Barbie and the Secret Door (2014)
On November 15, 2023 by CrescentBarbie made a return to musicals with Barbie and the Secret Door. Unfortunately, this film is not here to recapture the nostalgic magic of older movies… It ultimately amounts to a boring, slow, drawn-out waste of time.
Story
Secret Door follows Alexa, a shy bookworm princess who struggles with self-confidence. When she is given a book by her grandmother, Alexa finds herself in a world of magic, fairies, and mermaids. With her new friends, Nori and Romy, Alexa must defeat the evil Malucia and return the magic she has stolen from the world’s residents.
The story here is a simple one. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing since simple stories can be very interesting when you do something innovative with them… But Secret Door does nothing interesting with its premise. The story feels slow and drawn out, and half the time, you’re just waiting around for the next thing to happen. The characters don’t do much to take action against Malucia. They’re standing around and talking about doing something until the plot happens to them. Half of the movie feels like padding to the run time rather than being there for a reason. It’s not fun to watch. I found myself checking the progress bar on this movie’s run time a lot. It’s just not fun to watch.
Secret Door has a very bland story that does nothing interesting with its run time.
Story: .5/10
Characters
Secret Door follows three primary characters: Alexa, Nori, and Romy. Out of the trio, Alexa is the only one with a character arc to speak of. She learns to stand up for herself and be more confident… But the change of heart is so sudden that it doesn’t feel earned. Alexa isn’t a fun character to watch, and her lack of interest spirals out to the other characters. Nori and Romy are very one note, each having a single character trait of ‘blunt’ and ‘air-headed’ that drives them through the story. None of the protagonists are interesting, and I didn’t enjoy following any of them.
Malucia is even worse though. I hated every time she was on the screen. As a villain, she has no stage presence. Half the time, she’s just whining or screaming, and neither one of those is a good option here. Her minions are annoying, her goals are boring, and she’s every bit as frustrating to watch as you would expect a ten-year-old antagonist to be. Malucia just isn’t a good character, and I didn’t want to have to deal with her.
The rest of the characters don’t do anything for me either. The prince is so boring and around for so little time that I forgot his name. Alexa’s friends are uninteresting and one note. The rest of the background characters in the modern kingdom are flat too. There’s just nothing to latch onto here.
Secret Door touts a very one note cast that does next to nothing with itself or each other.
Characters: .5/10
World Building
The setting of Secret Door is the magical land of Zinnia. I admittedly didn’t know it was called until I looked it up though. The movie doesn’t really say the world’s name much… But other parts of the universe are even worse at being interesting. The magic system is very poorly defined, and the idea of ‘magic’ in general is so loose and generic that it’s difficult to figure out what it means half the time. Mermaids and fairies have magic enough to be mermaids and fairies, but they can’t cast spells. Barely anyone can cast spells even though everyone is magical… So what’s the difference?
Don’t even get me started on the whole ‘princesses have magic’ thing. It feels so contrived. What about princesses are so special that they get magic? Why is Malucia the exception? Is this just a way to make Alexa the protagonist? Probably so. There’s not even an inventive reason for Alexa to be the hero of the story. If the plot barely has a reason for her to care, then why should I?
The world’s general whimsical features feel like they’re just hand waved half the time. The cast hides out in a field that is hidden by magic, but this is never described in detail. Unicorns exist, but they don’t do much of anything. All they really do is frustrate me when they’re on the screen. The creatures don’t have any sense of unity or commonality between them. It feels like it all exists for the sake of convenience rather than as a way of contributing to a greater world. It’s not fun to see, and I certainly wasn’t interested in this universe at all while watching.
The world building of the regular kingdom isn’t much better. The nation is very generic and doesn’t have much to it. The modern kingdom Alexa is from just seems to exist to show that she’s shy. There’s nothing of interest here, and what is there feels so inconsistent that it’s frustrating.
The world building of Secret Door is nonexistent at best or obnoxious at worst. The setting isn’t interesting, and the movie doesn’t try to change your mind about that either.
World Building: 0/10
Themes
The theme of Secret Door is that you never know what you can do until you try. The theme works well enough, but it’s difficult to really give it that much credit when the rest of the story is executed so poorly. This theme is meant to interconnect with Alexa’s arc, but it’s so rushed and forced that the theme doesn’t feel like it works as well as it should. The theme is decent, but it’s nothing special and is bogged down by the other poor parts of the movie.
Theme: 2.5/10
Production
Going into Secret Door, I had high hopes for the animation. In general, the models look fine… For the normal adults. The creatures all look off, and the unicorns are unsettling to watch. This movie leans very heavily into dramatic, over the top facial expressions, and none of them look good. Malucia in particular is just unpleasant to have on the screen.
There are other problems with the production aside from just the models though. For example, Secret Door has a really bad problem with its color palette. The world of Zinnia is colored with a full rainbow aside from green. The world is very unpleasant to look at with a lot of clashing colors. The colors of Alexa’s outfits don’t look great on her either, and her hair is so washed out that it’s difficult to see where it begins throughout most of the movie.
The dancing animation here is also far from great. The movements during the musical numbers are disjointed and unpleasant to watch. The character design being generally poor doesn’t help either. The only design I really enjoyed here was Romy, but aside from her, everyone either looks generic or so overwhelmed with different colors that they end up tough to look at. Malucia is the greatest offender. Why does she need that many colors? I don’t know where I’m supposed to look.
Somehow, the music is even worse. Normally, a Barbie movie being a musical is a point in its favor. I love a good Barbie musical… But Secret Door barely feels like it qualifies as a musical. It has four songs, and it plays them all in the first half hour. After that, it just repeats those songs over and over. There isn’t a single new song after the thirty minute mark. The songs all being awful doesn’t help. I hated listening to those songs once. Why are you putting me through it again? Just make it stop already!
The production of Secret Door is messy in a lot of ways, but its disjointed color scheme and bad songs are the worst offenders.
Production: 1/10
Overall
Barbie and the Secret Door is one of the weakest Barbie movies by far. It tries to do something new and innovative, but it falls short in every way. I don’t enjoy this movie at all, and I can’t recommend it to anyone. Just watch another Barbie movie. I promise you’ll have a better time.
Overall: .9/10
Silly Superlative: Barbie movie with the least green
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