In my southern corner of the world, the audience did NOT vibe with #Barbie. It so clearly wasn’t what they were expecting. I liked it quite a bit, but it’s a bit of a bummer to sit through a funny, inventive film with a packed, dead audience who doesn’t laugh a single time. pic.twitter.com/wlTGpDMf09

— Clarence Moye (@ClarenceMoye) July 22, 2023

“Barbie is like the deformed mutated rage child of Captain Marvel, the 2016 Ghostbusters and She-Hulk.

“Watching this film was one of the most miserable, demoralizing, unpleasant experiences I’ve ever had as a movie critic [as it] genuinely made me question where [western] society is heading.

“It is pure brain cancer in movie form, and I was genuinely shocked by the sheer, undisguised contempt that film has for 50% of the human population.

“Barbie real]y is a wolf in sheep’s clothing…a lot of parents who have been duped into taking their daughters to watch this, probably expecting the kind of breezy, colorful, family-friendly movie that was advertised, only to find themselves confronted with this spiteful, bitter, mean-spirited pile of misandrist dogshit instead…

“Think of the man-hating psychopaths who are going to be created because of this film.

“If you’re a parent and you’re thinking of taking your kids to see Barbie, the Drinker recommends that you skip this one and literally do anything else with them. Believe me — you’ll thank me later.”

“Undisciplined Barbie Gush“, posted on 7.20: “Never has a major studio film ever conveyed such utter contempt for straight guys…in its peppy and good natured way Barbie constantly belittles men and regards them as delusional little boys with selfish and thoughtless agendas.

“Red-staters will have problems with the basic Barbie attitude. This movie definitely tries to nudge the little girls and boys that will see it into the man-hating, male-pitying side of the discussion.

“If you want to start your little girl (or your little boy) on a path to despising foolish and idiotic straight men, this is the film to take them to — trust me.

“In a very good-natured and heavily ironic and often comedic way Greta Gerwig‘s movie absolutely DESPISES men. It really does — it’s total propaganda to this effect.”

Yesterday afternoon (7.20) Variety‘s Matt Donnelly reported that under the cloud of a possibly enduring SAG/AFTRA strike, Warner Bros. is “strongly considering” bumping Dune: Part Two out of its 11.3.23 release date and opening it sometime in ’24.

Ditto James Wan‘s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (12.20) and Blitz the Ambassador‘s The Color Purple (12.25).

The apparent concern is that Joe and Jane Popcorn will either be unaware of these films or wont be motivated to see them unless the actors promote them via the usual media outlets.

Forgive me for sounding ignorant or for living on my own cloud or desert island, but if I want to see a film it’s NEVER because this or that actor has visited the Jimmy Kimmel Show or done the usual round of junket interviews. It’s because of good reviews or advance screenings or general online buzz.

I realize there’s a whole community of none-too-brights out there who will never see a given film UNLESS the star has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel or done junket interviews, but it seems strange nonetheless.

Before last night’s AMC Lincoln Square Oppenheimer screening the Dune: Part Two trailer played on the big IMAX screen, and it was obvious that the crowd is excited about seeing it. Timothee Chalamet interviews won’t matter one way or the other.

An “industry player” has told Donnelly that the success of The Color Purple “would hinge on a robust awards campaign.” Those who want to see The Color Purple because of its own merits are already convinced, just as I’m convinced that The Color Purple will never ring my bell and that I would’t see it with a gun jammed against my rib cage,

I just don’t want to see Ridley Scott‘s Napoleon (Sony, 11.22) bumped into ’24…please.

During her 7.18 Oppenheimer screening in Burbank Sasha Stone was hugely bothered by a pair of 20something women who took out their phones around the half-hour mark and were pretty much texting all through it. They didn’t even turn down the brightness levels on their screens.

The first thing I texted Sasha when my Oppie screening ended last night at 10:20 pm was “as much as I condemn phone-surfing during a film and especially during a major blue-chip immersion like Oppenheimer, I understand why those women were texting.”

An unmistakably grade–A experience, Oppenheimer could be re-titled Oppenheimer: Interiors as it’s almost all super-smart dialogue, super-smart dialogue and more super-smart dialogue inside rooms (university classrooms, Los Alamos conference rooms, hallways, hotel rooms, dining rooms, the Oval Office).

Okay, the historic New Mexico test explosion of the first atom bomb (7.16.45. 5:29 am) happens under an open-air nightscape and there are several other moments that happen outdoors, but still…

The likely truth is that if you’re not at least half in love with the Oppie legend going in — if you haven’t done your homework by having seen The Day After Trinity (free on YouTube) and if you haven’t read “American Prometheus” — your Oppenheimer experience may (emphasis on this word) feel like a big fat Alaskan grizzly bear sitting in your lap, or certainly right next to you.

It feels (and is) long and demanding, and at three hours is certainly a proverbial tough sit. And yet it’s undeniably a first–rate, grand–vision, smart–person movie that absolutely surges with the spirit of semi-tortured genius (I was reminded of similar-toned portions of A Beautiful Mind) and is highly charged in every respect and is even emotionally engrossing during the persecution-of-Oppie finale (kudos to the “junior Senator from Massachusetts” for voting against the venal Robert Downey Jr.!!).

And I adored viewing this Christopher Nolan film on that tall-as-an-apartment-building, super-sized IMAX screen (I was sitting third-row center), but I’m afraid I’ll need to re-watch it at home with subtitles as I fully understood roughly half of the dialogue, certainly no more than two-thirds. That or I’m simply too fucking dumb to keep up with all the density and complexity.

Not to mention the fact that my poor right knee was aching and moaning in pain as I had no place to shift or maneuver within that tight IMAX seating area, and my knee massages began around the 45-minute mark and never stopped…one of the most challenging IMAX screenings I’ve ever endured.

At the one-hour mark I looked at my watch and said to myself, “oh, dear Lord, this is so brilliant and dense and tightly woven and sharply focused to a fare-thee-well, and God help me but there’s another two hours to go!”

And man, the Ludwig Goransson score is really loud in portions, and certainly during the final act. It throttles and hammers you into submission.

HE to friendo: “You didn’t feel a tiny little ‘yay!’ surge when it’s mentioned that JFK voted against Downey? I did.”

Friendo to HE: “Naah, that was just a little fun grace note of JFK nostalgia.”

…as I’m waiting for the big-ass, 15/70 IMAX screening of Oppenheimer to begin at 7 pm…this is the best I can do on the fly…please forgive the repetitions.

Barbie is cheerful, ironic, smart…it’s colorful, pop-pop-pop feminist and male-despising propaganda in a fleet and funny way…it’s clever and snappy enough to make you say to yourself “okay, fine…men are the foolish morons in this thing and there will be no oxygen for steady, fair-minded viewpoints…just give into it, man…whatever. Because it’s zippy and fizzy and a fair amount of fun.”

Barbie really is fun and juiced for the most part…it’s sharp and clever and peppy as fuck and production designed to a fare-thee-well.

Red-staters will have problems with the basic Barbie attitude. This movie definitely tries to nudge the little girls and boys that will see it into the man-hating, male-pitying side of the discussion. Megyn Kelly, take note!

If you want to start your little girl (or your little boy) on a path to despising foolish and idiotic straight men, this is the film to take them to — trust me.

In a very good-natured and heavily ironic and often comedic way (except for the final 25 to 30 minutes, when it turns into one soul-baring speech after another about the burdens of being a woman and the necessity of men accepting their fundamental immaturity and subservient role, and the task of crafting and molding your own identity)…what was I saying?

In a very good-natured and heavily ironic and often comedic way Greta Gerwig‘s movie absolutely DESPISES men. It really does — it’s total propaganda to this effect.

But at the same time it’s giggly and brisk and breezy and funny and, I have to admit, a very well assembled satire of sorts. A woman-celebrating, man-pitying satire. Wheeee!

Never has a major studio film ever conveyed such utter contempt for straight guys…in its peppy and good natured way Barbie constantly belittles men and regards them as delusional little boys with selfish and thoughtless agendas.

But it does so with such brisk and perky energy & with such a persistent sense of nerve and extra-ness…a certain punching-through-the-fourth-wall self-awareness.

And it does have a great final line that is just about equal to the final line in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot so you just have to roll with it and accept the male humiliation and the dominant species of Barbie-women.

This afternoon’s audience was like a midnight crowd at the Rocky Horror Picture Show in the early ’80s, or like the young-girl audience that first showed up to see the first Twilight on opening weekend…a lot of women (and a couple of trans guys!) dressed in pink and giggling and delighted with how the film made them feel. And a fair number of gay gays laughing and giggling and feeling the euphoria.

This is a cultural event, this film…it’s a celebration of the feminine wonderfulness of Barbieland and straight-male mocking and belittling, and a concurrent celebration of feminized gay males.

All The Kens are allegedly straight, you see, except they all look and dress gay. Go figure.

There are phony moments here and there. During her initial visit to the real world, Barbie sits next to an 80something woman and, despite having no frame of reference about older people or age or anything about real-world biology, she says to the 80something woman, “You’re so beautiful.” And the old woman chuckles and says, “I know.” Bullshit, doesn’t work.

My screening was crammed with Millennials and Zoomers…mostly women and a decent smattering of gay men. There was a guy sitting behind me who was giggling like a deballed falsetto Chihuahua…”hee-hee-hee-hee….ooh-hoo-hoo-hoo…hee-hee-hee-ee!”

At the very beginning a hot-pink Warner Bros. logo appears, and this same idiot was DEE-LIGHTED by this…”ooh-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo…tee-hee-hee-hee-hee!!” I almost turned around and said to him, “Do you know what the term ‘easy lay’ means?”

First thing I wrote after Barbie ended: “I have to give Gerwig and Noah Baumbach credit for having created a fleet, zippy, self-acknowledging, hall-of-mirrors Barbie universe that mostly works.

“If you don’t mind the relentless humiliation that is heaped upon the stupid, self-deluding Ken men, the film holds together. It’s fully realized and precisely thought through and is quite the pink creation, quite the work of imagination…

“Even though it regards men as pathetic and immature and basically seven- and eight-year-olds…the Barbie women are the wise and the strong and way, WAY more commanding and visionary and competent….the Ken men are foolish, emotionally stunted infants, and woman know SO much more and are SO much wiser and more mature and they, henceforth, will lead the way. And are destined, it is fully implied, to run the real world once the men are fully deballed and schooled and feminized…”

No Clint Eastwood or Lee Marvin types allowed! And no Cary Grants or Jack Lemmons either! Only buff-bod gay guys who are pretending to be straight, or at least aren’t identified as queer.