The Barbie Diaries (2006)
On October 16, 2023 by CrescentThe Barbie Diaries is the most experimental project in the Barbie cinematic universe. It has a unique animation style, radically different setting for the movies of its time, and follows a plot you wouldn’t expect. I find The Barbie Diaries to be a movie of extreme highs and notable lows, and the viewer’s opinion will vary based on the factors they are willing to overlook.
Story
Barbie and her friends are gearing up for their sophomore year of high school, and Barbie is determined to make something new of her life. She wants to be the anchor for the school’s news channel, but when that position is instead taken by her rival, Raquelle, Barbie tries to tackle it from a different angle. She decides to learn more about what makes popular kids popular, leading to strain in her other friendships and in her love life. In the end, Barbie realizes that her true friends were there for her all along, and she leaves behind the popular life to be with them.
I enjoyed the story of The Barbie Diaries a lot more than I expected to. This movie captivated me from the start with its interesting high school storyline, and it certainly stands out against the other Barbie movies of the 2000’s that all focused on fantasy plots instead. I love how different The Barbie Diaries is, and it does a great job of really feeling like a high school story.
And that’s where my main problem with the story comes in. This is just Barbie’s version of Mean Girls. The idea of an unpopular girl infiltrating the innermost circle of popularity that consists of three cruel girls is taken exactly from Mean Girls… And Mean Girls did it first and better. I enjoy The Barbie Diaries for what it does with its story, yes, but it feels a lot like a watered down version of Mean Girls.
This movie has one problem that Mean Girls does not though: telling instead of showing. The Barbie Diaries relies a lot on narration, especially near the middle of the movie. Things are explained to the audience rather than shown, and that can take you out of the story a little bit. The pacing is a bit lopsided because of this too.
The story might not be anything original or ground breaking, but I enjoyed The Barbie Diaries for what it had, even if its pacing could use a bit of help.
Story: 7/10
Characters
For the first time in the Barbie cinematic universe, Barbie plays… Barbie. She’s just herself in this one, and she’s an unpopular girl trying to survive high school. Barbie goes through a strong character arc in this movie, and it’s understandable how she fell from grace given the circumstances. Barbie pulls herself together again in the end, and she never loses that relatable charm that makes everything really click. She’s a great protagonist, and I loved my time with her.
Barbie’s main two friends in school are Tia and Courtney, and while the two of them don’t get anywhere near as much time to shine as Barbie, they still work perfectly here. They help Barbie’s development to go above and beyond, and I love them for it. While the two could be called a bit flat with their unchanging motivations, I enjoyed them, and I think they work well for what they are.
Raquelle, Reagan, and Dawn are great antagonists for this story too. They work well as popular bullies, and you can feel just how two-faced they are through the way they are written and voiced. I can see them as popular mean girls in my own high school, and that makes their downfalls all the sweeter. Everything about them is expertly done, and they play their roles perfectly.
The primary issue I have with this cast is Kevin, the love interest. Kevin feels kind of strange from the start. He’s almost creepy with his passing comments around the girls, and it leaves me feeling more uncomfortable than anything else. He has more time onscreen than Todd, but I almost wish Barbie had a chance with Todd with how weirdly uncomfortable Kevin makes me. Kevin gets a lot of time in the story all too himself, and I really wish he had less focus.
The cast of The Barbie Diaries suits its purpose and setting perfectly well, though the love interest leaves quite a bit to be desired.
Characters: 7/10
World Building
The world of The Barbie Diaries is exactly what you would expect from a regular high school. There are popular kids, unpopular kids, and everyone in between. There’s always something going on in the school leading up to the bigger events, and there’s always some gossip to focus on. This movie has a fairly standard setting that draws from the audience’s experiences with high school, and while that makes it easy to get into, the world doesn’t do much to develop itself beyond that.
The main issue that I have with this comes in the form of a throwaway line near the start of the movie. Barbie says she used to be friends with Raquelle when they were younger, but this never goes anywhere nor is it brought up again. I feel like this would have been a great chance to flesh out the world and the characters’ relationships a bit more… But it is left in the past and never mentioned again. It’s an unfortunate decision that could have gone a long way to developing the world.
The world building of The Barbie Diaries is fine, but it tends to lean a lot on the audience’s experiences or ideas of high school instead of developing the world in its own right.
World Building: 7/10
Themes
This is the first Barbie movie to not have any messages displayed at the end of the credits, so I have to come up with my own theme for it. Luckily, this is rather easy to do. The theme is to be loyal to your true self no matter what. I think this is a perfectly fine message, and it works well with the story the movie is trying to tell. This idea is a great description of Barbie’s journey throughout the film, and while the story doesn’t do anything special with it, I think it still works well.
Themes: 7/10
Production
Okay, fine, let’s rip the bandage right off. The animation in this movie is horrible. It’s the worst animation in the entire Barbie cinematic universe. I appreciate them going for something a bit different with this movie, but it doesn’t really work. The hair looks great at least… So long as it’s on the main characters. The background characters don’t look anywhere near as good, and there are a lot of background characters here. The animation style was a nice experiment, but it’s not great by any stretch of the imagination.
The music is definitely a product of its time, and everything about it really screams that this movie was made in 2006. The fashion is much the same way. I enjoy the music enough, but none of the pop songs ever quite stood out to me as being anything special. This movie feels somewhat dated because of the movie and fashion choices, and while that could be part of the charm for some, I can see others disliking it for the same reasons.
I have one other big problem with this movie though, and it’s an issue that no other Barbie movie has ever had. This is the only movie in the Barbie cinematic universe to not have subtitles. I’ve owned over 30 Barbie movies on DVD in my time, and this is the only one to not have an option for closed captions. In a movie that already struggles with quiet voice actors and poor audio balancing between the music and dialogue, the lack of captions becomes even more egregious. If this movie had better audio mixing, this problem wouldn’t have been as glaring to me, but as it stands, this movie is very inaccessible. I struggle a lot with audio processing issues, and that made it much harder to enjoy the film. The movie does no favors to those who are Deaf or hard of hearing, and it makes the already bad problems with the audio almost intolerable.
The Barbie Diaries tried something different with its animation that didn’t exactly pan out as the team planned it to. Between that and very poor audio mixing and no subtitles, this movie’s production is an absolute mess that really drags it down.
Production: 2/10
Overall
The Barbie Diaries was a very bold project, and I admire its ambition. For the most part, the movie is strong, but it falls apart in terms of production in a way that makes it almost unbearable at times. If you’re interested in the idea of Barbie meets Mean Girls, give The Barbie Diaries a shot… But be aware of the production problems going in. It’ll make the sting hurt a lot less.
Overall: 6/10
Silly Superlative: Barbie movie with the strangest media parallels (Mean Girls)
Archives
Calendar
M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | ||||||
2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
30 |
Leave a Reply