Barbie: Princess Charm School

phenomenal movie, no notes.

When I tell you I was OBSESSED with this movie when I was little. Believe it. It’s relatable and hopeful. It gives dreamers something to dream about. Oh to have gone to Princess Charm School! Sigh…now this 20 something year old wants to watch it again…again!!

10/10

Fun movie!

My baby love Barbie movies

Barbie movies have been going downhill for the most part, but I was pleasantly surprised with Princess Charm Academy. This film mixes traditional fairy tale stuff like magic and fairies with modern day amenities like broadcast television and Starbucks. Once a year, princesses go to a charm school. If they pass, they "earn" their titles of princess. Certain girls born commoners go as well for a chance to be selected as a "lady royal"--an adviser to the princess. In Gardenia, one commoner girl is selected each year by lottery to attend the school for a chance to be a lady royal, and this year coffee house waitress Blair Willow (Barbie) is selected. Blair doesn't want to go to charm school because she has a little sister and their adoptive mother is sick. The little sister entered her, and Blair changes her mind after talking to her family. She is promptly whisked away to princess charm school for a chance to be a lady royal. A lot of Mean Girls type of stuff happens, Blair discovers she is the long lost princess and true heir to the Gardenian throne, and learns about self-confidence and other life lessons. The villain gets her comeuppance, Blair gets her crown and she makes friends with her young rival, Delancy. Blair's mother (who is looking better by this point) and little sister move into the palace and all ends well. One petite irritation was the Men In Grey (Secret Service pastiches). Most have voices like that OOM PA PA MOW MOW guy in the Oak Ridge Boys with Scottish accents, and very little patience. Somewhere along the line Gardenia must have conquered The 300 or an island of soccer hooligans. (I really want to see a copy of the school handbook, because the academy seems to pull rules and policies out of nowhere.) Also, each student (and teacher apparently) at the academy has a little fairy helper. These recycled Twillerbees seem to be "good" or "bad" depending on the person to whom they're assigned. This cast of extras has Star Wars Storm Trooper Accuracy(tm), but only at critical moments in the plot. So I guess soft living in the Kingdom of Pinkness is eroding their mad minion skills. However, I especially liked Alexandra Privet, who was the embodiment of a true lady. She was a great role model and a very likable character. I want to address some of the more serious problem points in this movie. Yes, a lot of class time is spent on things like walking with a book on your head, table manners, dancing and other matters of deportment. I never saw Barbie sitting in a class on political science, but they never said things like that weren't included or weren't important, either. An entire montage is spent on Barbie doing homework, including extra work on the fluff like dancing. This movie is targeted at 5 year olds; unless you can figure out how to coat a pre-law curriculum in pink glitter and combine it with at least a few girly things, I don't think it's going to hold their attention for very long, and that may go for a few boys that age as well. Also, considering the behavior I see from kids AND adults these days, I think a few lessons in etiquette and wanting to emulate polite, well-behaved characters couldn't possibly hurt anyone. Princess and lady royal are not the only career paths shown in the film. Barbie's room mates are a soccer player and a DJ, two hobbies/careers that are not traditional "girlie" activities. The soccer player does some pretty impressive gymnastics, and the DJ uses her musical skills to get them out of a jam. The teachers and the leader at the academy are all women and it's never mentioned anywhere that there are career paths girls can't take. The only way I found this movie sexist was that it appeared that only a female could take the position of monarch, at least in Gardenia. There was a male academy to provide dance partners in classes and a love interest for Barbie, but that was the extent of boys in the movie (aside from the soccer hooligan guards). I find it difficult to believe that these are major issues when the main villain eliminated two people in a car crash, lies, plants evidence, wrongly detains three minors, attempts to usurp the Gardenian throne, hides the fact that Blair is the rightful heir, has plans to leave an unknown number of poor people homeless with a landscape beautification project, and is just an all-around nasty woman. One of the people she eliminated was likely her own brother from the way her relation to the royal family was described, and Blair was her niece (who she also tried to eliminate). This isn't the first Barbie villain to be guilty of this sort of thing, but are tea and dance lessons really more appalling than all that? This is the first Barbie movie I've actually liked in a long time after a myriad of unwatchable fluff and even overt attempts at political activism. I miss Kelly Sheridan as the voice of Barbie, songs like Princess and the Pauper, and frankly, the characters move like The Sims. Mattel can do better, but they've done much worse. This is a definite improvement over many of its recent predecessors, and I think kids and adults will both enjoy it.

A very cute movie for kids. My sister loved this as a kid and now my daughters.

Love it