Current Events > Barbie: Princess Adventure

(+) Yeah! (+)

This iteration had more potential than any of the numerous Prince and the Pauper yarns the Barbie franchise has produced, as well as having the most intriguing plot set-up of any Barbie movie so far.

Though 'Barbie & Her Sisters in A Puppy Chase (2016)' was far more tedious, 'Princess Adventure' promised the most, yet produced most flaccid result. This also may have been the most cartoonish entry so far: the kick & step on the horse followed by the horse doing a front flip got a new tone of balk out of me.

-Spoilers-

Sheltered Floravian Princess Amelia, with long blond wavy hair, is kept under careful watch and media curation by her regent, Alfonso. Amelia will ascend to the throne in a matter of days, but feels she has never lived and, therefore, will make a poor ruler. She's also a huge fan of the influencer, Barbie. While watching a video on Barbie's channel, Amelia noticed that when Barbie put on a long blond wavy wig, she looked like Amelia. She creates a pretense to get the stars of Barbie's vlog to Floravia.

Barbie is your average eldest daughter of a multi-millionaire Mormon family living in Malibu with her family, five or more dogs, a cat, naturally long blond wavy hair, and the horse they don't board. She runs a social media channel for fun. A major aggregator calls Barbie and wants to host her videos on her channel, but wants a sample piece of explosive content first. Barbie thinks the sweepstakes trip she never entered and won is the perfect opportunity.

Upon arrival to the palace, Barbie's smuggled, leashless dog runs into a forbidden wing and introduces the two teen protagonists. Barbie, having kept her vision of the future too wide, has never settled onto a career. Therefore, she takes up Amelia's ploy to switch places at once.

Amelia mopeds away from the castle and is spied by a guard, but nothing ever comes of it. Little comes from her mopedding away, as we don't revisit the princess's adventure until extremely late in the second act.

Barbie goes to a precoronation boat party and talks loudly at the snack table with her friends about being an imposter. The charming, indulgent, sweet, eager, fun-loving, well-groomed, generous, tolerant, chatty, nostalgic, affectionate Prince Johan raves to spend time with er. In a thrilling subversion of precedent, he is not her betrothed. Rather, he is her childhood friend from a neighboring kingdom who will do a ritualistic dance with her to formalize the surrender of his country to hers as she ascends to the dual throne.

So far, Barbie hasn't found anything worthy of filming. For some reason, Amelia is not taking over Barbie's vlogging duties the way Barbie has taken over Amelia's royal ones.

When the gang get home, Regent Alfonso is furious. Barbie wore her 'Barbie' nametag necklace throughout the whole party. Girl, didn't you shower to get ready? Alfonso gets the story pulled from the media. She's permitted to continue the charade because Alfonso needs someone that looks like Amelia around until the real one can be found.

Ken wants to tell Barbie he likes her. He doesn't get to. This is a feature of the movies now, so there's not much to say about it other than at least two screen minutes of that could have gone to showing us the princess adventure. Mattel has neutered the sexual tension between Ken and Barbie and now they're just wistful, lovelorn neighbors who trip over themselves with 80s-style "no, no, oh, no, we're not, no, not us, him, me, no."

Barbie gets yelled at for not having produced any content. She films an interview with Amelia to be posted after the coronation.

Amelia is missing. JOHAN DID IT!

The aggregator splices the exclusive interview Barbie got with an ascendant princess to instead look like Barbie is alone and calling herself a YASS Kween. I'm doubting the revenue potential of this aggregator's channel.

Girl Power and/or Friendship saves the day and I think there's some parkour. The dog surely escapes again for Rube Goldberg antics that lead to arrests.

Barbie cuts her verbal contract with the aggregator. Johan is deposed/arrested. Alfonso apologizes and hooks up with Barbie's teacher off screen. I assume Johanistan still cedes to Floravia as planned. Amelia tells Alfonso that from now on, she'll be running a royal vlog, so that the people of Floravia can hear her message directly, not from him, or the advisors or anyone else. We'll always be friends forever.

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Princess Amelia, as a Good character, is totally wasted. She gets no screen time exploring the city or learning about Life. Her 'what I know now' monologue at the end is about ice cream (and "so much more").

Given that she secretly orchestrated for eight minors from a foreign nation to visit and live in the palace, unvetted, in order to install a lookalike pretender to the throne on the eve of a peace treaty, it was right of Regent Alfonso to try to protect Amelia from herself. Madness must run in the family. Her parents, presumably, are dead or imprisoned as part of the treaty between Floravia and Johanistan (yes, that's the other kingdom's name; I wasn't being cute).

In the more interesting aspects of her as a potential Villain, her budding authoritarian tendencies were overlooked entirely by the plot. Floravia, stated to be in the end stages of a successful annexation, is a marked departure from the other fictional White kingdoms Barbie and her proxies find themselves in. Architectural differences within the palace compared with other movies indicate more of a push by Mattel into Russian markets, as does Amelia's hairstyle and the few Floravian city street backgrounds we see.

Prince Johan's arc was formulaic, to say the least. The narrative undermined the righteousness of his mission, as well as doing too little to disabuse the audience of his earlier affability. He could have been a complex villain or even a seems-bad-but-turns-out-is-a-chill-bro character. At no point does the movie suggest that the surrender of Johanistan is unfair, nor that it is an ancient formality being tied up.

Snaps to the songs 'Try It On' and 'King of the Kingdom.' Though, in a crucial failing, 'Try It On' as a power motto only works within the metaframing of how the Barbie franchise works; for anyone else, the correct inspirational admonition would be 'Try It Out.' However, this did open up the delightful possibility that in the lateral universe of Team Roberts, Barbie is in the frequent habit of showing up to school dressed in the full regalia of a distinct career.

If you're wondering, the best version Prince and Pauper they've made was simply the original 'Princess and the Pauper (2004).' 'Barbie & Her Sisters in The Great Puppy Adventure (2015)' is quite possibly the saddest Barbie movie, but that tale of capitalism and the death of children's whimsy is for another day.

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