Barbie: Skipper and the Big Babysitting Adventure (2023)
On August 20, 2024 by CrescentBarbie: Skipper and the Big Babysitting Adventure is the second of three movies following the adventures of Barbie’s sisters. This time, the focus is all on Skipper for her summertime babysitting business… Which isn’t what the movie is actually about. Huh. I didn’t see that one coming.
Story
The story for Big Babysitting Adventure is a bit… Strange. Skipper begins the summer ready to work on her babysitting business with her friends, but when both of them end up leaving for the summer, she’s on her own. After her babysitting business gets horrible reviews because she’s alone, Skipper ends up with a job at a water park. This eventually leads to her getting another shot at babysitting, and she looks after a few kids even when they are taken far from the water park by unexpected circumstances.
The pacing in this movie is probably the strangest part about the story. Babysitting is mentioned in the title, but there’s a long stretch in the middle where no babysitting happens at all. It’s odd, and it feels a bit strange given the title and focus of the movie. I understand why this conflict exists, but it feels like a roundabout way of reaching the eventual plot.
The story also involves a lot of suspension of disbelief, even more than usual for a Barbie movie. This movie sets itself in the modern age, but there are a lot of strange, unexpected things that happen seemingly just for the sake of it. The last twenty minutes are really weird. I had fun with it, but I can see how others would get frustrated with it if they had expected something a bit more grounded.
The story has its highs and lows, but I ultimately found it to be a fun time. It’s nothing super engaging, but it can be a good time if you’re willing to put your thoughts on reality and the pacing aside.
Story: 4/10
Characters
This movie revolves around Skipper, but she actually gets very little development over the course of it. She starts and finishes the movie much the same character. Even though Skipper makes the most of bad circumstances and proves herself very responsible, it’s nothing we didn’t already know from this movie or the previous titles that featured her.
If anything, the greatest character arc here goes to Tammy, the antagonist and Skipper’s rival for a lot of the movie. Tammy starts out very spoiled, but she learns to rely on Skipper by the end of the movie. It’s a nice story to follow, but it has less weight for people like me who are watching this movie on its own. Tammy is clearly a character from the Barbie show that was releasing at the time, and I imagine her arc would have had more weight to fans of that. Judging it on its own though, I found it nice enough.
There are other characters that make up Skipper’s friend group and the children she watches. Joy, Anna, and Cheri are fine enough friend characters, but they don’t add much to the plot. In fact, their scenes feel a bit like distractions from the babysitting plot of the movie near the middle. None of them really goes through a major arc, and the same applies to the children. Aside from Tammy, there’s really not much character development to speak of.
The characters are nice enough, but only one of them gets development over the course of the story, and it unfortunately isn’t our main heroine.
Characters: 4/10
World Building
The world building of this movie is fine if nothing else. It mostly takes place in a water park or on the gaming bus. There’s no much to speak of in terms of interest developed in either location, but they’re still fun places for the story to be. I enjoyed this setting a lot more than the other movies that came out around its time in part because of how different it was. We don’t really get many details about the world, but it’s a fun enough setting to choose.
I don’t really have much else to say about the world building. There’s not much to go off here, and the world doesn’t get all that much focus. This movie doesn’t expand upon settings we already know, and as such, it’s just kind of… There. It’s harmless, but I can’t really say much more than that.
The world building is fine, but there’s not much of note to comment on here.
World Building: 4/10
Themes
To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what the theme of this movie is. There’s not really a great lesson to learn here. Is it about giving people a chance? That feels like it fits the best… But it’s still kind of hard to say Skipper learned anything from this experience. Tammy’s change of heart was the reason for Skipper being given another chance, but I suppose Skipper gave Tammy a chance for that to happen. I guess that works? It’s still not a great theme nor is it communicated very well, but it’s something, I suppose. I’ve seen worse.
Themes: 3/10
Production
Big Babysitting Adventure has a lot of interesting and fun production aspects. The first thing I noticed was the animation in this movie. It’s a lot smoother than other modern Barbie movies made for Netflix, and I enjoyed it more than I expected. The character designs–particularly for Stacie and Chelsea–tended to be very busy though and distracted quite a bit in the scenes they were in. Since they didn’t show up much though, it wasn’t much of a problem.
I absolutely loved the animated segments throughout the movie that were meant to resemble anime. I had a lot of fun with them, and the style meshes very well with Skipper’s personality. I only wish we got to see more of them because of how enjoyable they are. The second half of the movie is missing out on them, and I wish that wasn’t the case.
I appreciated this movie for not bloating its runtime with songs that add little to the story. This is a problem I have with both Mermaid Power and Stacie to the Rescue, both of which came out around the same time as this movie. Big Babysitting Adventure only has two songs in comparison to the five plus of those two movies, and I’m very glad for that. The songs are nice too, and they’re well-sung even if they’re not particularly memorable.
I also think the voice acting in this movie is a step up from its contemporaries. The acting feels a lot less stilted than other movies that released around the same time. Maybe that’s because the script is better. I’m not sure, but the voices are a lot nicer on the ears than some of the other movies from Netflix.
My only issue here is with Skipper and Tammy. These two have the same voice actor, and since they do the most talking out of anyone in the movie… Yeah, you can see how that might get confusing. I don’t blame the voice actress, Kirsten Day, for this at all. I know this movie is a spin-off of an existing Barbie show. I can only imagine that Day was decided to be the voice actor for both Skipper and Tammy without anyone knowing those two would interact as much as they do in this movie. I understand why it is the way that it is, but it’s still a bit confusing.
The animation of Big Babysitting Adventure is nice, and the songs and voice acting are nice even if each aspect of production has a few shortcomings.
Production: 6/10
Overall
Barbie: Skipper and the Big Babysitting Adventure is a somewhat lopsided movie that heavily encourages suspension of disbelief. The pacing is odd, but if you can put that aside, it can be a fun time for those looking to indulge in something whimsical and strange. It has its highs and lows, but it is easily my favorite of the three sister-centric movies.
Overall: 4.2/10
Silly Superlative: Barbie movie with the most references to the stock market
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