifer Coolidge. If you want bisexual heroine energy, try Christmas With You. If you wanna see Andie McDowell, google.

(image credit: Netflix)

I like to spend the whole period between Halloween and Christmas watching Christmas movies. It’s not about great cinema; it’s about vibes.

If you’re into vibe maintenance, you know what I’m talking about. You need the soundscape, the background colors, the ~mood~ that you can only get from a couple of people with really nice teeth falling in love adjacent to Christmas lights.

Keeping a movie going on the TV is cozier than putting up a fake fireplace (slightly) but you can’t necessarily give a movie more attention than a fake fireplace. It’s time to wrap presents. Your cat is on the wrapping paper. The kids want to open another bottle of sparkling cider. You’re wondering if you can fit in the closet with the presents, without cats or kids.

Right now you’re not keeping up with elaborate plots. Rewatching movies every year means you don’t have to. You always know when the good parts of When Harry Met Sally come around. If you miss it this year, you’ll see it next year.

So when I put something new on my rewatch list, it has to be special. It has to endure revisiting every 12 months, but only being revisited with as much attention as Swiss has cheese. It has to be predictable enough that I don’t get too caught up in worrying over the characters’ drama. I appreciate good needle drops. I want over-decorated Christmas sets whenever possible.

I found a few movies worth adding to the yearly rewatch list, so here’s my suggestions for a few you may or may not have in rotation.

5. Single All the Way

If you like the traditional Hallmark-style romance, you might appreciate this version that features a male couple. The simple fantasy of an accepting family in a cute town with affordable real estate prices should belong to all sexual orientations.

From Christmas photo shoots, to excessive sweater-wearing, and Jennifer Coolidge over-directing a very dramatic Christmas play, Single All the Way has all the pretty things you could possibly want to ignore on your television.

4. Four Christmases

I think people skipped this once because it was advertised as a Vince Vaughn movie, and I bet you know what I mean when I say that. Bringing up Four Christmases in conversation made people say, “Isn’t that the one where the kid beats up Vince Vaughn?” and the fact I have to say “yeah, sorry, that’s the one” isn’t starting this recommendation off on the best foot.

But that’s a pretty brief part of the movie, which is in service of drawing a picture about messy families – like the Vince Vaughn version of the cousins in My Big Fat Greek Wedding getting into trouble. It’s part of the process wherein Reese Witherspoon realizes she wants to have a family with Vince Vaughn. Their relationship is adorably nontraditional for holiday romances. I think long-time committed couples will especially appreciate how these two keep it fresh.

It’s not the most vibey suggestion, but the central couple is so cute I have to recommend it. And I bet it’s not one of your favorites yet.

3. What Happens Later

This is the first year that What Happens Later has been eligible for watching, much less existing or rewatching, but I immediately gave it a position of honor on my mental shelf of Holiday Rewatches. Meg Ryan might be my favorite 90s/00s romcom darling, and my wifemommy is just as good as ever.

Contemplative and moody, What Happens Later is a slow-paced conversation between two very charming actors enjoying one another’s company immensely. Although it gets sad here and there, it’s mostly a magical look at love later in life between sweet goofball Meg Ryan and a caustic bag of luggage played by David Duchovny.

I read the stage play this was based upon before seeing the movie, and Meg Ryan did a wonderful job tweaking it just a bit to make the story warmer, but no less theatrical. This one will flow nicely in tone between more well-worn classics.

2. Falling for Christmas

Hear me out. Even if you like the Hallmarky Christmas movie subgenre, you might not love the idea of watching Lindsay Lohan; I know there were times in her life where she wasn’t delivering her best performances. But this woman is perfect in this movie. She is every corny pink-drenched atom of clueless heiress turned flannel stepmommy that you could ever possibly want.

I’ve also watched enough holiday romances by now to realize that chemistry between the leads is entirely optional. These two are actually into each other somewhat. And despite dealing with the usual budgetary issues that Netflix holiday romances tangle with, they manage to get some good song moments, too. At some point you realize the movie has gone from silly-garish to an actual aesthetic, and it feels like you were transported onto a hot cocoa mix box logo when you weren’t paying attention. I love this one.

1. Last Holiday

Queen Latifah stars in an inspirational romance about celebrating life through grief. Sounds corny put that way? I’ve never met a movie that made me feel such a genuine outpouring of emotion. Queen Latifah absolutely destroys my soul with a beautiful performance, and the story is such heartfelt Christmas magic. Last Holiday is a great balance between my stylized platonic ideal of a Christmas movie and a flick that actually has stuff to say on a spiritual level. I *went places* watching this.

The subplot I always think about is Queen Latifah with the woman who’s having an affair. Our heroine isn’t nice confronting this woman when the opportunity arises, but she’s extremely *kind*, and the blunt honesty transforms her life. I can’t describe how the bumps along that bit spoke to me, and that was just one of many very lovely moments packed into this.

I’m convinced Last Holiday is the king of all Christmas romcoms. Somehow it totally flew under my radar until this year, and now I don’t want to live without it. I have to put it at the top of this list in case Last Holiday hasn’t graced your life yet. But maybe you already love this one too! I was surprised when I started talking about it and had folks coming out of the woodwork with superlatives.

What kind of movies are your perpetual holiday rewatches?

I have to give five stars to a movie that makes me goofy-smile while watching it, hands clapped to my cheeks, happily rocking in my chair. This did it for me, and it’s not exclusively because I’ve been in love with Aimee Garcia since she was on Lucifer.

This is a pretty standard Christmas romcom, so the tropes can really tell you what you need to know: heroine falls for the hero’s family, celebrity falls in love with small town guy, pop star collaborating with songwriter.

I always like to say how it’s about execution rather than idea, and the execution here just works for me on all the levels. This is a very standard Christmas romance done simply and competently, in the best possible way.

The director (who is a woman!) Gabriela Tagliavini did a beautiful, emotional, heartfelt job making this movie. The casting is all on-point. Lots of great performances. Lovely music. Warm, pretty cinematography. Open adoration for Latino culture. The story checks every single box I want checked in a Christmas romcom superlatively.

Heck: even the Gen Zers are given fantasy fulfillment in this one. A 14-going-on-15 year old girl precipitates the meet cute between our H&h when the pop star notices Kiddo’s TikTok cover of her song. I love it.

Heroine Aimee Garcia’s performance admittedly carries the movie. She’s so open and charismatic and you can see her character’s thoughts all over her face. This girl is *working*. The fact I feel Freddie Prinze Jr doesn’t meet her level is, I think, because he’s actually just playing the meek smalltown single Daddy so well. He sorta provided a more “real” performance in She’s All That relative to the stylized approach of the movie too; the more grounded approach here just kinda got a little outshined by all the pink sparklies and the pop star (as you would expect). They don’t have especially hot chemistry, but they are very warm and friendly, and I find that to be wholly appropriate for the holiday genre.

I don’t really have anything to analyze here; this is exactly the kind of thing that lets me turn off and just relax and enjoy myself all the way.

~

Fun fact: Aimee Garcia is a vampire. Freddie Prinze Jr is 47, and he looks about 47. I assumed this was a weird unremarked-upon age gap romance because Aimee Garcia surely had to be twenty years his junior. Nope! The woman is 45 years old. Since goddamn when? Twenty years from now? Can you believe I got through 400 words of review without talking about her ass in those leather pants? Wait, shit. Goddammit.

(image credit: Netflix)

I keep forgetting I watched these movies to review them. The fact I’m offering three stars for them to share is a Christmas miracle of true generosity (although all three stars were earned by the third movie). My charitability is a shining North Star.

I gave the first of the franchise five stars because I really couldn’t think of a reason not to. It artfully dodged evoking emotions, producing the perfectly bland inoffensive Christmas vibe such movies are meant to evoke. Romance has a lot of very problematic tropes that are, in my opinion, most effectively used when you do not try to justify them or ground them in reality.

I’m so comfortable with the princess fantasy; marrying into socioeconomic security and fancy dresses IS, in fact, an awesome fantasy.

The problem is when you try to actually talk about the monarchy and get into monarchist fantasies. I mean, who does it really serve to have a fantasy of the “good king”? Is there any utility to the lower classes to fantasize about monarchy without violence? Sounds like a nice way to validate a shitty system.

Royal Wedding was more of a mystery (I assume driven by the desire to use Rose McIver’s experience and audience from iZombie) and unfortunately not an especially good or memorable one. The second movie barely has King Richard present, which means it’s not really very romantic, and he’s mostly getting up to stuff that shows us how he’s one of the good members of the ruling class. The monarchy was making life heck for Aldovian citizens, and King Richard felt Just So Dreadful about it (frowny face), but luckily it turned out it was a scheming McBadguy and the monarchy is still cool. Phew!

I thought I had zero patience for “one of the good ruling class” anymore, but I was more patient by the time the third movie came around. Mostly because there was lots of King Richard being romantic! I love baby tropes. Being concerned for his wife (who births a four-month-old baby, which I ALSO LOVE), getting another king’s help building the crib, sitting around trying to figure out The Baby Stuff, interfacing with the doctor.

Turns out I’m okay just kinda shoving all the gross monarchist stuff behind the curtain if they will be so kind as to push my buttons about cozy family and the ongoing romance of marriage. It’s all I want, and it feels like it’s not that hard.

Basically if I’m getting All Sara About The Politics, the romance isn’t good enough to distract me. The third movie pulled it off way better. It also gave us a really good amount of Alice Krige. For future Christmases, I might honestly revisit the Aldovia trilogy (70% to thirst over Alice Krige), but just kinda skip over the middle one.

I would love if they put a pin in this series for now and brought us back to Aldovia in about 10 years to keep going.

(image credit: Netflix)

I try to give movies a pass on how enfranchised they are within a system because, well, when I say “a system” I mean “more or less reality,” which is just our society and government and etcetera. Movies are expensive and big-budget flicks only get made when they please the people with the money. People with money like the system, you see, because the system has made sure they have money. That’s just how the whole thing works!

I will try to give movies a pass on failures of inclusion too. Generally, if a movie isn’t inclusive, you don’t *want* it to be. Not all writers are cut out for writing inclusivity. See: The Proposal including characters of Tlingit descent via Ryan Reynolds and Betty White.

But when a story directly engages with The System the way Barbie (2023) does, you really have to judge it on that level. You gotta have a paranoid reading about the way that The System influenced its creation, creator, marketing, and the audience.

If we don’t talk about late-stage capitalism in regards to Barbie, you might as well try to talk about Orange is the New Black without talking about lesbians, or Mona Lisa Smile without talking about lesbians, or U-Haul without talking about lesbians. You’re just missing the whole point. And usually lesbians!

~

Actually let’s talk lesbians for a second.

Have you ever seen a more sublime portrayal of fated mates on the screen as when Barbie and America Ferrera’s eyes met for the first time?

Those two are *connected*. Whole ass red thread of fate. Their souls recognize one another.

Ferrera’s character is also married to a man who is essentially a Ken, but I guess the queerest thing about this movie (besides a mouth-frothingly attractive Ncuti Gatwa) is the acknowledgment that Straight Business Women are allowed to acquire men for sperm reasons and then just kind of let them beach around the house or whatever.

I’m 100% convinced Barbie and Ferrera’s character end up together, coparenting their daughter, and I’m not interested in any other readings.

~

Since Barbie was one of the most popular movies of the year, I won’t try to sum it up. The plot is not exactly important. Plot here is a scaffold that interconnects thematic vignettes about Barbie, Ken, patriarchy, and/or admittedly great Barbie product jokes. Plot is how we get Barbie on a bench with a beautiful old woman while Ken is trying to perform surgery; the movie is about the beautiful old woman and the surgery more than how the characters arrived in those positions.

I guess you could say, on a meta level, Plot is the Ken and “vibes about gender from a wealthy white American woman” is the real Barbie.

Ultimately, we spend a lot of time working on a fairly simple thesis statement.

This is the thrust of Barbie: Being a woman in a patriarchy is difficult, and if we acknowledge it, it’s way easier to function intelligently.

Most of the movie sticks to the beginning part of the thesis.

“Being a woman in a patriarchy is difficult.”

That’s hard to disagree with, and the stylized story is confident you will agree. Most everyone can sympathize with it.

The movie falters reaching its conclusion about how this should be handled. Women are brought back into the fold of sisterhood and anti-patriarchy by recognizing the conflict inherent in womanity.

But like, that’s it?

My brain started shouting “opiate of the masses” when I realized that the not-so-revolutionary conclusion of this was for basically nothing to change or improve. We’re just supposed to see the problem. And now it’s not better, but I guess it’s good enough?

Given that Mattel makes plenty of money in The System, there’s no way that it could have been more subversive, which really highlights the conflict at the core of Barbie. The thing is, Barbie also tries to frame this conflict as a feature rather than a bug. Trying to tell a revolutionary story about patriarchy in the constraints of the patriarchy is deeply uncomfortable, so you’re supposed to revel in that, I guess.

Someone like Greta Gerwig has surely made way more compromises than we’ve seen in Barbie to reach her accomplishments, and of course she wants The System to persist. It’s rewarding her. She just wishes being a woman in America’s high caste wasn’t so annoying sometimes.

“I see you,” Greta Gerwig says into the mirror. “You’re having a really hard time succeeding in this patriarchy, Greta. You are succeeding, though.” Hashtag girlboss.

~

I wouldn’t even talk about it if Mattel hadn’t already given us Barbie material I prefer.

The gonzo, almost dadaist humor of Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse is my personal favorite. It’s definitely designed for the YouTube iPad generation of kids. Go check it out on YouTube, sincerely; the jokes flash by at the speed of memes in a show formatted somewhat like an especially silly reality show.

Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse gave me an outstanding Ken who I just adored. As the only mechanic who seems even willing to engage with the whole shlonpoofa issue, he’s engineered everything cool the Dreamhouse has, and he’s amazing at enabling Barbie.

Thanks to this Ken, and my own army of gay Kens when I was a kid, Ken was *never* “just Ken” to me, which made me really bounce off of the characterization of Ken by Ryan Gosling. I found his performance near-unwatchable, which I assume is entirely personal preference, possibly because I’m so offended by making Ken a brainless slimeball when we know he’s so good with cars and Barbie’s robot closet.

Anyway, there wasn’t a page of Barbie (2023) that was half as revolutionary as Barbie as The Princess and the Pauper, which took Mattel’s permission to use Barbie’s likeness and dived head-first into a plot that wasn’t joking around about caste. Literally, Princess Barbie realizes the caste issues in her kingdom and starts changing it by the end. Realistic? Nah. But it’s so much more subversive than anything I spent my time squinting discontentedly at for the last couple hours.

~

The feminism Barbie features is one mostly concerning to a caste of American high enough to actually *buck* traditional gender roles. Binary gender is enforced by violence. If you’re outside that binary, like being a male fashion doll, we already know this isn’t a story about people economically vulnerable to such violence. The idealized men paralleling Barbie are allowed to have feminine qualities, but remain wealthy. That’s the lack of inclusivity in Barbie: a lack of money.

If you have enough money to buy a Barbie doll, but especially if you have enough money to care about historic Barbie dolls and their clothes, you can be included in this movie too.

Again, pointing back to earlier in my review, I wouldn’t even mention it if the movie were not about The System (it’s a toy! brand! movie!), and American capitalism predominantly divides its castes by wealth at this point. The problems of the ruling class are not the problems of everyone else. The concerns of Mattel executives are extremely obvious in this toy movie, but they would really prefer if you think it’s about gender, actually. Do you see how revolutionary they are about gender?

Gender stuff is not radical here. An excessive amount of time is spent on Ken’s personal arc, and my sibling argues that the Kens in general have a far more interesting and more concrete plotline than Barbie herself does. I got a real feeling of “feminism is also worrying about the men <3” and it’s like. You guys. We are *not* far enough in A Feminism where we need to worry about men being marginalized. Not even in a metaphoric sense.

Ultimately, as we all know, this is a movie meant to sell toys, and here Barbie has done a whole lot of work and spent a lot of money and monologued a lot of words in order to make it look thoughtful enough to sell toys to people who weren’t buying them enough.

~

It kinda raises the question: Why in the world bother engaging with The System if you’re not going to have anything real to say about fixing the pinch points? Why wouldn’t you have the most glancing thought about how gender disparity is always about wealth and who is allowed to have it? What kind of opiate of the masses nonsense is “seeing you”?

That’s not a rhetorical question meant to make a point! I have an answer.

There’s nothing capitalism won’t monetize, and that includes criticism of itself. In fact, the media environment means there are more people engaging with media *intelligently* than ever, and folks can’t be assuaged as easily by the same ol, same ol. You gotta get to the next level. If the people love meta material analyzing capitalism, then they will surely love to buy meta material criticizing capitalism. It’s just not allowed to have any real teeth.

Barbie really had critics *frothing* over its level of self-aware meta, which means Mattel and Gerwig hit the sweet spot perfectly.

As my sibling said, the snake eats its tail.

~

The conclusion that I arrived at is that Barbie is deeply nihilistic.

There is nothing better than this, you see. You can live in the toy land and pretend everything is fine, or you can grow old and die. Either way, we see you! We see your struggles. We see you, and that is it. Beginning, middle, end.

Ideas and brands live forever.

Barbie’s got blinders on, and it loves it that way. Don’t you? Gosh, I should really pull my old Totally Hair Barbie out of the attic. I’d love to buy a Weird Barbie. I’ll grab one on my way home from the gyno.

~

You’ll note I still gave the movie three stars, even though I’ve written *cough cough* number of words criticizing it. Three stars is pretty warm tbh, considering that the movie is in opposition with my personal values in many ways and I found its pacing uneven.

It’s got some really funny moments. Ken’s song is genuinely good. I would never complain about the art direction. There are so many performances I adore, like President Barbie. I am smitten with the transition between worlds forever. Can I do it a few times?

Plus, Alan is my favorite queer inclusion in the movie. A male doll wearing the pink jumpsuit and conspiring with the Barbies?

There’s real heart to this, even if the heart exists in a bleak wasteland, and that’s kinda relatable.

Gerwig has stated (to paraphrase her) that she really fully plans on succeeding in The Man’s World, and Barbie not only furthers that goal for her, but also serves as another stepping stone in the Margot Robbie Girlboss Turns Big IP Feminist Journey. Which is…interesting? Deeply unappealing to me but kind of compelling? I guess what I’m saying is, I’d still rather have another Greta Gerwig movie to chew over, frowny-faced, than a Zack Snyder movie. Hashtag girlboss.

But I find the limitations of Barbie so bleak, it was actively unpleasant to watch sometimes. Like I think they would have made this movie on Ferenginar without feeling bad about anything, you know? (If you don’t know what I mean, it’s a Star Trek reference. I’m sorry.) Realizing that the misery wasn’t really going to go anywhere just made it feel grim. It felt self-conscious more than self-aware. They didn’t even show Barbie and America Ferrera kissing, and there were *so* many opportunities.

There’s a lotta cheap representation, but at least this one was well-made cheap representation that actually paid marginalized actors to depict their own representation.

There’s a lot of value in being a movie worth discussing.

So as a movie-lover, it’s not a movie I want (my takeaway was unpleasant), but I think it holds an interesting place as a mirror reflecting the time-and-place of America in 2023, and it’s interesting to me as a reviewer (I love analyzing!). I appreciate seeing something made with effort and intent. I’m probably never going to watch it again.

(image credit: Warner Bros. Pictures)