*Shrug* caught it yesterday with a friend. And I don't agree with Drinker, who I agree with a lot of the time, that the film is "hateful" to men; more like it's more feminist than I was expecting - at least the men in the audience were laughing while the little kids were getting bored.
This film packs a lot in and I'll agree with whatever professional critic who said the film starts to bog down in the second half, from what seemed to have been touted as a light and breezy movie. Which is where I started feeling tired, there's so much of the "messaging" in media, banging me in the head. I feel like "no *&^%?" anymore.
Or, if I had known ahead of time, I wouldn't have bothered, tho the movie IMO is B to B+ overall. Great sets/visuals, lots of cheekiness like taking shots at Mattel, great performances, Ryan Gosling is a scene stealer, Simu Liu is hilarious, Kate McKinnon is awesome, Margot is a beautiful, talented woman perfect in the role, kudos there. It's not that the serious stuff is bad, or inaccurate, or even badly written - it's just IMO an overload from what people might expect, and it's imbalanced, coz it doesn't delve enough into what MEN deal with. It could have, but it didn't. Ken's arc alone was worth exploring on that score, but it's barely touched on in favor of humor most of the time.
Suspect that this will see more of a box office drop once folks figure out, no, don't take small children to this, no, doubt older boys will get a lot out of this, no, don't go in thinking it's all fun.
And why does a film need to have a progressive message at all? Why can't they just be fun and organically written? The reasons why films didn't get this much blowback decades ago, even though they do have elements which would be described as part of "The message" today (Marion Ravenwood, Leia, and Sarah Connor all being strong willed as well as physically strong) is because they were written that way as an organic service to the story....
Well, yeah, basically. IMO that's why my friend and I just sort of sat after the credits rolled, nobody clapped, tho IMO this is a well-made movie with excellent performances. Gawd, I miss the good 'ol days of Cap and Natasha, or even Tony and Pepper.