Barbie, might be the first critic-proof movie. Any criticism leveled at the box office smash will have the critic labeled as a misogynist, a defender of the patriarchy, a slave to the status quo, an unwoke slob who needs more pink in their life.
Good thing I thought Barbie was pretty good.
It featured a variety of jokes, both smart and dumb that had me laughing out loud. The production design looked great and while some of its ideas fell flat, I found it kind of remarkable that more thought was put into the plastic doll that is Barbie than another recent movie put into the creation of the atomic bomb.
The masses seem to love Barbie as well. I saw it on a Tuesday night and the only seats that were available were in the front, front row. The obvious reason is that women needed something to itch the childhood nostalgia Marvel movies have been scratching for men, but I think the nostalgia is a little more complex than that.
We’re a decade into the streaming entertainment revolution where the viewer gets to be in charge. Commercials can now be skipped. But maybe adults who were raised on being sold products in pretty packages in quick, catchy thirty second spots, yearn for them. Barbie had the feel of a clever Super Bowl ad with plenty of mentions of the toy company that manufactures her. And I can’t help but feel that Barbie is the start of a new movie genre, the commercial movie. In a couple years I’ll probably be writing reviews for Diet Coke: The Movie and UberEats Part 3.
The Baker
The Baker is a more familiar genre, it’s the old man kicks everyone’s ass movie. You can probably trace this type of flick back to Death Wish in 1974. Though Charles Bronson was only 53, he seemed already old as dirt, but that didn’t stop him from killing every young punk in New York City.
The modern ground zero for the old man kicks everyone’s ass movie is 2009’s Taken, where a 56 year old Liam Neeson kicks everyone’s ass for having taken his daughter.
The Baker fits comfortably in this world. It stars a 73 year old Ron Perlman as the titular baker who need to protect his granddaughter from the thugs who killed his son. And while the opening scenes show Perlman seeming to have a deft hand in the kitchen baking, all the action scenes make sure to cut away awkwardly so the stunt doubles can do the heavy lifting.
I’m intrigued to see how old the oldest hero of an old man kicks everyone’s ass movie can be. I think the current record is a 78 year old Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, but records were made to be broken.
Shortcomings
For better or worse they don’t often release movies like Shortcomings into theaters any more. In the ’90s they had all kinds of indie movies where young people walked around a city complaining about their love lives. Shortcomings aims to be an Asian-American spin on it.
Ben is a miserable movie theater manager in Berkley, California unhappy with the relationship with his girlfriend. In fact he’s unhappy about everything and everyone.
The screenplay was written by Adrian Tomine, who also created the comic book this movie was based on. Tomine has a drawing style similar to Daniel Clowes, which made me hopeful Shortcomings would have the same exceptional quality as Clowes’ Ghost World. Shortcomings moves briskly enough but it doesn’t have the rich story or depth of character that Ghost World showed off. And while the movie title refers to the shortcomings of the protagonist, I couldn’t help but think it was an apt one word criticism for the flick. You couldn’t help but to think how disappointed Ben, who stays up late an night watching classic foreign film, would have been by it.
Although I do wonder what he would have thought of Barbie.
