Barbie in a Fashion Fairy Tale

This direct to DVD animated movie would be the second one of the third generation Barbie movies & actually portrays Barbie as herself being a famous movie actress this time round, showing that all the second generation movies & predecessor A Mermaid Tale, are all sort of movies within movies despite Barbie mostly narrating them & seemingly having a normal life, but she's famous in this one &- yeah, it's all pretty confusing & the continuity is just all over the place! This would also be the first Barbie movie to have Diana Kaarina voice Barbie, replacing voice actress Kelly Sheridan. Anyway, can this movie show that Barbie can bring a bit (and by that I really mean A LOT) of pink & sparkles to the fashion of Paris & actually succeed, or is it as bad as a fashion faux pas during Paris Fashion Week? Let's find out!

Story: The main story, I won't lie, sounds a bit familiar! After Barbie gets fired from her latest movie The Princess & the Pea due to disliking the addition of rapping zombie peas (can't really blame her), everyone online accusing her of being a diva once the news comes out & her boyfriend Ken dumping her, she decides to go to Paris where her fashion designer aunt lives, only to find that her fashion house is in danger of closing down thanks to a rival fashion designer (the designated villain of the film) & needs to save it by putting on a fashion show! Yes, it's like the plot of Burlesque for children! The romance subplot with her & Ken is entirely useless besides a cliched misunderstanding because of some bitch also liking Ken & to make kids remember that Barbie has a boyfriend! Seriously, it'sjust brought up randomly as if we need to remember that this plot exists! As for the middle...nothing happens! It's just filled with padding, montages & the annoying talking dog & fairy side characters being unfunny & relaying on what's going on when we can see what's going on. And the world Barbie lives in is absoultely confusing! It's supposedly meant to be in our world as she's an actress with movies like A Mermaid Tale (refer to my last review) under her belt as well as real life technology & websites like Twitter being mentioned & going to Paris, but then we see that where she lives is called Gloss Angeles (because everything needs to be so pink & girly!) and she has magical fashion fairies in Paris! Way to show suspension of disbelief! It doesn't really help that the 'cool and hip' dialogue along with the modern references just make the movie overall dated! Overall, it's a load of materialistic (in a bad way), shallow, dated & cliched drivel!

I thought Ken was supposed to have brown hair...

Animation: Just as I thought the animation was improving, somehow, it got worse! The character designs are just creepy thanks to the big alien-like eyes & caricatured skinny bodies on the women! It It doesn't really help Ken's design just takes you into the uncanny valley & it's clear that they use the same models AGAIN & changing the hairstyles/colours, outfits, skin tones & make-up! Pretty lazy isn't it? The character animation is also pretty inconsistent from looking stiff in the walking cycles or a bit good or using motion capture. Like before the hair and skin texturing is a bit better, but still pretty bad. While the streets of Paris are actually pretty accurate (I've been to Paris a few times), the textures & rendering are pretty bad! The biggest 'highlight' would probably be the costume designs, even if they're all way too pink or some look generic. The overall feel is like an early 2000s PC game like The Sims 2 & even at that point, some of that looked better than this! And this was 10 years ago!

Characters:  In this film, Barbie is just an annoyingly perfect heroine who is bland, & honestly pretty ditzy, partly thanks to Diana Kaarina's intolerable & terrible performance! Her aunt Millicent is just the bland supportive and loving aunt type. Jacqueline, the villain, is just annoying & non threatening & pretty childish looking back at it! Ken is also just the 'pretty boy' type who is in love with Barbie, Sequin is her annoying dog sidekick who never shuts up, Grace & Teresa are her token brown haired & sassy black best friends who are also there to tell Barbie even more perfect. The Flairies are just annoying comedy reliefs & are just intolerable & throw sparkles everywhere! Then there's Alice, probably the best character in the movie! She's Aunt Millicent's assistant, but wants to be a fashion designer herself & is actually good at it! Even with that, she's still reduced to being the 'Barbie's new best friend' side character stereotype! At least the voice actors who are obviously American try with the French accents!

TOO MUCH PINK!!!

 

 Overall, this is one of the worst Barbie films I've sat through with a shallow & cliched plot which feels dated, bad animation & characters with little to no personality traits! I can only recommend avoiding this film completely! It just accentuates stereotypes to little girls and expects all of them to be fashion loving & talk about boys & love the colour pink! It feels like a huge cashgrabber for the dolls with no effort put in & giving nothing in return to it's intended audience! And do you know the worst thing about this for me? I'll have to endure more of Diana Kaarina's terrible voice acting for the rest of these movies!
Story: 2/10
Animation: 3/10
Characters: 3/10
Overall: 3/10