Barbie: Epic Road Trip (2022)
On January 31, 2024 by CrescentBarbie: Epic Road Trip is a first for Barbie, taking after the interactive DVD games of the 2000s. I appreciate the step in a new direction, but I really wish I could fast forward more than ten seconds at a time. You don’t realize how much of a deal breaker that is until you’re in too deep.
Story
The story of Epic Road Trip changes wildly depending on the choices you make over the course of the story. Malibu, Brooklyn, Skipper, and Ken are on a road trip from California to New York, and along the way, they need to drop off dogs as part of Skipper’s new app. The audience gets to choose between a scenic or express route, and you can change your viewing experience and length with the many choices along the way.
Since there’s so much to cover with this story, the audience is left to balance the friendships and relationships Barbie has with the other people on the trip. I felt a bit bad about the choices I had to make though; I didn’t want to disappoint anyone, but you have to make sacrifices for the story. It’s relatively low-stakes, but it still feels like a lot, and some of the choices can have a massive impact even if you don’t see it at first.
The story has six total endings and two different points that go back to an earlier part of the movie. I thought the story overall was fun, but it was a bit slow in pace for my liking. Watching all of the different versions of the movie takes two and a half hours total if you’re watching it with no breaks, but in practice, it takes much longer because of how much rewatching you need to do. That can definitely discourage people from wanting to see everything the story has to offer, and if you want to go for a completion style story, it can get a bit frustrating at times.
Epic Road Trip has a fun premise, but its pacing it slow, and seeing everything takes a longer time than it should.
Story: 4/10
Characters
The characters in Epic Road Trip are overall nice. I enjoy Malibu and Brooklyn’s dynamic as per usual, and Skipper is a lot of fun too. Ken is nice, and it’s sweet to see him and Malibu finally spark a relationship after having feelings for each other for so long.
The character arcs change depending on what routes you decide to take, but for the most part, the focus is on Malibu and Ken starting a relationship. Brooklyn and Skipper don’t really develop all that much, and they feel kind of flat when compared to Malibu and Ken. If you choose to not pursue a relationship with Ken, then it feels like no one really goes anywhere. It’s kind of disappointing how much time you spend only for the characters to not really give much in return. There are other movies where these characters are better and more entertaining to watch, and honestly, I would rather go there if I miss this cast.
The characters of Epic Road Trip are fine enough, but I struggle to enjoy them fully because of the medium holding back their character development.
Characters: 4/10
World Building
The world building of Epic Road Trip is… Interesting. For the most part, it feels realistic, but there are a few points with aliens and vampires that break that realism. It’s kind of hard to really feel like you have a grasp on the world when everything is prone to change in supernatural ways. The jokes about the supernatural are forecasted, but it still feels bizarre when you’re actually faced with it, especially with the way it drops you off earlier in the story.
I want to say that it’s easy to ignore these options and move in a different direction, but it comes up enough times to feel strange and hard to understand. A story that’s mostly realistic but breaks the world building every once in a while for a dip into the supernatural feels strange and a bit hard to get back into once it happens. It feels inconsistent, and I don’t like it much.
Aside from that, the world building is fine, but it’s admittedly a bit hard to understand because of how much it relies on other Barbie movies. In other cases, you can watch Barbie movies without issues even if they’re sequels. You’re filled in enough to know what’s going on, and you can pick up on everything new. In this case, there are a lot of references to other Barbie media to the point that it gets hard to keep track of. In order to fully understand this movie and the relationships at play, you need to watch two seasons of a television show and a few movies. It’s hard to get into if you don’t know what’s going on, and I imagine a lot of people wouldn’t know.
The world building of Epic Road Trip is inconsistent, and it references other material frequently enough to be almost hard to follow.
World Building: 3/10
Themes
This movie doesn’t present a theme at the end of the credits, so I have come up with one instead. The main theme of Epic Road Trip is about finding a happy medium between pursuing your career and personal life. I think the theme works very well with the medium of the story. You can take it in different directions depending on the interactive choices you select, and I think that’s interesting given the unique format of the story. You can get different mileage out of the story depending on what you pick, so I don’t know how much I can judge this category. It works at different levels depending on the circumstances.
Themes: 4/10
Production
Epic Road Trip is unique movie because of its format. The film is interactive, and you can choose all sorts of scenes depending on your preferences. There are twenty different choices in total, and for the most part, they’re all fun romps. They’re quaint, but there’s not all that much else to them, and the number of choices weighs down the pacing by a lot.
The production is unique, but I struggle to agree with it entirely. There’s one main problem that I think holds this movie back: the lack of a fast forward option. If you want to see all of the choices in this movie, you have to go through it six times for six different endings. This wouldn’t be a problem if you could fast forward or use scene select, but you are instead restricted to skipping ahead in ten second intervals. As I said before, the combined footage for all of the scenes and all of the choices is two and a half hours long. Skipping through a two and a half hour movie at ten second intervals just to see a new outcome is ridiculous. There’s no reason to not give a fast forward button. Just skip ahead until a choice and then stop the fast forward by force! Then the audience can make the choice and then see something new! It wouldn’t be hard!
While this sounds like a small issue, it’s a massive one in the long run. I saw a few endings of this movie, but I didn’t feel encouraged to see all of them because of how long it would take to get through them. Skipping in ten second intervals is unbearable for something this long, and the movie doesn’t let you skip when a choice is coming up or a scene is about to change. This turns any rewatches into massive slogs as you either sit through something you’ve already seen or try desperately to skip so you can get to something new. The fast forward you do get has lag too. You don’t realize how big of a problem this is until you’re in too late. It’s awful, and it wouldn’t get better without quality of life changes.
While I enjoy the idea of Epic Road Trip, I hate the lack of a fast forward button, and it really weighs down the rest of the production.
Production: 1/10
Overall
Barbie: Epic Road Trip is a unique story told in a unique format. While it works to the movie’s favor at times, it doesn’t work as well at other points, and it can interfere with your enjoyment of the movie. The story, characters, and presentation are fun, but the production leaves a lot to be desired, and it holds back the movie massively on repeat viewings.
Overall: 3.2/10
Silly Superlative: Barbie movie that takes monsters the most seriously
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