I'm a man approaching his 50's, and I was nothing but intrigued by the furore and energy this movie had created in the media and amongst people who had watched it. In some context I played with Barbie; this was only as my ActionMan crashed his car into the living room of the three-storey Barbie house my sister had in our hallway. An ActionMan that then went up-and-down in the elevator -stuck to the side of the house - as many times as possible, and then emptied the fridge and followed his superb entrance (much to my sister's dismay) with a drip-drip shower in the bathroom, with that red button you had to pump like crazy to get the water out of it.

I had no expectations at all watching this movie, in-fact, I had the overwhelming feeling it would amount to nothing more than a neat marketing freight-train to introduce a 'Barbie' lost generation to the power of the lost and forgotten Barbie. A gross thing grossing mega-sales, a PowerPoint worthy line-graph causing the eyebrows of even the most stoic of CEOs to nudge upward in a seemingly interested fashion. I certainly wasn't wearing a pink tutu, neither was my wife, or anyone around me as I watched it. My kids have never played with Barbie, or ActionMan, but that doesn't Mattel at all. So, I settled in (not crashing my car into the house this time!) for something, for whatever, for the ride...

Within minutes, I was laughing by the play like scenery. By the houses with missing walls and rooves (so the kids can get their hands in to move the dolls around). By "Beach Ken", because that's what it says on the box. The way the car spins during a crash; I have repeated this overblown and utterly unrealistic motion so many times myself, with those very same dolls (+ActionMan)! I was immediately drawn in, especially by the notion that something so colourful and playful -and often downright silly- can end with the achingly beautiful title song sung by Billy Eilish, if anyone can break our hearts she can, breathtaking. And it ended in perfection, I had tears streaming into my BIG MANLY BEARD.

I won't spoil anything, because in truth I don't think I can. The script is possibly one of the cleverest and most under-handed I have encountered in a long time, a few comparators spring to mind (Blazing-Saddles, Team America). I found myself reeling from the rapid-fire finger-pointing ideology it blithely shoots from the lip. I will have to watch it multiple times to fully absorb the overwhelming wealth of thought provocation it slams into every single scene and line.

It describes in consummate detail a world filled with inequality. To say this movie is a feminist soapbox is wholly misinterpreted, the film painfully forces both women and men onto their respective soapboxes and makes them shout about it, whether they are happy about the societal expectation placed upon them to do this. It portrays women who want to be something alongside those who just want to be themselves, and those men who want to be something alongside those who just want to be themselves (and in both, the idea that people are forced by image and rule to wear clothes they don't fit into, or even like). In a world where men are increasingly using cosmetics as much as women do, it juxtaposes the idea that sex has nothing to do with what we want to do with our lives. Whether you are a man or woman, you can do anything you want, be whoever you want to be. Women and men should be allowed to exist as they see themselves, as human beings. Each sharing and accepting this right of existence with one another. Forget the media, the expectation, overwhelming opinion, ingrained rule, or impressed oppression.

Be whoever YOU want to be...

DON'T LET ANYONE MAKE YOU THINK YOU CAN'T BE WHAT YOU WANT BE...