Barbie

Posted on July 18, 2023 at 7:15 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language
Profanity:	One bleeped strong word
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Kens drink a lot of "brewski"
Violence/ Scariness:	Fantasy peril, no one hurt
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	July 21, 2023

I came out of the “Barbie” movie feeling better about Barbie’s world and better about mine, and I think you will, too. Greta Gerwig directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay with Noah Baumbach, and it is utterly captivating, engaging honestly with all that is enticing and all that is troubling about the world’s most popular doll and the way she is both symbol and perpetuator of positive and negative aspirations. Barbie is available in every possible profession, from pilot to doctor to President to nine different Olympic athletes, twelve different kinds of chef, seven different kinds of musician and five kinds of singer including jazz and rap. She works at McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and See’s Candy, and operates a stall at the farmer’s market. She is a pet groomer, a corporate Chief Sustainability Officer, and she sells Mary Kay products. There are dozens more, plus whatever the girls (mostly) who play with her can dream, but her ridiculously exaggerated feminine shape and essential plastic, consumerist role are concerning. I admit, I had and loved my Barbie, then tried to dissuade my daughter from Barbie-ism. She was given a Barbie and Ken by an aunt, and she loved them. I was wrong. Resistance is futile.

This film begins with all of the fun of Barbie world, as we meet “stereotypical” or original Barbie (Margot Robbie), whose life is one perfect day after another. She wakes up in her Barbie dream house, enjoys her pretend breakfast, then stops by the beach, where the Kens hang out (their job is “beach” — not lifeguard, not surfer, just beach). She believes that the Barbies took over from the centuries-old tradition of giving little girls baby dolls, so they could pretend only to be mothers and housewives, the chance to play with adult woman dolls mastering every profession led to unobstructed opportunity and accomplishment in the real world. In Barbie world, everything is pink and pristine, and everyone (almost) is a Barbie or a Ken. The Supreme Court is all Barbies. Construction crews are all Barbies. President Barbie (Issa Rae) presides in a pink version of the White House. The Barbies love to have girls’ night sleepovers and huge parties with choreography. Kens are just there to admire and support the Barbies. Ryan Gosling plays the Ken who lives for the brief moments each day when Barbie notices him.

Every day is the same and every day is perfect…until one day things start to go wrong. Barbie starts to ponder the prospect of death. Just as disturbing, her perfectly arched, high-heel-ready feet are suddenly FLAT!! She visits Weird Barbie (no one does weird better than Kate McKinnon), who offers her the red pill/blue pill option: does she want to stay in blissful ignorance or does she want to visit the real world, where the dark thoughts of the person playing with the doll are coming from.

And so Barbie and Ken find themselves rollerblading on a real beach, and immediately getting into trouble. For all of her consumer purchases, Barbie does not have any money. When they escape the real world and get back to Barbie world and bring that trouble with him. Ken has learned about the patriarchy and likes the idea of men running everything. The Barbies have never had to face a challenge like that. Will the Kens take over Barbie world?

The cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto and production design by Sarah Greenwood make Barbie world enticing and Robbie and Gosling inhabit their roles with endless charm that almost disguises the precision of their craft. This is not a parody or a high satire. The terrific screenplay skillfully mixes the silly with the heartfelt and the actors deliver with every shift.

Adorably, Gerwig and Baumbach bring in some of the most strange and esoteric aspects of real-life Barbie history and as we see in the closing credits all of it is real. Michael Cera plays Allan, based on a briefly available friend for Ken. We also see the pregnant Midge, the Barbie who is also a camera, and pubescent “Growing Up Skipper.” And we get a monologue from working mother Gloria (America Ferrara) that ties together the crushingly unrealistic expectations of women that Barbie represents and perpetuates. And narration from Dame Helen Mirren is a lovely touch. The Barbies and Kens are diverse in race and body type, with Simu Liu and Rae so good they left me wishing for a spin-off. The movie comes down on the side of heart and brain, fantasy and reality, and, of course, the Indigo Girls.

There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
Closer I am to fine.

Parents should know that this movie is not for children. There are references to the dolls’ lack of genitals and some mild sexual references, Kens drink a lot of beer, and there is a bleeped out bad word. More important, the film deals with issues of purpose and meaning and struggle that younger viewers may find troubling.

Family discussion: Have you ever played with a Barbie? If not, why not and if so, which Barbie did you like?

If you like this, try: Forever Barbie, a terrific history of the doll, and Barbie and Ruth, the story of the real-life Ruth Handler, played by Rhea Perlman in the film

Theater Camp

Posted on July 13, 2023 at 5:53 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some strong language, suggestive material, and /drug references
Profanity:	Some strong anguage
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	July 14, 2023

“Theater Camp” is a true labor of love from people who are former theater kids. They love the children who somehow know from birth that they were born to be performers, and seem to bypass the world of Raffi, JoJo, pop, and rock but know all of the songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Stephen Sondheim by the time when they’re still collecting from the tooth fairy.

Molly Gordon (“Broken Hearts Gallery”), Ben Platt (“Dear Evan Hanson” and “Pitch Perfect”), Noah Galvin (“The Real O’Neals”) and Nick Lieberman clearly know and love the world of theater kids, so the humor is pointed but affectionate. The passion for performance in both the kids and the adults who teach them is sometimes over the top, but the film is clear that it is these special people who can “turn cardboard into gold.” And at the heart of the film is what someone says near the end: theater camp is a place for people who are not accepted anyplace else.

The camp is called AdirondACTS and it is owned by Joan Rubinsky (Amy Sederis) and managed by Rita Cohen (Caroline Aaron of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”). They are good at scrambling to get enough campers and enough money to keep it going (“I know he’s awful and tone deaf but his father is rich”) until Joan has a seizure at a grade school production of “Bye Bye Birdie” (one of the film’s weakest ideas). She is in a coma and so her son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) has to take over. He as very much not a theater kid and he is not a business guy, either. The snooty rich kid camp sees this as an opportunity, and their representative (Patti Harrison) makes an offer to take it over.

The camp teachers include alumnae Amos (Tony winner Platt) and Rebecca-Diane (Gordon), whose ultra-close friendship is getting claustrophobic. Each year, they create an original musical for the campers to put on, and this year it will be “Joan, Still,” a tribute to the camp founder. There are also other productions, including a junior version of “The Crucible.” And there is an exhausted tech (a terrific Noah Galvin) and a teacher assigned to cover everything from masks to stage combat even though she has no idea about any of it and lied on her resume (a game Ayo Edebiri).

The film gently points at the pretensions and dysfunctions in the world of theater kids and adults, but it reminds us that they really do turn cardboard into gold throughout, especially with a final musical number that is at the same time rousing, hilarious, and heartwarming.

Parents should know that this movie has some strong language, a drug reference involving children, and some mild sexual references.

Family discussion: Why did Amos call himself a performer working full-time as a teacher? Why didn’t Rebecca-Diane tell him what she was doing? What is the best part of being in a show?

If you like this, try: “Camp,” “Magic Camp,” and “Waiting for Guffman”

Joy Ride

Posted on July 6, 2023 at 5:46 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Adult
Profanity:	Extremely strong and crude language
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril and violence
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie

It’s not unusual to see a “Oh, no, they didn’t” cheerfully raunchy comedies like the “Harold and Kumar” films, and Seth Rogen’s “Superbad,” “Neighbors,” and “Pineapple Express,” but it is almost unheard of to see one with women as the lead characters (though I don’t think “The Sweetest Thing” is as bad as its reputation). It’s also almost unheard of to see a wild American comedy with all Asian characters. “Joy Ride,” with Rogen as one of the producers, is directed by Adele Lim, one of the screenwriters of “Crazy Rich Asians,” who also gets co-story by credit. That helps to make “Joy Ride” a welcome addition to the genre.

This is not about witty repartee or storyline. A lot of the comedy is just the shock value of seeing these actresses in such outrageous situations, especially seeing women who are very sex-positive, frank about their desires and their actions. But the most successful of this genre work because of the relationships at the heart — in every way — of the story, and the strength of this movie is not the raunch but the friendships.

The only Asian children in a suburban Oregon community are Audrey, a girl adopted from China by white parents, and Lolo, the daughter of a Chinese family. They become instant best friends at age six when Lolo punches a bully who calls them a racist name, and then we get a quick montage, watching them grow up, Audrey (now played by Ashley Park) always at the head of the class and then an ambitious young lawyer, Lolo (Sherry Cola) an artist specializing in extremely explicit sexual imagery. There are a lot of “extremelys” in this movie.

Audrey gets a chance to impress her boss. There’s an opportunity in China. All she has to do is close the deal. And if she allowed her partners to believe that her command of Chinese is more than the two days she’s spent on DuoLingo, that is fine with her. She’s got the language on lockdown because her college roommate, Kat (“Everything Everywhere’s” Stephanie Hsu), now a popular actress in China, has agreed to act as translator. Lola, who speaks Chinese, comes along as a back-up, and her cousin Deadeye (Sabrina Wu), a nerdy K-Pop fan, tags along, too.

Audrey has never been interested in tracking down her birth mother. But the potential client says she should bring her mother to a gathering, and, after things go disastrously on their first meeting, she is desperate. The four women go off on a wild adventure that includes getting caught up with an American drug dealer, having their bags and passports stolen, some very intense sexual encounters (lucky thing that busload of handsome athletes came by!), and some big surprises about Audrey’s bio-family.

All four actresses are clearly having a blast, relishing the opportunity to get down and dirty. There is just enough specificity about their experiences to add interest without distracting us from the next wacky adventure. And the cast and the characters they play are so varied there is never a risk of caricature. The movie is having fun with them, not making fun of them. Even within the ultra-silliness of the storylines, most of which are weak but no one is there for the plot, each character has her own lesson to learn and bonds of friendship to strengthen. And drugs to hide and men to…well, you get the idea.

Parents should know that this movie is so filthy I could not even include the green band (supposed to be suitable for all audiences) trailer on this site. Character use very strong language, there are many explicit sexual situations, character drink, get drunk, and use drugs.

Family discussion: Why were Lola and Audrey friends? How did Audrey’s discovery change her idea about herself?

If you like this, try: “Superbad” and “Pineapple Express”

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Posted on June 29, 2023 at 5:24 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, language and smoking
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended peril and action-violence, characters injured and killed, some disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	June 30, 2023

It’s been a long time since the archeology students of Dr. Henry (Indiana) Jones, Jr. (Harrison Ford) gazed longingly at him in the lecture hall. In the first movie of this now-five chapter series, one of them even wrote: “love you” on her eyelids. That was in the 1940s, and we get a flashback to that era with Indy captured by his old foes, the Nazis, and then his thrilling escape with his friend, Basil Shaw (Toby Jones). Just as in the first film, they were seeking the Ark of the Covenant because Hitler coveted its power, in this flashback they are looking for something almost as legendary: a compass-like dial from the Ancient Greek scientist/mathematician Archimedes.

But the now of this movie takes place in the summer of the first moon landing, 1969, and Indy is being grumpy at his retirement party (which, oddly, occurs before the end of the semester, despite his just having told his bored students what will be in their exam, but okay).

Basil’s daughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) surprises Indy, who has not seen her since she was a little girl. Her father’s obsession with Archimedes’ dial ruined his life. But Helena is now looking for it, too. And so is that Nazi officer (Mads Mikkelse), who, like Werhner von Bron, was brought to America instead of tried for war crimes, because his scientific knowledge was essential to the development of the space program.

As with the third and fourth films, we get just enough about what is going on with Indy to add some emotional heft to all of the action scenes. We learn why he is estranged from Marian (Karen Allen). We learn about his relationship with Basil and Helena and some regrets he may feel about all three of them. We also get to catch up briefly with some friends from the earlier films, including the warmhearted Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) and his family. There are some callbacks to the earlier films, and of course one of the all-time classic John Williams movie scores, guaranteed to make pulses race. Are there snakes? You’ll just have to wait and see.

And of course we have lots of action. The opening chase scene on and on top of a train is everything we hope for in an Indiana Jones movie, witty, exciting, well-paced. Director James Mangold (“Logan,” “Walk the Line”) ably takes over for Steven Spielberg, with inventive stunts making the most of the props and settings. One under-water section is not as effective as the high-speed chases. There are some poor and tonally inconsistent choices about outcomes for some characters and a switch of allegiance that is not adequately supported by the storyline. There is an un-earned death of a character that takes us out of the film and it takes a leap near the end that did not always work for me. But we’re there to see Harrison Ford, with hat and whip, dazzle us with his action scenes and pure star power, and that is more valuable than an ancient treasure.

Parents should know that this film includes extended peril and action-style violence, with characters injured and killed. There are references to a sad death of an adult son in combat and a sad death of a parent due to a preoccupation that took over his life. Characters use strong language and drink some alcohol.

Family discussion: If you could go back in time, what time would you pick? How has Indy changed over the years? Which is your favorite Indiana Jones movie and why?

If you like this, try: the other Indiana Jones movies

The Flash

Posted on June 15, 2023 at 5:16 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, some strong language and partial nudity
Profanity:	Some strong language, several s-words, one f-word
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended comic-book action peril and violence, injuries and sad deaths
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	June 15, 2023

“The Flash” is centered in the sweet spot between action, comedy, and heart because is is grounded in a deep affection for the source material but is not afraid to play with some of its absurdities. I’m going to tread very carefully to avoid spoilers (and alert you to what I hope will be just two of the jokes in this review), but if you want to go into the film knowing nothing, including what is in the trailer, come back and read this after you’ve seen it.

Ezra Miller shows no signs of the instability that has led to troubling behavior and disturbing headlines in his excellent performance as not one but two Barry Allens. The storyline allows for something of an origin story without the too-often superhero film mistake of making it all about the adjustment to the use and purpose of superpowers and attendant vulnerabilities. We first see Barry Allen (Flash’s secret identity) trying to get a high-protein sandwich at a cafe counter. He is, unsurprisingly, in a hurry because first, he is running late, and two, as a result of the energy he burns in his super-fastness requires a lot of food for fuel. It’s not quite like Popeye and spinach, but it’s not not like it, either.

Barry is awkward and shy. He works as a forensic scientist, looking at evidence from crime scenes. And he is hoping to exonerate his father, Henry (Ron Livingston), who is in prison for murdering his wife, Barry’s mother, when Barry was a child. Barry knows his father is innocent, and is hoping that his friend Bruce (Batman) Wayne (Ben Affleck) can help him with a crucial piece of evidence, security camera footage from a grocery store that would substantiate Henry’s alibi. But the enhanced clarity of the tape, shot from above, does not show Henry’s face, only his baseball cap. Barry, devastated, goes for such an intensive run that he passes the speed of light and goes back in time. If he can do that, he reasons, maybe he can go back further and prevent his mother’s murder. Bruce Wayne warns him it is a big mistake. Butterfly effect, etc. He, of course, knows very well what it is like to have your entire live defined by a devastating childhood loss.

Barry cannot resist. And that is when things start to scramble. First, one very small choice somehow had a lot of major repercussions, some strangely random. Somehow, instead of Michael J. Fox coming in to replace him, the original star of “Back to the Future,” Eric Stoltz, stayed in the role. The people he knows from his timeline are either not there or very different. And second, Barry misjudged and instead of returning to the present, he finds himself 10 years ago, which means, yes, that his teen-age self is there, too. The interaction between the two Barrys (both played by Miller), one formed by the murder of his mother and wrongful conviction of his father and one who grew up in a home with intact, loving parents, is at the heart of the film. In fact, the villain (Michael Shannon as Kryptonian bad guy General Zod) is almost an afterthought in this film, relying on our remembering him and his whole deal from previous encounters.

Instead, the movie is more about Barry, both Barrys, their interaction and their growing understanding of their situation and, if it can be put this way, each other. From a small, witty hiccup in the presentation of the movie’s title to the throwaway lines about other anomalies in the pile of spaghetti that is what happens when you splinter linear time, to some funny cameos (Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth provides one of the film’s best moments), the film is more interested in concept and character than mayhem.

That’s a good thing as the mayhem is more serviceable than memorable. This is a movie that is more about the people than the powers, and that is a superpower worth having.

Parents should know that this film includes brief non-sexual male nudity (bare tush), some strong language (s-words and one f-word), and extended comic book-style peril and action violence, with injuries and some sad deaths.

Family discussion: What one small decision have you made that had a surprisingly big impact on your life? If you could go back in time ten years, what advice would you give yourself?

If you like this, try; Other time-warp movies like “Back to the Future” with Michael J. Fox and “Frequency” as well as other DC Comics movies