Review: Barbie – A Fashion Fairytale

Hopefully, the lifestyle of Barbie is so far removed from everyday life in the UK, that children will see this as the fairytale it is.

Parents will hate this. The beautiful and perfectly proportioned Barbie will excite pre-pubescent boys and have those all-things-pink worshipping girls enchanted for an hour. But on reflection, the images of perfection and riches is not that far away from the world of Cinderella and other illustrations from the hardback Ladybird Easy-Reading books published between the sixties and eighties.

Barbie is fired from her acting job and heads off to Paris after being fooled into thinking boyfriend Ken has dumped her.

Upon discovering her aunt’s fashion house is about to close, Barbie along with three Flairies and various other Trademarked characters create a fashion show. Ken does the big romantic gesture of flying to Paris to find her.

Of course, it’s all fairytale fun. In reality a bloke is more likely to send Barbie a drunken text at 3am. Perhaps even go as far as to post on Twitter or Facebook.

Vivienne Westwood she is not, but this animated film is good enough at entertaining those girly eight year olds on a wet Saturday afternoon. It’s well animated, the storyline holds together and the characters very knowingly created. It practically so twitters with every must-have item of girl-tech and features talking dogs.

But, every copy must be accompanied with the parental advice that higher education is the main way to achieve goals and the last sixty years of feminism not to be forgotten.

Barbie – A Fashion Fairytale out now
£14.99

Running time 1 hour 30 minutes
Extra features include:
Outtakes
Two music videos
Featurette – I can be … A Fashion Designer