Barbie: A Fairy Secret

"Barbie: A Fairy Secret" is the story of how Barbie discovers that fairies really do exist. When a fairy princess captures her boyfriend Ken, Barbie along with her costar, Raquelle, and two of Barbie's stylists, head out to rescue him from Gloss Angeles, a floating town filled with fairies. I really like the animation in this movie, especially how each of the characters are drawn. Barbie's eyes glisten like jewels and get me into the fairy mood. Each scene bursts with color, like their hangout Wally's.

I also love how every piece of clothing has a modern twist. I wish I could have two fairies as my personal stylists.

The movie also has great music that makes me want to dance.

Barbie is already friends with her two fashion stylists at the beginning of the movie, but is uneasy around her rival Raquelle. Raquelle is jealous of Barbie, so what will happen when they get twisted up in this magical world together?

When Ken is forced to marry fairy princess Graziella he realizes how much he loves Barbie but lots of trouble stands in their way. Don't worry, because Barbie will do anything to get Ken back.

Girls ages two to ten will really enjoy this movie filled with friends, fashion and adventure. Will Raquelle and Barbie ever be friends? How will they get into the magical world? Will they rescue Ken? Find out when you watch "Barbie: a Fairy Secret." Credit: Makai Weber Colvin, Age 9, KIDS FIRST! Film Critic

I think I understand the messages they were trying to get across with this film, women can be heroes, forgiveness and that you have to make an effort with friendship, but all they imaged to get across is that the important things in life are shoes, dresses and boyfriends. Barbie doesn't even care when her two friends leave at the end of the film.

The writers just took the storyline and the characters from Mariposa and A Mermaid Tale, added Ken and some inane dialogue to make it sound clever - "ugh, too many apps". I assume the action figures and merchandising are already available in the foyer??

All the things that made the early Barbie thing special - character development, original storyline, catchy songs, emotion, humour etc are missing. All we're left with is an empty, shallow 70 minutes of bright noise.

Avoid. For your children's sake.

I wanted to like A Fairy Secret, and tried to. But I just couldn't. And this is coming from somebody who actually likes the Barbie movies(especially Nutcracker, Diamond Castle, Island Princess and Prince and the Pauper). But although I haven't yet seen Fashion Fairytale, despite hearing a lot of negative press about that one, I can't imagine until I see it that it will be worse than this. The only redeeming quality for me of A Fairy Secret was the catchy soundtrack, and even that is nowhere near as good as those for Nutcracker, Rapunzel and Swan Lake. I disliked the animation here, entries like Nutcracker, Swan Lake and Diamond Castle have beautiful animation that is full of colour and fluidity, but here the colours are lifeless, the backgrounds blocky and the character designs at their most plastic. The writing focuses far too much on fashion(seemingly fashion is like the most important thing in the world) and behavioural snobbery, and the story instead of being charming with good messages is formulaic and rushed with values of stealing boyfriends and vanity. The characters are no longer cute, but now act like childish brats, especially Ken. Barbie in another of her as...roles is no longer resourceful and kind but now a stereotypical teenager, the anti-thesis of her persona in the first place, in other words she's at her least likable. The voice work is stilted, nobody sounds natural as their characters, granted I wasn't expecting any big names to pop up and practically embody their roles like in Nutcracker, Rapunzel, Swan Lake and Three Musketeers but at least the voice actors could've sounded as though they were bringing some kind of life to the proceedings. Overall, a huge disappointment, I'm expecting little from Fashion Fairytale but I just pray that it isn't worse than this. 2/10 Bethany Cox

I've had the opportunity to see a number of these Barbie flicks and they're uniformly targets at little girls and so portray a fairly formulaic fantasy land of fairies and adventure. By and large I think that kind of story telling is benign in the long run.

This film stood out to me with the bizarre mixture of shopping and royalty. Per the film fairies create out of magic all the stuff in the fancy stores and in fairyland life is portrayed as one endless shopping excursion. For all of the characters their only real 'normal' activity is shopping for stuff (note I didn't say buying as that's never actually a part of the process, just walking around with bags of fashion garments). The rest of the time the characters are in some sort of interpersonal conflict or peril.

Fantasy and play are part of being a kid and that's a grand way for them to experiment with human roles. This peculiar shopping fantasy land and it's direct tie to a excessive vanity is pure mental poison.

I don't know that I would recommend the other Barbie movies but their not cognitively poisonous in relating real world situations like this one.

Barbie: A Fairy Secret is great! The story it tells builds well and is a fun adventure from start to finish. The voice acting is terrific along with the music. The animation is gorgeous and the rivalry to friendship relationship between Raquelle and Barbie is honestly my favorite part. Overall, it's an enjoyable film.