I finally plucked up the courage and wore my usual all black clothes as I braved the hordes of pink wearing women to watch Barbie the latest release from director Great Gerwig. The film opens with a voice over from Helen Mirren telling us how Barbie changed the doll business, no longer did young girls just have dolls that were encouraging them to stay in the kitchen now they had barbie who could have any career with the change of an outfit. Straight away this should tell you about the gender politics of this film but more on that later. We then cut to Barbieland where everything is plastic and fantastic that is until one day Barbie out loud says do you ever think about death? (Is there not a therapist barbie?). From there starts an adventure where Barbie and Ken travel to the real world, barbie in search of her owner to find the source of her new found depressive thoughts and Ken well in search of Barbies heart.

This film is a hard one to unpick as it's just chaos, there's so much going on all the time, so much so that the slower moments act as nice breathers for the audience. There's dance sequences, action sequences, jokes, gender politics and somewhere in here there's the typical Barbie plot that you might presume this film would have but it's covered with loads of other stuff. The thing I'm most torn on with this film is that I want to praise Gerwig for creating a Barbie film that no one would have predicted while at the same time I can't help wondering if I personally would have enjoyed it more had it been more generic. I'm always talking about how films should be more creative and yet this is the question this film has me asking myself. It's just different and it definitely isn't a kids film, a young girl sat a couple of rows behind me had to keep asking her mum what was going on and I don't blame her as if I was 6,7,8 years old I wouldn't have had a clue. This film seems to be aimed at women Greta's age which is a surprise to me as I thought she was in her late twenties for some reason but you can Google her actual age if you wish to know. Now I know her actual age some of the more older niche references to bands and films etc make more sense and I think it's women that are a similar age to her that she's trying to appeal to here.

That brings me onto the films central theming which is its gender politics. It's a film that's about women and for women and in that it does a great job, I think for its target audience it could be an impactful and empowering piece of art. That being said however if you're a pre teen girl or a man you might not get the full emotional impact of this film and I feel that's a bit of a missed opportunity. If this film had eased up on the gender politics at times I think it could have appealed to a wider audience and in doing so may have been able to spread the films message further but I think it's largely ended up falling on death ears to those who aren't in its target audience. It's a shame because the film has an important message to share about equality but it's one that men need to get onboard with as much as women to bring about any real change.

By the way, for a film that's supposed to be telling women to be who they are and challenge the patriarchy why has a trend been created for women to wear pink to this film considering it's one of the most commonly associated colours with women?

Overall I'm not the target audience for this film but I had a good time nonetheless, it's not one I'll be hurrying back too with haste though.