All right. I know that we promised you an end of the week bonus
Barbenheimer podcast between Mack and I where I see Barbie maxis Oppenheimer. But things
fell through, much like things are falling through Mac right now because he's got
the rhea. So I have go ahead, and I've called in a backup.
I have called in a friend to step in here to talk Barbie with
me, because this fella has also seen Barbie, and that is DJ Bean.
Hi Hi Hi, Hi, Hi? What up? Oh? I
saw that? You are? You just saw Barbie? Correct? I just
saw Barbie and you are bouncing off the wall with excitement. I mean you're
gonna be bouncing off the wall with something after seeing that like that is we'll
talk about it. She she took a swing. There's a lot of swings
in it, massive swings, because there's a lot of different things in the
movie, which is why are we jumping right into it. Let's go ahead
and jump right into this bar be rated pg. Thirteen. It is a
tick under two hours. It feels a little longer than that. Feels longer.
I will say that, especially in the third act. And I actually
like what they did in the third act with the Ken's but also if it's
within the movie, I don't necessarily need it. Like I love how weird
it is and how a lot of the movie is very straightforward, but then
a lot of it is very cartoonish and silly. Yeah, I mean,
and I so this isn't a great movie. I don't think. No,
No, I'm very glad that she made it. And I know I also
have to give no a bomb back credit. But I'm like, this was
Greti Grewig being like, you're giving me a Barbie movie, all right,
like you are giving Superman, Walter White whatever, the person with like with
the ability to do whatever the fuck they want, they put their mind to
it. Yeah, you're giving me a Barbie movie. All right. I'm
gonna give you a freaking Barbie movie. And she went insane with it,
and it wasn't good, but I love that she went insane with it.
That the Taylor Swift album that I celebrate most is Reputation, which I understand
is not a great album, but she tried. She like she could have
done the down the middle, boring Taylor Swift thing that she does a lot,
but she was like, you know what, I want to find out
if I'm a rapper, and I was like, yeah, like you're not,
but good for you for trying. And this takes a lot of swings.
Uh. I agree with you that there was a lot of it that
you're like, you know what not in this movie, but it's cool you're
doing this. There's a lot of it that feels like the twelve fifty five
sketch on SNL where they're just throwing something up against the wall and it's either
really funny or it doesn't stick at all, and you say, okay,
we'll watch next week. I guess right right. It's the It's the the
Tim Robinson slot back pretty much. Yeah, yeah, SNL when they were
like, okay, you want to try to do your weird thing. Maybe
here's where I would cut. By the way, Yes, I'm just getting
rid of La, and I'm getting rid of the mother and the daughter.
I'm getting rid of Will Farrell and all the Mattel executives. Yeah, this,
I totally agree that it's two hours. That feels longer than two hours.
It feel it feels like two and a half to forty. You know
what's weird though, is that you mentioned both of those things and I didn't
necessarily dislike Will Farrell in this movie. I thought that he was fun and
it's it harkens back to like mid two thousands Will Farrell being very, very
silly, and also I like, I mean, we're kind of spoiling here,
but I like the twist of the mother being the one and why then
that's why Barbie has to come there, and it's her losing grasp of her
daughter and wanting to connect with her again with this doll. But they don't
necessarily get into that. They don't explore that at all. They just bring
it in and then they say, all right, now you get off to
the side. Barbie's gonna cry for a while. Totally. They do so
many things at sixty percent, and that I get it, Like this is
a druggy movie. This is and I don't know if drugs were used to
make this movie, but it is a druggy movie. And that it's like,
okay, well we're here, all right now, all right, now,
Ken has a big song. Now this is actually about the fragility of
man. Okay, no, actually it's about the pressure it's put on.
Like I feel like they kept opening up more boxes before they cleaned, before
they closed any of them, and a lot of the box that they opened.
I was like, yo, you know that now as a result of
this, if you're going to make this about like f the patriarchy, which
I'm if you've listened to my podcast, you know I'm generally cool with,
then you also have to tie in the like, Okay, well this is
how I've been treating Ken because we live in the world where we're in charge.
And I actually do like they only spent a second on that being like,
hey, you know what, I wasn't totally cool to you this whole
time, like I should have given you the time to day, etc.
Etc. But I was like, every new twenty minutes that they added,
I felt like was going to cause them to then add another twenty and twenty
and twenty because they kept opening up these boxes and doing them in very un
I understand, it's PG thirteen, so really it's for like twelve year olds,
I know, but they also it feels like they kind of middled what
this movie could have been, because if they had gone with an R rating,
it could have been a lot funnier because I had a lot of ha
moments in this Ken was pretty funny Ryan Gosling as Ken is pretty funny in
this movie. But there's so many moments you're like, Okay, there's a
better joke here, yes, yeah, oh yeah, I'm so glad.
I was afraid that you were gonna be like, what do you talk because
I was gonna say I laughed throughout the movie, but I laughed like,
no, it was hat but not ha ha exactly. I think they were
like two two four ha has, and some of them were great. Some
of them got a little like Adam mckaye, but a lot of them could
have been like a lot of the rest of them. And I'm talking like
seriously, ninety percent of the jokes could have either been punched up or exactly
either punched up to be funnier or just stripped a little bit. And again,
I know that maybe they're shooting for a younger audience. It's quite one
oh one in conveying its messages, Like at one point when and this is
gonna be spoilish, but I think we've already decided this is pretty much just
a spoiler podcast. Sorry, I know it's a this is a reaction just
because after I saw it too, I had so many like and just before
you get to your point. There was a part of this movie where I
was so confused to why Barbie out of nowhere was crying faced out on the
floor, and she's like, I'm ugly, Well, how did we get
to that? Because America Ferrera felt ugly. Yeah, there were a lot
of how did we get to that? So quickly? We're like, logically,
if you're told I'm seeing a movie where Barbie's having an existential crisis,
you understand that there's going to be a part where Barbie's gonna be lying face
down, But there isn't much of a set up to it, and it
just jumps. It makes choices in like crawling from one spot to another,
but they're two insignificant spots and then leaping to a huge thing like oh,
like Barbie's in actual trouble now. And it went from like who am I?
To like shit gets dire real quick. Yeah. I think that a
lot of it is really really, really heavy handed, and just knowing Greta
Gerwig films and knowing that she often explores like feminist themes in less it just
in like she's a fucking awesome filmmaker. Just yes, she does it in
great ways, and she works things in without Like at one point when America
Ferrera started to do the um, the unbrainwashing, the yes yes. When
she first started doing that, I thought that it was mocking, like a
certain type of feminist and I was like, okay, don't be mean.
And then I was like, oh no, like they actually are being that
heavy hand. That was so loud too, that was such a loud Well
first off, I said, it was like the Twitter. I thought it
was mocking like the Twitter. Like, but you said, everything in this
movie is like sixty percent of what it could be, Like there's a lot
of small ideas that just don't pay off, and that part right there,
or even like every part, every part is sixty percent, but everything is
turned up to eleven. So yeah, while while they are giving you these
like like decent jokes, they're just slamming them in your face. Yeah,
yeah, it's um. I was kind of thinking of Boas Afraid while watching
this movie. I was like, the this year has given me two drug
movies that are done in completely different ways. And in the case of Boa
Is Afraid, it's just like, oh yeah, we're gonna keep pushing it.
We're gonna keep pushing it. We're gonna stretch it out further, We're
gonna get weirder, We're gonna get weird, or we're gonna get weirder.
But in the case of Barbie, a lot of it's things it was doing.
I was like, hey, wait, wait, say I like it
here, like a lot of the Barbie Land stuff, the the the I'm
trying to think of how to put it, Like the bizarro spin on Dude's
Rock. Yes, I thought it was so funny, and I was like,
like, let's hang out here for a second and explore, like while
they continue to get their jokes off, explore the ramifications of a world in
which it's just dudes rock like that was. That was really funny. Out
That was like a small stretch where I thought that Ryan Gosling was anything special.
Otherwise throughout the movie, I really kind of thought he was replacement level.
I thought that he was a Scot. Was just gonna say I think
almost everyone, and I mean I might have liked Gosling a little bit more
than you. I think that mid Go Robbie. Oh. I thought this
after being like just kidding, but also so I thought that those two might
have been exactly what they wanted for their roles. But then it's like,
Michael Sarah is Michael Sarah in this movie, but all the cameo barbies,
all of the random Ken's, they could just be anybody playing those roles.
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. And given some of the casting
choices, like for me, you can't put Issa Ray in this movie as
the president and give her like three lines. I was just like waiting.
I was like, all right, so does does Ray make it to la
does she save the day? Here? Like when and there there is like
one moment whereas Rays like, yeah, we figured you all out and everything.
I'm like, at least they gave her that line. I was just
distracted by the lack of of Esa in this movie because I thought there was
a lot more, especially like if you're going for this is supposed to be
a comedy, I believe she's one of the funnier people in the movie.
I do have to shout out the reduced the reduced frequency with which we get
Kate McKinnon these days. Yeah, I think works. I I got massive
Kate McKinnon fatigue, as did all of America, and I thought that she
was good in I thought she was really good in Super Pets, and I
thought that she was really good in this. I thought that she was really
good in the first scene that she was in, and then I didn't need
to go back to her. That could be Kate McKinnon fatigue PTSD, like
Kate McKinnon A bunch again. I'm like, oh, I guess I'm back
in with Kate McKinnon. They're like, oh no, no, maybe we
don't want to do this that much. But she was really good as weird
Barbie. I actually did really like that first scene with her. It wasn't
until they were in La that I was like, oh, this isn't a
very good movie. But also I do appreciate the fact that they only spent
was it, fifteen minutes in La. So I crushingly dropped my phone during
the movie and it was in the seat. But I don't go on my
phone during the movie unless I need to, like really really jot something down.
But I am a constant time checker because I do like to know,
like, all right, it took because the third act. Because I agree
with your earlier point about like once the third act started cooking, you're like,
all right, now this is the meat of the movie. But I
was like, yeah, but but where are we like time wise into the
movie anyway, they didn't spend too much time in LA. But I thought
that it was like maybe could have been eight great minutes and was maybe more
like fifteen or twenty, just because everything in that scene is things that have
been done before. That's the most run of the mill stuff in the movie.
Yeah, I mean, especially where they chose to shoot the stuff in
LA with it being on is that what is that the Santa Monica pear or
is that the well where I go roll blading there every time I go?
But I still couldn't tell you what it is, but that that when you
think La and Beach, that one place. Also not to stand up for
modern Americans because we're quite awful people, but very unrealistic that they would be
that overtly cat called. It's an eighties movie caricature, That's all it is,
right, because I was like, somebody in that group of I mean
one point, somebody sexually assaults her, yes, and then she punches a
guy in the face and she gets in trouble for it, right, and
then she hits them and goes to jail and I was like, I mean,
again, we're we're kind of constantly in a bad place. But I
was like, I feel like some of the stuff that's going on, even
just verbally with even with that when they were talking to Ken, Yeah,
I was like, somebody speaks up and is like, hey, are you
okay? What's going on here? There's no way, there's no way there
would be that lawless of society. And also we are shooting on this movie
maybe more than we should. I don't think it's a terrible movie per se.
And there are parts that I do like, and I do like the
overall message of don't let other people decide what your identity is, and that's
kind of the point by the end, But then I hate as soon as
we decide, like like you know, that's where we get to the final
part of the movie. Is Barbie wanting to be real? Yeah. The
the stuff on in that like studio whatever that's set is where everything where they're
kind of Apple commercial or their their Mac versus PC. Yeah, that I
that was making me once again think boy is afraid? You know. I
was like, so now where in this completely different thing and now it's teaching
you I'm not going to completely spoil it, but some of the questions she's
asking are some general existential questions and then some like logistical and borderline biological questions
that I was like, what really is this movie? I mean, we
also go from this like big stylized pink world to just we're gonna end it
with this white it's just white and plain. Yeah, so I did assume
that was a radical choice on Greta's part, and I do agree with you.
It is worth noting that I think that we're maybe both exploring our agreement
that this isn't a very good movie more so than being like, this movie
was terrible. I think this I clocked it like a C minus, which
there are C minus movies that I love. I don't think I love this
movie. But I, as I said off the top, I do really
respect that Greta Gerwig decided to get as crazy as possible with this. I
have it had about like thirty hot dogs, twenty nine hot dogs. It
isn't it isn't great. It's it's definitely good. It's definitely worth watching.
You obviously want to be a part of the zeit guys, do you want
to talk this This movie is gonna make one hundred and ten hundred and twenty
million in its first weekend, which who would have thought that a Barbie movie
was gonna do that? And I think expectations also might have gotten to us
DJ. Yes, I think that we got into this um like dueling aces
thing with Oppenheimer. And I mean you could say that maybe one hurts the
other, but I don't really think so. I think that both are going
to crush as a result of all this buzz like what's gonna do better this
or that? Like I is gonna be my uh second, I made some
weird pop music reference earlier already forget what it was, but Taylor Swift,
Oh the Taylor Swift thing, all right, Like this is gonna be like
Backstreet Boys and in sync, Like oh no, like Backstreet Boys putting on
an album three months after in sync Bola. It's like, yeah, what's
gonna happen is everybody's going to buy all of them because they want to be
part of this battle. And this is like geist as you said, uh,
it's gonna do very well. As I was watching it, I was
like, this isn't gonna age well, just just generally, like in a
year people are gonna acknowledge it's a bad move. Word of mouth isn't gonna
slow it down, though, because even though you know we don't love it,
it also might not be a movie made for us. We might not
be the target audience here. But on Metacritic it is a must see eighty
one, which is fucking huge. Yeah. I last saw on Rotten Tomatoes
eighty nine, eighty nine. Obviously, this Rotten Tomatoes is just did they
think it was good or bad? Eighty nine. I'd give it a thumbs
up. I'd be a part of like the positive. I'd have a tough
time with that because at at C minus so sixty five is the thumbs down.
Oh okay, so i'd give yeah, So, I guess i'd give
it. You'd be on that bottom end. That's and that's how Rotten Tomatoes
gets you, right whoa okay? So, I mean, and that's why
I think we talked about Air. We were like, this is gonna be
a hundred on Rotten Tomatoes because no one's gonna dislike it so much. There's
so much in this movie that there is to like, well, Air not.
I mean, there is stuff in Barbie to like, but Air is
just totally it's just a consistent knew exactly what it wanted to do and didn't
take any of these big swings that Barbie did Barbie and Barbie didn't necessarily hit
any home runs. So it takes these big swings and it's still only hitting
singles, but it's not necessarily knocking anything out of the park. Yeah,
I mean, there were I'm trying to think the I'll just say there's a
commercial scene that I thought was laugh out loud funny. It was kind of
millennial fan service, I guess, but I still found it really funny,
and there were a few moments that I really did think like that isolated thing
was great, or that isolated joke was really funny. And typically most things
that I thought were great from it other than obviously, like you are right,
it becomes about identity and pick choosing your own destiny and everything like that.
But obviously there's a lot of like feminist themes that are i won't say
baked into it because they are just lathered right on top like you cannot miss
them. So obviously there's good messages in the film, but by and large,
the things that impressed me were like five jokes and them in the third
act just completely going out of their way and like, I'm not the biggest
fan of like the Ken Battle on the Beach, but when it turns into
this no, but when it turns into this weird musical number, I'm sitting
back going, Okay, what what are we doing here? I'm I'm interested
in this And that song wasn't good enough. That song wasn't good enough,
the duelipa song wasn't good enough. Like they all felt found in and I
so I did, yes exactly. I did like the opening Lizzo song and
how she flipped it. And that's like at the end of like the first
act, when Barbie started to like, you know, feel that things were
different they at least some fun with that. I thought that was going to
be more of a thing it was. I mean, again, without spoiling.
In comedy, there's a rule of a certain number, and that it
didn't get to that key to comedy is repetition. Repetition is the key to
comedy. The key to comedy is repetition. I love and this was in
the closing credits of the song spoilers, Uh I did love the Nicki Minaj
and Ice Spice song, just because I thought, I think the line it
girls and we ain't playing tag is like the best line from a song maybe
in world history. You see it's girls, but we're not playing tag.
When you tag somebody, you say you're it. They're saying no, no,
no, we're We're in fashion, is what we're saying when we're it.
Girls. Sorry for spoiling the movie there, that's what they mean by
it. That is the whole movie right there. Yeah, that they're not
playing tag. You find by the end of the movie that they're not playing
tag, like oh so like when they went to La Okay, I got
it. Yeah, they weren't playing tag at all in that movie. Um.
Yeah. The songs generally though, weren't good enough. A lipa in
general in this movie wasn't great. So weird the music and even her just
delivering the line of high Barbie so green it was weird and like maybe literally
but it just seemed like such a remote job that she was always she was
never in the same shot as the rest of them. It's always often the
distance in the water spoilers saying hi Barbie. Like people are going to look
back on this movie and I don't recommend anybody do drugs, but I think
like, maybe this is a movie people will be like, oh, let's
do whatever our weapon of choices and watch Barbie, because otherwise, with the
clear head and just I coke in my hand, I was like, uh,
yis I watched it at So I was a brag. I was at
an influencer screening and I believe that I was. I might have been the
only guy there possibly, I think there are like two or three other guys
there. It was mainly a female audience, and walking out as people were
talking to the you know, the person that invited us there, and generally
you do say nicer things to them as you leave, but everyone's like,
I loved it. That was a great movie. That was so fun.
And I'm curious if is it more just women enjoy this movie more or was
it you got swept up in being there and then as you're leaving you kind
of think it through. Because my first thought when I left first off was
I wish I saw Oppenheimer. But then my second thought was that was interesting.
I didn't think it was good. I didn't think it was bad,
but there were interesting parts to it. But I was never like, oh,
that was great, that was an amazing time. Ad by all,
I'll give it interesting. My tweet was it was ambitious and a mess.
Yeah, and that's it's not about. Like again, there's a lot of
good things that are messes. I like not following a blueprint and maybe herky
jerky direction. I like that in music, I like that in everything.
So but it's still a mess. It still is all over the place.
My audience, I would say, was if I had to guess, predominantly
mail but and there was a lot of clapping, that's the worst. There
was a projector malfunction, so the screen was just stuck for like ten fifteen,
twenty minutes, and once we realized something was wrong, somebody in the
audience said the world wasn't ready Paul the Gastanza perfect. Yeah. I was
like, yo, yeah, yeah, yeah, but like you just fucking
won. What a line. We're all gonna be jealousy you forever, but
truly, I mean you said people are gonna like want to be in on
the zeitgeist and everything. I felt bad for not being super excited for either
of these movies, but going into it today I was like, yo,
I am jazz for this movie and sitting down to it in that packed theater
with a bunch of people who were just hyped up. The theater projector breaks
and someone's like, yeah, that's what the bitch world eight ready for this?
I was like, fuck, yeah, that's who was Barbie Shit,
I'm here to experience this with all these people. Yeah, And I'm I'm
typically not a he huge like opening night guy or big packed theater guy.
I like to slouchin at two pm, like three days after it came out,
or maybe a screener that no one really cares about. I don't know.
I just like the I like the low stakes watches. But every now
and that, it's fun to get to a movie that feels like an event.
And if you see this movie on opening weekend, it is going to
feel like an event. So that's a plus in and of itself. Yeah.
And then if I'm just comparing it to comedies on the year, because
this is a comedy, right, I think it has to be. Yeah.
I mean I haven't, especially if we're looking at laughs at home run
laughs. Have you seen joy Ride yet? No? So both the movies
I've seen this year, joy Ride is definitely has more of the home run
laughs. I think it actually has a little more heart at the end of
the movie as well. Also, when I saw that movie, the projector
that I was there also, so WHOA, So I don't know what's happening
there BlackBerry. If we're considering that a comedy, I would take that over
this. BlackBerry is amazing. Or if we're considering that a comedy, I
would take that over this, and then Guardians of the Galaxy Volume three.
I don't know if we're considering that a comedy. Everything is so outside of
joy Ride here. Everything is so like it has humorous aspects to it,
but nothing is straight comedy. Yeah, I'm trying to think of straight comedies
that I saw. I saw I thought that the Machine wasn't bad. See
that, yet I thought that was going to be a waste of time.
So when I say it wasn't bad, it was better than I expected.
It wasn't a complete waste of time. And I'm not a massive consumer of
Bert Kreischer's comedy, So maybe if you've seen one or two of his jokes
before, you'll see it and be like, oh, this is tired.
But I don't know if i've seen Sure, everyone's seeing that one. Yeah,
but like I haven't seen so much of his stuff that I felt tuckered
out by it. So but like as comedies go, it's not great for
twenty twenty three comedy DJ I crave, but I also crave rated our comedies
that just like we are starting feelings, I would say, we are starting
to get more of them. I have not seen no hard feelings. Mac
did enjoy it quite a bit. It's not bad. Yeah, it's not
bad. He says that it harkens back to like a mid two thousands comedy,
which, right, really, that's all we can ask for right now,
right if you want. I mean, the last two years, I
feel like the only like raunchy comedies we've gotten have been that. And in
this obviously dipped way more into rom comment points. But I thought that bros
had some like good old fashioned, like sit in the theater and actually laugh
moments that have maybe been escaping us the last decade. I would say that.
And Palm Springs, oh right, Palm Springs is great. Yeah,
you might have forgotten about because you had to watch it at home, right
exactly, I was gonna say, I remember where I was, and it
was my coach on Hulu. Sometimes I'm assuming that everyone's gonna see this movie.
There's really nothing that I, you know, chould have said that it
was terrible. Everyone's gonna see it anyways. I think everyone also has already
picked which side they're on. I was right down the middle, but I
was leaning more towards Oppenheimer. Now I still haven't seen Oppenheimer yet. I'm
so jazzed to see Oppenheimer and Mack and I will have a double Barbie Oppenheimer
podcast maybe at the end of next week or the beginning of the week after,
and then I know I'm on vacation coming up here. Mac will do
a Secret Invasion slash news dump coming up on this Monday, and then we'll
also do something Secret Invasion coming up either at the end of next week or
the beginning of the week after. It'll be one of the two with Barbenheimer,
but we'll figure out our schedule. Hey, DJ, where can the
people find you? You may find me on the Brunch podcast, of course,
just type in brunch somewhere and you'll find it. It was pointed out
to me recently that all of my social media have different handles, so I
apologize for that. I really care mostly these days about growing my Instagram and
my TikTok. So my Instagram is d E E and then just keep hitting
E. It's the worst, but I'm verified and if I change it,
I lose the check mark. It's a nightmare. So DJ on Instagram and
Brave Dave Bean on TikTok. You can follow Mac and Goo on all of
those social medias as well. Also, we have some new shirts up on
that's a chunky on t public dot com, but we'll be changing the name
of the site by the end of this week the beginning of next week.
Two shirt Brothers got a bunch of new stuff up there. Very very excited.
That's amazing, selling like hotcakes right now. So DJ, thank you
for joining me. Have you on again the next time that Mac is feeling
ill? Yes, anytime. I am always very very grateful to sub in.
Everyone go and listen to brunch and now it's time for girls jumping on
t appolins. Please flip the cassette over to side B to continue the adventure.