Barbie (2023)
Yes yes, I know, you're supposed to watch it together with Oppenheimer. I like the meme but I didn't actually want to spend a 5 hours block.
Gonna skip spoiler tags; spoilers don't really matter for the movie anyway
So this was not what I expected. I heard that Barbie starts in the Barbie world and then visits the real world, so my brain just filled in the details and assumed without evidence that they're correct, as usually happens. I thought most of the movie would play out in the real world, and that the real world would, in fact, behave approximately real. That's not what happens. Instead, the real world is only used as a way to give the characters some ideas that they can then take back into Barbie world.
But also, the real worlds obviously isn't the real world. It's a fantasy world that has some symbolic similarities with the actual world but, like Barbie world, operates according to simplistic narrative logic rather than the messy laws of the actual world.
So no part of this movie ever engages with any practical obstacles. Which means that everything has to be read as a metaphor; nothing that literally happens means anything. So the movie basically has no real story. It also didn't say anything interesting. It was pretty funny though, and most of the non-funny parts were still fun for the sheer spectacle.
None of the characters except maybe Barbie herself (and even then eh) were interesting or felt real -- which isn't really a consequence of everything being a metaphor, it was just also the case. As a result, every time the movie tried to be a drama, except when it was about Barbie herself (and even then eh) it completely failed, often so hard that it was just uncomfortable. Several other characters supposedly went through arcs and I didn't buy any of it.
Since it was fun it's probably like a 6 or weak 7?
Oh, and the movie was also incredibly sexist. I can't honestly say that it bothers me but it feels dishonest not to point out that if you did similar things the other way around, it would be completely unacceptable.