All right, I'm confused. I've believed for the longest time that the Barbie movies are the most dispicable cash-ins, throwing vile characters and by-numbers stories with grotesque animation onto a screen to sell dolls to little girls, espousing only the most reductive of values and lessons about looking your best and wearing pink - far worse than anything released by the Disney Princess line in terms of utter unwatchability and brain-melting ideals. Perhaps that's what the Barbie movies as a whole really are, and I will have to watch more (shudder) to be sure, but The Princess and the Popstar isn't... that.
Oh, it's no hidden masterpiece, to be sure, and they were dead on about the animation, but when it comes to DTV children's movies, I was led to believe the Barbie movies were the absolute bottom of an incredibly deep barrel. But look, I just saw Pup a week ago, and compared to that supposedly more legitimate film, TPATP is nearly redeemable. It still looks like a cutscene from a particularly bad video game from 1997, in fact it looks as if it was animated by people who are aware that humans have limbs and have heard about their movements thirdhand, and its pleasant "be yourself and do it your way" moral loses something when the only humans it cares about are decadent princesses and glamorous pop stars, but on the scale of things, it's not that bad. Believe me, there is a soggy taste in my mouth for saying that.
Anyway, we meet our heroes, Princess Tori (Kelly Sheridan, sung by Jennifer Waris) of the kingdom of Mirabella, and Kira the Popstar (Ashleigh Ball, sung by Tiffany Giardina), who are both dissatisfied with their wonderful, wonderful lives. Tori is being bossed around by her domineering aunt, the Duchess Amelia (Ellie King), who only wants her to be a proper princess and serve her kingdom well. As punishment for basically taking on the roles of both mother and father to the girl (at first I thought her father was dead - nope, he's just completely unimportant and has nothing to do with his daughter's life), Tori uses her magical hairbrush to play awful pranks on her. Oh yes, she has a magical hairbrush. And is a horrible person. Annoyed by the drudgery of standing still and looking pretty that is her entire life's work, she yearns for the freedom and excitement she is certain her favourite pop star enjoys.
Meanwhile, Kira has lost the spark that made singing the joy of her life, what with all the costume changes, choreography and dealing with her sleazy manager Crider (Peter Kalamis), and yearns for the simple ease and luxury enjoyed, she is sure, by the local princess.
A publicity stunt meeting between the two girls affords them an opportunity and a wicked idea - To use Tori's magic brush and Kira's magic microphone (yes, she has one) to switch their creepy interchangeable faces into new hair and outfits for a day so each can enjoy the other's life. Unfortunately that day is the day of Kira's big show, and also the day Tori is supposed to give a speech about the kingdom's anniversary, which neither one is prepared for. Also, Crider has decided to steal Mirabella's secret Diamond Gardenia, a magical bush that funds the kingdom, to finance his own musical dreams. You see, Crider was once the star of an irritating children's show until puberty killed off his beautiful voice, and his career. And look, I can relate. I was once the star of my school's musical production of Oliver until my cherub-like voice cracked opening night, but that didn't make me a bitter budding super villain with an irritating squeaky voice and terrible one-liners... I don't think so anyway.
The Barbie movies have always been ostensibly musicals, and usually that's a sign of bad things to come, but to be honest, the songs in TPATP aren't awful. Credit goes to Giardina, whose dusky voice makes all of Kira's songs, no matter how insipid the lyrics, actually ring with emotion and truth - as much truth as anything sung by Ariana Grande or Selena Gomez anyway (it is pop music after all). Much worse is Waris as Tori - whenever she has a number you can literally hear the Autotune warbling out of the speakers. And aside from one number - the awful "To Be A Princess/To Be A Popstar", in which both Tori and Kira sing about how so much of their lives involve shoes and standing straight and looking gorgeous - the songs all sound like legitimate pop songs. Important, because any movie claiming "Popstar" in the title had better sound at least decent. In fact, Kira's signature number, "Here I Am" is actually really successful, catchy, fun and forgettable, like the best of pop music. It's an earworm, still stuck in my head as I write this, and not a bad one either.
Grace notes intrude all the time on what should be a tremendously awful film - the scene where Tori, forced on stage in Kira's disguise, elects to sing her song unplugged because she knows the words and guitar chords but not the choreography, is the best moment in the entire movie, ringing with pathos and emotion missing from the rest of her entire performance, but there are even a few good jokes. Three, actually, three good jokes, all in the last ten minutes and two of them spoken by Crider's until-now irritating comic sidekick Rupert (Jonathan Holmes). On the other hand, it's so rushed and perfunctory - everybody speaks as if they have exactly seven and a half minutes to perform their lines before they're kicked out of the recording studio. A glaringly bad example is when Kira's talking dog meets Tori's talking dog, and Kira's dog says "Nice digs!" and I thought he said "Nice dicks!"
There are nods to girl-power here and there. Kira and Tori actually find a way to use their ridiculous fashion-magic powers to save the day, and the third really good joke in the whole thing involves the handsome prince "rescuing the damsels" only to find the damsels have run off to save the kingdom, but it always comes back to the fact that this movie is telling little girls to be themselves, as long as they can be glamorous, rich and pretty. It's no accident that there is no "pauper" in this Prince and the Pauper revisioning - you only matter if you're a princess, or a popstar.
Story: I gotta give it this one. 1 Point
Moral: Be Yourself - as long as you're famous and hot. On the other hand, Kira's whispered cheer of "Do it your way" during Tori's show, coming right on the heels of the best part of the movie, speaks louder than that reductive implied message. 0.5 Points
Songs: Better than expected. I'll give it a little more than half. 0.75 Points
Execution: The writers and voice actors tried to make a real movie. The animators didn't, or couldn't. The CGI is nightmare fuel. I've said before, you work with the budget you've got, and I try not to harp on the animation, but I've seen cheaper movies that looked better, so it loses half a point. 0.5 Points
Did My Kids Like It? I'll be honest. I didn't show this to them. I was afraid of what it might teach them. I still haven't decided if I'll let them watch it. Let's be overly fair and strike this category. N/A
Score: 2.75/4, and I'm legitimately sad that the score wasn't worse. I wanted to tear this movie a new one.
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