Kid's Show Logic
No Amount of Talking Animals Can Save Barbie - 10.16.07
Ellie
I really wanted Barbie to say 'Shut up and stop whining! It's camp, for heaven's sake!' but I guess I was being a bit too optimistic.
Hey, everyone. Sorry about the delay between halves of this column, but something happened. I'm still not sure what. I either got a cold, or had a demon named Zuul possessing my body. Of course, to the students of Sunnydale High, those two events are equally plausible.
Anyway, as I mentioned in my last column, in addition to The Nutcracker, Barbie has tackled several other classic stories: Swan Lake, The Prince and the Pauper, and Rapunzel—all three of which I plan to discuss in the next nine hundred eighteen words.
Barbie of Swan Lake, starring Barbie as Odette, is the most comparatively solid film on Barbie's resumé—but given how utterly, depressingly bad the others were, that says very little. Again, it begins with Barbie counseling Bratty-Kelly, who is nervous about running a race at camp the next day. I really wanted Barbie to say "Shut up and stop whining! It's camp, for heaven's sake!" but I guess I was being a bit too optimistic.
Keeping with the tradition of having a famous person as the villain, Kelsey Grammer plays Rothbart, the one responsible for turning Odette into a swan. Rothbart's daughter, Odile, is voiced by someone whose name I don't recognize, but she's apparently been a forgettable guest star on numerous sitcoms.
There was actually a very solid cast of secondary characters in this one: a group of children who could turn into animals. The ones featured most frequently were a French skunk girl, and a porcupine boy with the most geographically confused accent I've ever heard in my life. I think he was supposed to be Russian, because he's credited as Ivan, but I could be mistaken. Skunk girl and Ivan were involved in a romantic relationship, which was disturbingly inappropriate given that they both looked to be about five years old.
In addition to the creepy five year olds, there was a truly obnoxious talking unicorn. I can't remember anything about her except that she was even brattier than Kelly, which says quite a bit.
I should probably mention that the ending is significantly different from the ballet, and Odette lives to the end of the movie and marries the prince. Oh, look, I just did.
For Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper, Martin Short fills the role of the villain, Preminger, who wants to marry the terminally idiotic princess, Anneliese, for money and the crown. Well, at least he doesn't want her for her personality, which is more than I can say for her romantic interest: her tutor Julian, played by Ken and voiced by an actor from Battlestar Galactica.
Mattel really got wacky in this movie, because there were two Barbies. Yes! Two! They switch places! And one's a brunette! That's just nuts! If you're wondering how a brunette and a blonde manage to switch places, the brunette (called Erika, and much smarter than her blonde counterpart) puts on a wig. They don't show enough of a closeup, but I'd be willing to bet money that the tag on the wig says "deus ex machina."
In addition to their differing appearances, the two girls were given different personalities. Whoa, slow down Mattel! One thing at a time! Erika was a singer, and got all the good songs in the movie. Oh, did I neglect to mention? This one's a musical! Only the best for you, kids! Anneliese was not only stupid, but boring, and spent all her time studying rocks. Seriously.
Of course, to add some sort of drama, Mattel gives us a plot. The kingdom is bankrupt and the brain dead princess is supposed to marry a king from a neighboring kingdom (played by Ken, called Dominick, and much smarter than his tutor counterpart). The king mistakenly falls in love with the more interesting and intelligent Erika, which makes me wonder how much of a mistake it really was.
The film ends abruptly with the girls marrying their respective Kens, so everyone's royal by the end. The movie should have been called The Princess and the Eventual (But Not Right Away Due to Numerous Cinematic Hardships) Queen. Because everyone knows, you can't be cool unless you either are royal, or marry into a royal family.
This ending was so sudden that I don't believe it was really the end. It was just way too easy, even for Mattel. For example, the money problems in the kingdom were solved in point-two seconds of screen time by Anneliese's rock obsession, and they started a geode mine. I honestly don't know how that would work, as geodes are more akin to paperweights than they are to any sort of currency.
My guess is that they only told Anneliese that the geodes saved the kingdom, and they actually took out a loan with seventeen percent interest with Erika and Dominick's kingdom. However, with no actual source of income, they were unable to pay back the loan and the castle, which had been named as collateral, was seized by Erika's kingdom and Anneliese and Julian were forced to live on the streets. But at least they had a neverending supply of paperweights!
Finally, we come to the last movie on my list, Barbie as Rapunzel, which again features a bratty Kelly, a famous person as the villain (Anjelica Huston as an evil witch. How unusual!), and romance with royalty. This movie really takes the cake as far as annoying talking animals go, as Rapunzel has both a wimpy talking rabbit and a bratty talking dragon.
It also wins as far as discrepancies between the original story and Barbie's version go. The witch was actually a shunned lover of Rapunzel's father, King Wilhelm of the kingdom next door. She took Rapunzel because she really wanted a daughter to abuse, apparently. Wilhelm spent the movie in a war with Love Interest Ken's father, King Frederick, because he thought that Frederick had stolen his daughter for mysterious, never-disclosed reasons. Rapunzel married Ken, the kingdoms reconciled, I felt nauseous, and Anjelika Huston was never seen again.
Another happy ending.
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