Barbie in Princess Power (2015)
On November 18, 2023 by CrescentBarbie in Princess Power is a new step for Barbie: a superhero movie. Something like this sounds like it could be a lot of fun… It’s a shame the film is shallow and offensive in countless ways.
Story
Princess Power details the adventures of Kara, a princess with overprotective parents. When she is kissed by a magical butterfly, Kara gains magical powers and becomes a superhero. With her new abilities, she begins to save her kingdom’s people from danger. Later on, Kara’s cousin, Corinne, gains powers as well, and the two are forced to resolve their rivalry to save the royal family from their wicked advisor.
When I say it in a few sentences, the story of Princess Power sounds interesting… But in practice, it’s really not. The movie is slow and dragged out, and it takes ages for anything to really happen. It might sound intriguing in theory, but in execution, it absolutely is not. There’s no substance to speak of here, something only accentuated by the lack of arcs for the characters. Plus, a lot of it just doesn’t make sense. That’s not how lava works. I feel like that should be obvious. The movie is awful at communicating necessary information too. If I hadn’t read a synopsis, I wouldn’t have known Corinne was Kara’s cousin. That’s a pretty crucial detail to leave out.
The story also requires the mention of my biggest problem with Princess Power: its misogyny. The movie frames itself as being all about girl power, but when you start to look closer, you can see all kinds of oddly misogynistic tropes. It feels like the writers tried to dumb down the story of Spiderman for younger girls, and it doesn’t work. Kara gets her powers through a butterfly’s kiss. She gets upset when her fashion is threatened. Everything about the story just feels misogynistic. It feels like the creators didn’t even take the movie seriously and were hoping kids wouldn’t either. It’s an insult to everyone involved.
Princess Power has a boring story at best and an outright misogynistic one at worst.
Story: .5/10
Characters
Starting off, Kara isn’t a fun protagonist. She doesn’t have any particularly interesting traits, and when she gets upset, I can’t help but feel that it’s justified. We should be rooting for her, but I was more frustrated by her than anything else. Corinne is just as obnoxious, and when the two make up in the end… I didn’t like it at all. They didn’t develop enough as people to justify something like that. They were being petty with each other the entire movie. They can’t just change with the flip of a coin and call it a day.
The rest of the cast isn’t much better. In fact, Baron is horrible as a villain. Not only is he uninteresting, but he feeds into a lot of really bad stereotypes (see the Production segment for more details). His motivations are shallow and lack any sense of intrigue. He’s not a fun character to watch, and he annoys more than he terrifies the protagonists and the audience.
Makayla and Madison are fine, I suppose. I don’t think about them much because they’re mostly there to be exposition machines, and when their exposition is no longer needed, they vanish. The king, queen, and younger princesses don’t do much either, and they don’t even fully make up with Kara in the end. They never resolve their differences in a way that feels satisfying. They’re just kind of… There.
Don’t even get me started on the sidekicks. None of them are interesting, and they just feel like screen time hogs. The worst offender of being a screen time hog though comes in the form of Wes, the movie’s love interest. He exposes Kara and is generally shallow and doesn’t do much of anything interesting. There’s just nothing to latch onto with a lot of this cast, and it only makes the problems in the story more glaring.
The characters in Princess Power are either boring or openly offensive.
Characters: .5/10
World Building
Princess Power doesn’t really have any world building to speak of. It takes place in the fictional land of Windemere, but we know next to nothing about the kingdom. Superheroes appear, but we don’t see much of the impact from that. There’s no history in the nation to really be aware of. I didn’t even know the main character’s birthday was approaching until it was already happening. This universe just isn’t well established.
But the butterfly is the worst part of it all. This is the story’s equivalent of the radioactive spider, but again, it feels shallow and a bit misogynistic. Why does the butterfly have lipstick? Why does the potion give people super powers in the first place? If a potion can give people powers, does magic exist in this world? If so, why does no one bring it up? The very premise of the movie asks more questions than it answers. I know there’s the argument of ignoring it since it’s just a kids movie, but I think kids deserve better than to be given shallow movies like this.
The world building of Princess Power is either nonexistent or confusing on countless levels.
World Building: 0/10
Themes
The moral of Princess Power is that you had the power to change the world all along… But is that really true? I mean, you could argue the point that it applies to the community garden, but that’s barely a plot point in the movie. The whole ‘real power was inside you all along’ idea feels really shallow here. Kara only starts saving people after getting her powers. The theme could apply if you squinted, but it feels haphazard and doesn’t fit cleanly at all.
Themes: 1/10
Production
Princess Power is a step down from the animation of movies that came out before it. The hair is overly animated, and it gets very distracting. Makayla and Madison’s hair is so bright that it distracts for other reasons. The shading and facial expressions all just feel ever so slightly off. The movie just isn’t as nice to look at as other past movies have been, and it’s really disappointing.
The greater problem comes in the form of the character designs. A lot of the designs are unpleasant to look at, but Baron von Ravendale, the antagonist, is outright an antisemitic stereotype. He claims he has true ownership over the kingdom and is dramatically evil while representing horrible propaganda used against Jewish people in the past. On top of that, Corinne is made out to be Kara’s rival… And her skin color is darker than the rest of the royal family. The racism isn’t subtle, and it’s horrible.
The voice acting is decent, I suppose, but it’s difficult to understand what’s being said half the time. The movie has horrible audio mixing, and the notably poor instrumentals often drown out the dialogue. The vocal tracks are even worse about this. It’s impossible to figure out where to set your volume while watching this movie. Nothing works for longer than a few minutes at once. The audio mixing and balancing is horrible. I can’t say it enough.
The production of Princess Power is a disaster from beginning to end between antisemitic stereotypes and horrible audio balancing.
Production: 0/10
Overall
Barbie in Princess Power is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination. Its boring story is bogged down by uninteresting characters and bigoted stereotypes. The dialogue is unintelligible half the time. Nothing here is any good. Do not watch this movie. You won’t have a fun time with it.
Overall: 0.4/10
Silly Superlative: Barbie movie with the most Rube Goldberg sequences
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