blytheandferb-10967 Review of Barbie and the Secret Door

Barbie and the Secret Door (2014)

A Second Draft Was Needed To Avoid Unfortunate Implications

[1/10 · 6 August 2022]

There's quite a few things wrong with this movie, boiling down to story (things that are either unexplained, go on for too long, or are resolved too quickly), characters, music, entertainment, and animation. If it was just that, I'd give this a 5/10 since there would be nothing technically wrong. It would just be unengaging. However, there's a big red flag when it comes to unfortunate implications, and it all comes down to the antagonist. She's a disabled child trying to commit an equivalent of genocide. Let me explain that a little better. Princess Malucia (the "antagonist") Is a child in a fantasy world. According to other characters in the movie, Malucia is the only princess to ever be born without magic in this world; everyone else, including the civilians, has magic. Therefore, by the logic of the movie, she is a disabled child. This doesn't make her taking everyone's magic away to keep for herself okay in any way, but we have to remember that she's like 8 and spoiled so badly that she doesn't understand why her actions are wrong. During her song, Malucia spouts some lyrics that I find very disturbing for a child to say such as "But you'll still get around 'cause you can crawl" and "It might just leave you curled up in a ball". One can only conclude this is the influence of her awful parents who, in my opinion, are the real villains in this story. However none of this compares to the awful conclusion our protagonist comes to when trying to give everyone their magic back. Instead of handling things like an adult (well, she's 17, but you get the idea) Princess Alexa decides to deceive Malucia by giving her all of her magic as well, shattering the wand containing all of the magic and sending the child flying backwards where she hits her head on a chair and is hit in the face by a very large cake. When this is over, Alexa shows no concern for the literal disabled child she just injured and even remarks much later "I wonder what happened to Malucia." Because she cared so little about the consequences of her actions, she didn't even check to see if Malucia was okay. It is later implied that Malucia has done this multiple times. I don't have anything else to say. This is just bad.