Celestine, here it is, the moment you've been waiting for, and it's fucking long because I can't give a short review.
So, unlike some people, I did not get to watch a lot of Barbie movies.
Movie picking was done by all of the kids and I can assure you that the males in my family did not want to watch Barbie in the princess factory, alright?
The few that I watched were watched at my friend's places and I always found them okay but I was never super into them.
So Barbie is neither nostalgic nor in my age group, but seeing as though the live action Barbie is coming out, I thought "why not catch up on all those badly animated movies I missed out on?"
So, welcome everyone to Barbie Princess charm school, or as I like to call it
Barbie gem class
Get your blonde wig situated on your head and shove in your blue eye contacts, because this is going to be a willllddd ride! And by wild ride I mean like if Ya'll ever watched the Wild Thornberry's that's what it's gonna be like.
So, we start this Barbie movie off with a scene in which our main character (who I assumed was named Barbie but is actually named Blair) is setting up her average daily job at a café. This montage is accompanied by this beautiful song sung by absolutely no-one that pretty much gives away the whole fucking plot.
All you need to hear is, "You can tell she's a princess" and then you can leave your popcorn and frozen Fanta and hightail it out of the cinema because there is just nothing more to know about the plot, orrrrr you can stay with the rest of the juvenile population in the cinema and be subjected to retinal torture.
Your choice.
Anyway, after almost two minutes of suffering through the montage, we finally get to see Blair leave her job and make her way home. On the way we can see that my girl almost lives in what looks to be downtown GTA city, and so here we can assume that she is very poor. Much sadness, and boohoo.
At home we first meet Blair's younger sister, Emily. This little munchkin has unlimited access to the TV and it's not doing so good for her brain development. Now, something we need to know about Emily is that she's obsessed with royalty. And who wouldn't be? I mean, doesn't the idea of someone controlling your every move and someone else wanting to kill you to steal your place sound so appealing?
Now, Blair and Emily have a very close and cute bond. Blair is a very involved elder sister, which is exactly what I wanted as a kid but never got fuck you barbie, fuck you right in your blondeness!
Anyway, that's not important-
So after a little bit of swinging around like sugar infused toddlers, Emily says to Blair, "yo here's your crown dawg" and Blair laughs like, "Hell nah dawg I ain't got no crown I ain't no damn princess," and Emily's like, "Yo everyone's a princess some just got deyselves some shiny ass crowns that's it."
And this sets somewhat of a premonition for the upcoming plot.
After this little convo we're introduced to another character – Blair and Emily's mum. We can tell from the dialogue between the two girls that their mother is quite sick. Blair takes this upon her shoulders like the good eldest daughter she is and tells Emily that she will just have to keep working her ass of in order to make everything better.
Following that little conversation we see some show or something pop up on their 1990's television screen about some lottery that's worse than any lottery you've ever seen because the reward is getting a place in the palace as some lady in waiting or something.
Something I'd like to point out here is the castle,
Like, who built this?
Who thought that this-
Was okay?
Some motherfucker thought hey lets mix Disney princess castle with big sugar daddy penthouse. I'm about 90% sure they were high and drugged all the construction workers because nobody thinks this is beautiful, this is exactly the reason why aliens refuse to visit earth.
And then we cut to my favorite character, she's supposed to be named Alexandria something something but I will be naming her, 'castle mama' so that I do not have to think too hard and she is a very good looking character, and she has a very formal accent which I think I may have heard in about ninety other characters, but oh well, she is special.
Okay so pretty much what castle mama says is that the school is slowly running out of students and probably funding so they pretend to be kind to poor kids and give them a scholarship so that they can be forced into a life of servitude. Everyone in the crowd screams and woohoos this idea like it's super magical so yeah, that's fine I guess.
I think someone should perhaps specify to them that in the unlikely chance they are picked to be the lady in waiting or whatever that that doesn't mean they'll be the princess because I think ninety percent of these women are confused about that-
Anyway, this is where we meet the main antagonists for the story, Delancy Devin and her mother, Dame Devin. Now, don't be upset if you're confused as to who is who because I was too. Look, I know they're mother and daughter but the animators practically copy and pasted the same character into different clothing. If anything I'd like to see these two reenact princess and the popstar because the resemblance is way more than enough to get away with.
Now, you can see from the start that Dame Devin practically rules over her daughter and wants her daughter to become princess of Gardenia (The country?) So she can rule through her daughter. Delancy on the other hand seems to want something more than this provincial life.
Delancy is chosen to pick out a card in the lottery for 'who's gonna be this school's new victim' and rather apathetically calls out Blair's name. This is followed by Blair absolutely losing her mind in surprise and Emily admitting that without adult supervision she registered her adult sister into a lottery that her sister did not consent to be in and then proceeds to dance around like it was nothing.
Now I'm not one to tell parents how to raise their kids, but if that was my kid:
The best thing about it is that Blair looks to her mother to stop the small and annoying child and her mother just looks at her like, "Haha what? Did you think I was going to do something? You're on your own kiddo."
What's also amazing is that the palace guards rock up within at least ten seconds to pick Blair up. I'm assuming they didn't have to come all the way from the castle to the downtown and were just kind of on standby, waiting for someone to get picked so they could pick them up within ten seconds?
Also this guard is tripping because he suddenly turned Scottish halfway through his visit which is just normal for these guards I guess-
Anyway, theres a little back and forth between Blair and her mum and Emily because Blairs like
"I'm not a princess I'm just a barista" and defends the fact that she has a literal job that she cannot leave which is an amazingly good point.
This however is brushed over by Emily and her mother, who convince her that if she's chosen for lady in waiting that she could make big ching chings and so of course she's going go.
So ya'll might think that Blair and the recently converted Scottish guard would drive back to the castle in a limo or something but you are terribly wrong. They end up going in a carriage pulled by a horse whose hair looks like it's a melted candy cane stuck to the horse's head. This carriage is so nauseatingly bright purple that I find myself needing sunglasses to shield my retinas from it's damage.
Now, I know this movie was meant for kids, but taking a carriage instead of a car for a long trip is a big fucking mistake, and a very uncomfortable one at that. As someone who has ridden in a horse drawn carriage before I can tell you that there is little to no suspension and therefore every rock you ride over feels like it's mount Everest's little cousin. Your motion sickness would be on high alert because the carriage jiggles with every movement made and seating can only be comfortable for so long.
In shorter words, bad idea.
After an awful drive, Blair and her scottish guard pull up at the shining gates of heaven....is what I would say if I was cruel, which I am.
No, they pull up at the gates of Barbie princess hell school. Inside, Blair is greeted by the sight of chattering girls and large flying insects that sparkle. She is then mauled by a dog that sounds like it was voiced by a furry and as she looks into what I can only describe is the ugliest animated dog face in history; she finds out that his name is Prince and not Mama's lil monster.
Anyway, Castle mama finds her on the floor with the dog and decides to take her around the castle school place and craps on about the school and things nobody cared about. Blair just "Wows" and "Ohhs" through this entire segment.
Anyway, at the locker with castle mama, Blair is greeted with a cupcake to the boob by Grace, a human fly. Grace is the species that serves the people that serve the princess. She is what I call double homicide.
Anyway, Castle Mama walks away and leaves Blair to fend for herself with this squashable flying human. Grace just introduces her to a locker in which creates a place to change right in the middle of the school hall. Sounds great.
Delancy comes into the picture and picks on Blair for the simple reason of jealousy with her friend, Portia who likes to eat off the floor.
Magical changing sequeeennnceee
So in the next few sequences we see Blair meeting and greeting her roommates, Hadley and Isla, and doing a few lessons. Here we figure out that Blair must have been a terrible waiter because her sense of balance is like mine on skates and she seems to be the world's greatest fuck up. A lot of the class goers make this clear to Blair.
Now around this time we come to know of a big conspiracy that happened with the royal family. They died in a crash blar blar blar, and Princess Sofia, a baby at the time, was thought to have not died in the same crash. Blair tells her friends that she was left on her mother's door step and that Emily was also adopted. Now, at first I thought someone had been cheating but now I understand, thank you Blair.
Castle Mama just happened to listen into this conversation and so she feels bad for Blair and wants to make her into the best princess in the world and here is where I once again question Blair's ability as a waitress and even her ability to do the most simplest tasks possible. This montage is bought to us along with the song, "On top of the world," which is surprisingly not a bad song, for a barbie movie. It sounds like a song that you would listen to while high.
Now we cut to the scene in which the girls will dance with the prince guys from somewhere else and Delancy wants to dance with Prince Nikolas and forces Blair to trade spots with her.
Instead of Delancy getting Nikolas, however, he ends up with Blair.
Nick is the epitome of "you see one you see them all" he is what you can show to people who say all kpop idols look the same. With the literal same hair colour and eye colour as Blair, this borders on sweet home Alabama.
But, at least he's not as fucking hideous as this guy
From the twelve dancing daughters.
There was a reason why he made shoes and it's because he's supposed to be stepped on. That face was not meant to see the light of day.
Anyway, they do this horrific dance that I never want to see again and skipety skip skip Barbie and her roommates discover that their clothes have been torn and so they make new clothes that are in perfectly good condition despite the absolute rags they were made out of and um the Isla chick's clothes didn't even have matching colours to the materials in the original uniform but we're just going to try and brush over that.
So everyone is absolutely shocked with their clothes except for Castle Mama who's like, "I don't fucking care I'm tired of these bitches", and this is where they sneak around and find a picture of the royal family. Just by noticing that Blair and Princess Isabella share similarities in their looks which is a carbon copy of every barbie doll, and the fact that Blair was left on her mother's doorstep the same day as the royal families crash, the friends decide they're gonna claim that Blair is the princess, which ruins Dame Devin's plan of crowning her daughter. Delancy overhears this conversation because everyone in this school doesn't know how to keep to their fucking own business.
After this there is just this bundle of Dame Devin and the girls doing whatever the fuck cuz I didn't care, stealing shit idk. I swear the movie went spy barbie for a moment but I guess that's just a theme with this movie – just look at scottish guard.
After Delancy allows Blair to take the crown with very little evidence on her claim, Blair fucking starbursts into a magical princess outfit because clothes don't work normally in this movie either, Dame is taken away, Blair talks quirky I'm not like other girls, Delancy and Blair become friends, Nikolas was invited by someone that was not me and Emily and her Mum rock up.
Isla has zero taste in music and puts on this song that makes me wish my earphones were broken and everyone dances like maggots in a trash can.
So yeah, that's the end because no one else wants to tell you that after that Barbie went into midlife crisis because ruling kingdoms isn't fun and yeah.
So, what do I think about this movie?
Well, it's a kid's movie. I did like Delancy's character arc, and I liked Portia because we share the same braincell.
Blair is barbie with a different name, Nikolas is every ken ever, and they were very close to calling Emily, Ebony I can just feel it in my nuggets.
The dog was terrifying, the guard changed voice actors within one scene and Castle mama is probably the best character.
4 chickens out of 10 popcorn kernels.
So, should i do another barbie movie?