Minimum Age: 3

Maximum Age: 9

Categories: Hmmm

Test drive: My daughter played it over and over. My son watched it a few times. Grownups: This is an exception to my “watch with your kids” selection, the reasons explained below. It’s easy on the ears the first five times, and may be eyed occasionally from the safety of the next room.

Please hear me out (before you preemptively unfollow me)!

In the early 2000s, Barbie jumped into the business of computer-animated movies with something like a good idea: they recreated classic stories, but each functioning as a door to a certain art. Thus they produced, if memory serves, a Nutcraker and a Swan’s Lake focused on ballet, and Rapunzel that painted. The storylines were unremarkable, and the quality of their animation was consistently below industry standards, but with pretty dresses, “cute” by-the-book animal sidekicks, and the occasional appearance of weird big-headed children, it hit the mark with toddlers and young girls who couldn’t know better. And, truth be told, they made an earnest effort to add some “culture” into the dough. (My daughter learned some notions about classic paintings by digging into the special features.)

None of those movies, however, would make it into this list as something that grownups can enjoy together with their children. Unless, of course, you are the kind of grownup that enjoys being hit on the head repeatedly with a pink bat sprinkled with powdered sugar.

But perhaps an exception can be made about Barbie Princess and the Pauper. In this one, the producers tackled the musical genre. There’s here a plot to take over the kingdom, two girls—a princess and a seamstress—trying to find love and meaning in what they do, and a few cat sidekicks, a la Cinderella. (You should be warned: One of the cats barks, Barbie’s idea of a lesson about Accepting Those That are Different.)

To their merit, the music is not terrible. Worse perhaps, the voices are well cast, and the songs are awfully catchy.

But here’s the important thing:

The standard “message” of Disney productions at the time was something on the lines of “If you are feeling frustrated, it’s because your parents are dumb and don’t let you to follow your feelings. So do whatever you feel like, and think of no one else. Oh, and marry a prince or someone handsome.”
By comparison, the “message” of this movie is surprisingly mature! The girls must listen to their calling. It may not be what they originally wanted, but it may be bigger than them, so they must adapt, and sometimes accept it, and make the best of it. Oh, and marrying a handsome guy will not be the solution to all your problems: concentrate on finding yourself first, and your place in the world.

Really. Don’t you wish the Disney executives had taken a page from them?

Furthermore, even the painfully catchy lyrics have a few neat moments. When one of the girls sings to her barking-cat:

“There is not a hair of you that I would rearrange
I love you the way you are, and that will never change,”

I can’t help thinking, “that’s exactly what I would tell my daughter!”

(Though not to that weird cat. Yeesh.)

Bottom line, you will probably not want to sit through this one—I never could—but it’s worth eyeing it every now and then from the safety of a corner.

* * * *

After P&P, Barbie did one more of those (The 12 Dancing Princesses), and then dropped the formula. They exchanged their computers for even older computers, by the looks of it, and began turning in some fairytopia and mermaidia stories that are even worse than they sound. By then, thankfully, my daughter was critical enough to realize that there were other things out there worth her time.

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