Barbie is a good movie. The visuals are nice to look at, the premise is quirky, the dialogues are often witty, it's somewhat self-aware, and even (some of) the songs are pretty great. It made me laugh, it made me smile, and that's great.

And yet... it's definitely not a great movie. From what I'd gathered, it's supposed to be a pointed satire that will quickly become a corner stone of gender equality. Instead, it's overly preachy, reductionist, occasionally fails to see the point, and only repeats a message that countless other movies have raised before in much more elaborate manners.

The largest problem, though, is the lack of a clear target audience. There are many series and movies that are primarily focused towards children but that can be appreciated by adults as well. Barbie certainly doesn't fit in this regime; I heavily doubt that many children will care about this heavy-handed discussion of an essential adult topic. And yet it is also a bit too silly to properly work as a movie that's targeted at adults.

If the movie had come out two decades ago, it would've been brave, and we would be more easily able to forgive it its many flaws. But this is 2023, where women's rights are actively backsliding in large parts of the world, and where the primary issue of gender equality is no longer man vs woman but binary vs pluralistic.

Nevertheless, Barbie is a fun movie. Parts of it are fantastic. It's much better than anything we could've expected from a Barbie movie. It just isn't the ultimate social critic it was portrayed as.