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The Barbie Movie is continuing to outperform outperform predictions, as millions of women and gay men excitedly charge into cinemas right around the world, and straight men excitedly force themselves to walk a bit slower.
After grossing over $200 million at the domestic box office in the opening, Barbie has already surpassed “John Wick: Chapter 4” ($187 million) as the seventh-highest grossing movie of the year and will soon overlap Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” ($214.5 million) as the sixth.
But again, this is only the opening week.
The young-adult fantasy comedy, featuring Margot Robbie as a stereotypical blonde protagonist has also done big numbers overseas – where the the doll has been equally popular for generations.
So far, Barbie has grossed more than $400 million globally. These are big returns on the $145 million project that has rewritten the book on film marketing – with social media feeds, billboards and enormous activation events painted hot pink for weeks.
The roar of snowflake conservative commentators who argue that the film is ‘man-hating propaganda’ has only resulted in more and more bums on seats, as even kids who grew up with train sets and army figures rush to see what the hype is all about.
One of these inquisitive Barbie tourists is local Betoota bloke, Shayde Cuttersely (27), who half-insisted his girlfriend ‘take him’ to see it.
“It’s an interesting story” says Shayde, who is now questioning his role in society as a decent looking bloke who is noticeably outshone by a high-functioning female partner.
“But yeah. I expected a bit more carnage. Dunno why… But I assumed Barbieworld would go up in flames at some point”
As a former juvenile delinquent only-boy in a family of sisters, Shayde is of course referring to his most fond memory of the Mattel products.
Namely, his childhood pyromaniacal desires to burn his sisters treasured toys with his dad’s deoderant spray and a lighter he stole from nan.
“I was expecting to see Ken turned into a skin coloured pile of ooze” he says, as he reminisces on the great blaze on 2003.
“They didn’t even have any scenes where all of Ken’s limbs got twisted back to front”
“Other than that… It was pretty good. The missus made me go haha”
