Barbie: Mermaid Power (2022)
On March 23, 2024 by CrescentBarbie: Mermaid Power acts as a belated sequel to Dolphin Magic. Unfortunately, the movie fails to capture anything that made its predecessor shine, resulting in a bland movie that barely feels like a sequel. Also, it feels a little like knockoff Avatar: The Last Airbender. That’s something too.
Story
In Mermaid Power, the two Barbies and Malibu’s sisters are all on a boat trip to do an ocean cleanup. While out, they are called upon by Malibu’s old friend Isla from Dolphin Magic. Once they arrive in the underwater city of Pacifica, Malibu and Brooklyn are drawn into a competition to find the Power Keeper, the strongest mermaid of all, discovering their own magical abilities along the way.
This movie sounds like it should be interesting on paper, but in practice, it feels very dry. The movie only lasts an hour, but it feels much longer than that, and I found myself checking the progress bar many times over the course of the film. The story doesn’t take any particularly interesting or engaging twists, and everything happens almost entirely as you would expect it. The twist with Malibu not being the Power Keeper but instead Aquaryah holding that position was interesting, but there’s not much to the movie otherwise.
The main storyline of finding the Power Keeper feels like it takes way too long to get going too. The story sets this up as the point from the start, but it isn’t until over the halfway point in the movie that this actually happens. It leaves the pacing lopsided and wanting more, and the movie doesn’t do much to fill in that blank space. It’s hard to keep your attention on the story when it feels like so much of it is spent on nothing of substance.
The story of Mermaid Power is incredibly generic, and the poor pacing doesn’t do it any favors.
Story: 4/10
Characters
The characters of Mermaid Power are for the most part pretty static. Skipper, Stacie, and Chelsea are all along for the ride, but they don’t do all that much. Malibu and Brooklyn get a bit more attention, but neither one goes through a specific character arc. They feel like the same characters they started off as. The most criminal offender here though is Isla. She was a real standout character in Dolphin Magic who I absolutely adored, but she’s been shaved down to nothing for this movie. She barely does anything to contribute to the story, and most of her charm is gone. She just feels hollow.
The new characters aren’t all that much better. Finn and Sareena at least get character arcs after bullying a child in the opening scenes of the movie, but it doesn’t feel like enough after how cruel they were to Aquaryah. Even worse is Talleigha who was leading the bullying against a girl who can’t be older than eight. She never gets an arc either, instead just fading into the background when the climax of the movie hits. There’s not much to her, and what is there isn’t likable or fun at all.
Marlo returns as the antagonist of this movie, but there’s not much to her. She was fun for how campy she was in the previous film, but here, she just comes off as desperate. I had nowhere near as much fun with her this time around, and she gets much less attention and screen time too. She’s a disappointing antagonist, and Talleigha feels like the far greater threat despite not being an actual villain.
The only standout character here is Aquaryah who I actually think is nice. It’s different to see a younger character end up with so much of the spotlight, something we don’t see much outside of Lost Birthday or Twelve Dancing Princesses. Aquaryah doesn’t really go through much of an arc either, but she comes into her own in her own way, and that’s still nice to see. I really like the fact that she’s a disabled main character too. It’s refreshing and a nice bit of diversity you don’t usually see in children’s media, and the fact that she wound up being the Power Keeper is great. It’s important representation for disabled kids, and I’m really glad it’s here. Still, Aquaryah being a good character isn’t enough to drag the rest of the cast out of their disappointing and dry situation.
Much of the cast is very static, and the one interesting character isn’t enough to carry the story.
Characters: 4/10
World Building
The world building of Mermaid Power is… Confusing. It retroactively ruins Dolphin Magic by acting like a sequel to that movie but not acknowledging anything that happened in Dolphin Magic aside from Isla being around. The idea of elemental mermaids feels weird since it was never brought up before, and the gemstone dolphins are completely absent from this movie too. It feels like this movie wasn’t meant to be a sequel only to be decided to be one late in development.
As for what this movie does have on its own, the elemental idea is very dry and boring. I said before that it feels like a knockoff of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the elemental magic is largely why. I know there are other stories that have elemental powers like this, but Avatar really feels like the best comparison. There’s one person with all of the elements, and there are competitions to find them… But some mermaids undergo a transformation to settle on their element, and they’re still seen using other elements after that. Aquaryah says everyone has all elements until one sticks, but it seems like that’s not entirely true after all. As a side note, the fact that the magic is called ‘powers’ here really adds to the generic feel of it all. Just say magic. It’s okay to just say magic.
If the mermaids have powers, then what age do they have to be for them to show up? The fact that Finn, Sareena, and Talleigha don’t have theirs yet implies that the mermaids need to be teens for the magic to stick… But Stacie, Chelsea, and Aquaryah are all kids when theirs show up. So what’s the story there? Also, if the golden pearl from the beginning of the movie decides on eight mermaids to compete to be the Power Keeper, does that mean it wasn’t ever set in stone? If it wasn’t already predetermined, then why did things play out the way they did? How is the Power Keeper decided on? And most importantly, why wasn’t Aquaryah pulled into the competition if she was Power Keeper all along like Malibu implies at the end of the movie? It’s a jumbled mess that makes no sense, and thinking about it felt like more trouble than it was worth.
The world building of Mermaid Power is incoherent at best and completely distracting at worst, making the movie much harder to follow than it should be.
World Building: 2/10
Themes
This movie doesn’t have a message after the credits to say what the moral is, so I’m just going to have to guess at one. A main idea of the movie that stuck out to me was “the real superpower was inside you all along.” This feels like it works well enough with Aquaryah being the Power Keeper, but again, this feeds into my world building questions. The theme is a good one, and it goes beyond the idea of just magic making people special, but it runs into trouble when set next to other aspects of the movie. So while this message is good on paper, the movie doesn’t exactly agree with it as much as it should.
Themes: 4/10
Production
Mermaid Power is a musical… For some reason. I wish I could tell you what any one song in this movie was trying to say, but I’ve got nothing. The songs are very front loaded, and the back half of the movie barely has any. The songs all sound way too similar too, and it’s impossible to tell them apart. The music doesn’t really add anything to the story. It just feels like the action has to stop for the sake of the song before things can get started again.
The animation of this movie is… Fine. I guess. The mermaid dance movements are very jerky though, and they don’t seem to settle as well as they should. The movie looks nice enough most of the time, but there are a few quirks that make it difficult to call great. For example, a lot of the characters’ eye colors are way too bright and stand out as being almost distracting. Isla is the best example of this. Her eyes are way greener than they were in Dolphin Magic, and it’s hard to focus on anything she says when her eyes are this strange electric green color all the time.
The voice acting of this movie isn’t great, but I feel like that’s not helped by the fact that the script isn’t great either. The script feels very juvenile and hand holdy. I know that’s something that comes with children’s media a lot of the time, but previous Barbie movies didn’t feel quite like this and still aimed themselves at children. The voice acting feels strange because of the script a lot of the time. Aquaryah is the one exception to this. She sounds stilted and awkward all the time, and her voice can be a bit distracting because of it.
There’s one other problem with the voice acting that I need to point out though, and that’s the strange repetition of empty phrases. The characters say “wow,” “cool,” “ooooh,” and other similar phrases a lot. They’re clearly impressed with their surroundings, but there are other ways of going about it than saying this sort of thing over and over. It feels like a quarter of the dialogue spoken in general near the start of the movie. It’s very distracting, and I don’t like it at all.
The production of Mermaid Power struggles in terms of music and voice acting, but the animation balances it out… Mostly.
Production: 3.5/10
Overall
Barbie: Mermaid Power is a lackluster sequel that forgets everything that made the first movie so strong. Between a generic story and confusing world building, the movie struggles to find its footing… Or swimming, I suppose. One great character can’t save this movie from being mediocre, and at times, outright frustrating.
Overall: 3.5/10
Silly Superlative: Barbie movie with the most uses of “wow,” “awesome,” “cool,” etc.
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