#barbie and Chelsea: the lost birthday

[camelspit]

visibly clenching my jaw and shaking with rage. why are all the newer barbie movies trash.

[barbiesince59]

The Lost Birthday - 2021

[barbiebattle]

[barbie-movies-tournament]

Preliminaries

[queen-erika-the-songful]

After 3/2 years you can finally get Princess Adventure and Lost Birthday on DVD in this 4-pack with Big City Big Dreams and, to my surprise and delight, a re-release of the original Dreamtopia special that only had a Nick premiere and short DVD release with SLA back in 2016

[barbie-movie-tournament]

[nono-bunny]

Damn I can't believe Barbie & Chelsea: The Lost Birthday was such a good movie, wtf I was not expecting to enjoy it so much but it was so wholesome and fun!

It really gives old Barbie movie vibes actually! The Wizard of Oz storyline was very cute, and the silly villain gave the whole thing such a fun vibe, I was kinda half expecting it to end with "and you were there, and you, and you, and you were there too!" lol

Also there was a Princess Bride reference thrown in there, which was neat, but it was all so much wholesome fun! Barbie movies are so fun when they have magic and adventure, THIS movie should've had adventure in the title, not the lackluster FOURTH princess switch movie that came before it

[idkwhatimdoingbutrandom]

What if I said I actually bump to this song… what then 😭⁉️

[music-in-my-veins14]

𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐢𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐱𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 ｡⋆୨୧˚| 𝐁𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐢𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

[asmolbirb]

Barbie movie tier list: part 3!

We're in the home stretch now! Just 10 more movies until I'm caught up to the newest release. You can find part 1 of the tier list here and part 2 here.

Barbie & Her Sisters in a Puppy Chase (2016): F tier. Mattel really said "Barbie can be anything, including a negligent caretaker!" With 8 talking animals (why!!!) and a complete disregard for shot consistency, this movie is only rescued from a "literal dogshit" rating by the rather sweet climactic moment where Barbie admits that sometimes even she doesn't know what to do.

Barbie: Video Game Hero (2017): D tier. This whole movie felt like a fever dream, honestly. The blocky animation style was kinda cute, and the BGM was nice at times, and one of the characters did say "noob", so...... minimal points for that, I suppose?

Barbie: Dolphin Magic (2017): C tier. The thing that really sucks about Mattel phasing out the "Barbie as" movies in favor of casting her only as herself is that Barbie is no longer allowed to experience any change, lest her character development cause complications for future films in the BCU. This means Barbie is fundamentally unable to play a pivotal (or even active) role in her own movies, and is instead relegated to the sidelines of some other character's A plot -- and yet, to bill the movie as a Barbie movie, Barbie must be given some requisite amount of screentime, which comes at the expense of the A plot's development. As a result, these movies are left feeling stale and underdeveloped, with no stakes and no commitment to the story being told, and Barbie: Dolphin Magic is no exception. No doubt the mermaid crystal given to Barbie by Isla will vanish into the ether between this movie and the next, and Barbie will continue to fret over whether or not she has the right to agency over her own choices. The kleptomaniac crab D plot was pretty funny, though.

Barbie Princess Adventure (2020): A tier. See, Mattel, you can still make awesome Barbie movies if you just full send it! With fun songs, lovely friendships, a meaningful message, and a sweetly awkward Ken, this movie is a worthy homage to the original Princess and the Pauper that nevertheless possesses its own charming identity.

Barbie & Chelsea: The Lost Birthday (2021): D tier. Was this a good movie? No. Was this a fun movie? Also no. Were the songs at least passable? Well, actually.....absolutely not. But there were some highly amusing characters with unique designs, and the silly little gags throughout (like the weird vegan DJ and the beach vampire) did make me chuckle!

Barbie: Big City, Big Dreams (2021): D tier. I begrudgingly appreciate the lack of talking animals, but this was such an absolute nothing-burger contrivance of a movie that I find myself hard pressed to give it points for that. There was no reason this needed to be set in NYC given it did not portray any NYC culture; there was no reason Brooklyn Barbie needed to also be named Barbie; there was no reason for literally anything that happened at any point in the movie! The only redeeming quality of this movie is the pigeons, which were fucking adorable.

[vengelark]

barbie bracket!

in this we are pitting every currently existing movie against each other in order to determine tumblr's favorite barbie movie... round one is as follows (with links to the polls!):

PAIR ONE: BARBIE IN THE NUTCRACKER (2001) v. BARBIE AND THE SECRET DOOR (2014)

PAIR TWO: BARBIE AS RAPUNZEL (2002) v. BARBIE OF SWAN LAKE (2003)

PAIR THREE: BARBIE AS THE PRINCESS AND THE PAUPER (2004) v. BARBIE AS THE ISLAND PRINCESS (2007)

PAIR FOUR: BARBIE AND THE MAGIC OF PEGASUS (2005) v. BARBIE & THE DIAMOND CASTLE (2008)

PAIR FIVE: BARBIE AND THE THREE MUSKETEERS (2009) v. BARBIE: PRINCESS CHARM SCHOOL (2011)

PAIR SIX: BARBIE IN THE 12 DANCING PRINCESSES (2006) v. BARBIE IN THE PINK SHOES (2013)

PAIR SEVEN: BARBIE FAIRYTOPIA (2005) v. BARBIE FAIRYTOPIA: MAGIC OF THE RAINBOW (2007)

PAIR EIGHT: BARBIE FAIRYTOPIA: MERMAIDIA (2006) v. BARBIE IN A MERMAID TALE 1 (2010) AND 2 (2012)

PAIR NINE: BARBIE: MARIPOSA AND HER BUTTERFLY FAIRY FRIENDS (2008) v. BARBIE: MARIPOSA & THE FAIRY PRINCESS (2013)

PAIR TEN: BARBIE PRESENTS THUMBELINA (2009) v. BARBIE: A FAIRY SECRET (2011)

PAIR ELEVEN: BARBIE IN A CHRISTMAS CAROL (2008) v. BARBIE: A PERFECT CHRISTMAS (2011)

PAIR TWELVE: BARBIE: A FASHION FAIRYTALE (2010) v. BARBIE: BIG CITY, BIG DREAMS (2021)

PAIR THIRTEEN: BARBIE THE PRINCESS & THE POPSTAR (2012) v. BARBIE IN ROCK 'N ROYALS (2015)

PAIR FOURTEEN: BARBIE: THE PEARL PRINCESS (2014) v. BARBIE DOLPHIN MAGIC (2017)

PAIR FIFTEEN: BARBIE IN PRINCESS POWER (2015) v. BARBIE PRINCESS ADVENTURE (2020)

PAIR SIXTEEN: BARBIE: SPY SQUAD (2016) v. BARBIE: VIDEO GAME HERO (2017)

PAIR SEVENTEEN: BARBIE & HER SISTERS IN THE GREAT PUPPY ADVENTURE (2015) v. BARBIE & HER SISTERS IN A PUPPY CHASE (2016)

PAIR EIGHTEEN: BARBIE: STAR LIGHT ADVENTURE (2016) v. BARBIE: MERMAID POWER (2022)

PAIR NINETEEN: BARBIE & CHELSEA: THE LOST BIRTHDAY (2021) v. BARBIE: EPIC ROAD TRIP (2022)

[barbiebattle]

[barbie-movies-tournament]

Barbie Movies Tournament: Preliminaries

Hello! Just for fun I thought I'd see what tumblr's favorite Barbie movie is. However, there are not quite the right number of Barbie movies to neatly fit into a tournament, so I've arbitrarily decided that the most recent 16 movies will have to earn their place in the showdown.

Preliminaries will start on Monday at noon EST and polls will be open for one week. The lineup is as follows:

Barbie: Spy Squad VS Barbie: Starlight Adventure

Barbie: Mariposa and the Fairy Princess VS Barbie: Mermaid Power

Barbie in Princess Power VS Barbie Dolphin Magic

Barbie and the Secret Door VS Barbie Princess Adventure

Barbie and Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure VS Barbie and Her Sisters in a Puppy Chase

Barbie and Her Sisters in a Pony Tale VS Barbie: Big City Big Dreams

Barbie in Rock 'N Royals VS Barbie Video Game Hero

Barbie: The Pearl Princess VS Barbie & Chelsea: The Lost Birthday

The 8 winners will enter into the official bracket. I might be persuaded to do a consolation bracket for the 8 movies that lose the preliminaries.

The official bracket will be released after these preliminaries are over. This is my first time doing a tournament so any and all feedback is appreciated. Hope you all enjoy and consider following if you want to participate in all of the polls. Thanks!

[queen-erika-the-songful]

So I refuse to watch Lost Birthday bc when it came out I had fresh birthday trauma from 2020 and I was so, so mad at Mattel for releasing the movie at all. Like from my perspective just from the title it seemed in such poor taste after everything that happened, and angry me thought it was trying to make the real world events grossly cutesy for kids like “Oh it’s not so bad, Chelsea lost her birthday this year too!” minimization. But now seeing it on that meme of yours, I’m curious as to your opinion on why it’s let’s just say not the greatest.

Damn, I never even thought about it that way. That adds a whole new layer to it...

Well, I mostly found it boring with garish colors and questionable character designs (the "tiki head", the monkey, and that goddamned sentient flower). BUT I recognize I wasn't the target audience for that one. It was definitely aimed at the much younger Barbie fans, probably 5-7 range. But I also felt like even as a kid that Barbie movies tried to appeal to a wide audience, at least a wider age range of kids and not just around kindergarten age.

I also can't get past the whole setup for the plot because of how insanely stupid it makes the characters look (this is why I can't stand Puppy Chase, Barbie is so dumb and insensitive). So, Chelsea's birthday is coming up, and George and Margaret take the girls on a big family cruise. Sounds fun, right? Right! But here's the problem: they're going over the international date line. Their parents, a documentarian that travels the world and an intelligent computer programmer working on the very cruise they are taking - did not account for the fact that their 7-year-old-to-be's birthday was going to get skipped over. None of the other sisters notice this either. Chelsea at least has an excuse as the youngest.

The pacing was off too to me. It felt like everything slogged even though it didn't even reach a full hour (58:52 to be exact). Maybe that was just me though.

I also explained in this post that the villain was pretty bad at being bad. Even if he won in the end, everything HE did would've come back onto himself. (Plus his magic world equivalent was an evil tiki head and that seemed kinda racist).

I think it could have been even better if Chelsea and her sisters just sat down and talked about her feelings instead of her having her run away and go on this big journey that turned out just to be a dream anyway. It would have been more helpful to the kids in the audience if the sisters had to work together and think of ways to turn a bad situation into something good (see Barbie: A Perfect Christmas).

Overall I just really didn't like it.

[cantstoptheimagines]

i don't think enough people are talking about that most of the barbie movies were directed by men. while the scripts were usually written by women (not always), the directors were overwhelmingly men.

apart from karen j. lloyd and cassandra mackay/cassi simonds, greta gerwig is the third woman to direct a barbie film. out of the line-up of 43, there are now only four barbie films that have been directed by women, two of which were directed by the same person.

barbie and the secret door (2014) and barbie in rock 'n royals (2015) were both directed by karen j. lloyd,

barbie & chelsea: the lost birthday (2021) was directed by cassandra mackay/cassi simonds,

and the barbie movie (2023) was directed by greta gerwig

let that sink in.