Barbie in Princess Power

The first Barbie movie released in 2015, this was released around the time where the Barbie franchise was taking a shift, but not up to the point that it would enter the fourth generation movies which started last year. Shown for a limited time in cinemas, can Barbie live up to the likes of Wonder Woman and Black Widow, or do princesses and superheroes simply not mix? Let's take a look!

Story: Having many nods to other superhero franchises, this is about Princess Kara, who ends up gaining superpowers after being kissed on the cheek by a magical butterfly (yes, really). Under the alias Super Sparkle, Kara decides to use her powers both for the good of the kingdom and to actually do something instead of having tea and wearing dresses, gaining attention from the media and jealousy from her cousin Corinne, to become her rival. While that's going on, royal advisor Baron von Ravendale plans to take over the kingdom through creating a potion to gain his own powers, leading the rival cousins to band together to stop his tyranny. Rather than being a deconstruction of superhero movie tropes like the recent Marvel and DC movies, this uses the cliches without shame. Everything is so paint by numbers from Kara forgetting the reason behind why she wanted to use her powers in the first place, somebody revealing her identity due to jealousy, lots of science mumbo-jumbo to explain illogical situations and a giant battle against a hammy bad guy. Add in lots of pink, sparkles and selfies, and that's this movie in a nutshell! It's not terrible, but it was so predictable that it left me bored and the characters themselves are their bland stereotypes with nothing which makes them stand out.The same can be said about the grating message about it 'being better to work together than working alone' which is barely acknowledged until the final act and it feels really shoehorned in so it won't be too scary for the kiddies. On top of that, the biggest problem is the set-up itself. Given that Kara is a very prolific princess, it would have been obvious from the start to everyone who Super Sparkle (God, it sounds like the name of a My Little Pony character) really was. However, I will give credit for the movie actually trying to make a Barbie character do something of importance for her kingdom instead of the stereotypical princess stuff & the climax, while cliched, at least tried to give the movie a sense of danger and peril. And I will say that while tried to set up a relationship between Kara and diet Peter Parker Wes, at least they don't have a full blown romance due to Kara's priorities being more about saving the kingdom. I can see what the movie is trying to do, but for what it is, it's more on the mediocre side in terms of plot and set-up.

Animation: Since there was a shift in the franchise, the animation in this reflects that. And to be honest...it's worse than before. While the character designs have consistently been creepy, the shift brings this up to 11. I think it's mostly because of the skin being smoother, the more caricatured body shapes (up to the point that the women and kids look disgustingly anorexic akin to Barbie Presents Thumbelina) and the eyes are giant compared to their tiny heads on top of looking really sunken. The texturing has also had a downgrade, especially on the hair and fabric as instead of actually attempting to feel like what they're supposed to be, the colouring makes it look more like blocks of hair rather than individual strands. The same can be said about the effectsThe backgrounds also don't fare any better because the city of Windemere looks like your average New York-style city with nothing that makes it stand out. Even the castle looks really out of place compared to the modern pop art look thanks to the more old fashioned look. The character animation is a tad better thanks to the admittedly creative action scenes, but it can still look a bit clunky and off thanks to some uses of motion capture. I know the look is meant to be akin to a comic book filled with tons of pinks, purples and blues, but overall, the animation feels more like a PS2 cutscene. Yes, I feel that this is actually worse in quality compared to The Secret Door! And given how creepy that looked, that's saying a lot!

Characters: Like I mentioned before, the characters are really by the book in their roles. I do appreciate that Princess Kara actually wants to be different than a typical princess and actually contribute to things that actually matter in the kingdom, but when she gains her powers, she can come across as a bit selfish and her priorities can be questionnable (even if the movie acknowledges it). Her friends, twins Madison and Michaela, are 'cool' science geeks with the character trait of arguing about who did what to help Kara and her powers. Princess Corinne is the cliched bitch who's jealous of her cousin, but she can have a bit of depth for actually explaining her envy and her reasons for becoming Dark Sparkle. It's still cliched, but at least it's something. Baron von Ravendale is easily the worst character as the hammy over the top villain who wants to take over the kingdom and nothing else with his 'comedic' frog sidekick. They try to shoehorn his motives at the beginning, but it does nothing to make him 'complex' or 'interesting'. As mentioned before, Wes is the 'clumsy' Peter Parker rip-off who follows Super Sparkle everywhere and exposes her secret without considering the consequences and grated on my nerves. Well, at least he's not the love interest...Anyway, King Kristoff and Queen Karina are the generic overprotective parents who still treat Kara like a child and don't listen to her wishes even though it'd be very important for her to learn leadership and proper responsibilities when she eventually becomes queen! Wait, was that expecting maturity and dimension? Anyway, Kara's sisters, Zooey and Gabby are the cliched fun loving girls who are massive fangirls of Super Sparkle and Dark Sparkle despite not noticing that it's obviously their older sister and cousin. The only other characters in this are the animal sidekicks Parker and Newton and even then, they really don't contribute much to the plot or as the sidekick stereotypes. This is definitely a case of the characters being stereotypes of stereotypes, even if they're not completely hateable.

Barbie in Princess Power is a pretty weak movie with some of the worst animation in the franchise and a dull story and characters, but at least the intentions behind it are clear and they are good ones. This really just feels like a cash grab for children since the popularity of the superhero movies plaguing cinemas is pretty much unavoidable. It's not terrible and I guess girls would enjoy seeing Barbie play a more 'badass' character with some fight scenes thrown in, but this wasn't really my cup of tea. And given how strange it gets by the next generation, I'm starting to get a bit worried over the franchise...
Story: 😕
Animation: 😡
Characters: 😠
Overall: 😠