Post 15, and no I'm not suffering from any more illness nor has said illness caused me to blow a gasket; every so often I like to challenge myself to review something that's out of my comfort zone in the hopes of finding something that might surprise me but sadly not in this review as you will find out.

Barbie to most people is a fashion doll designed for little girls but in an attempt to stay relevant in the 00s, a number of CGI films were made to try and promote the character in a better light to try and stop her fading popularity and appeal, the results are generally from mediocre to terrible, this film, Barbie and the Three Musketeers is on the terrible scale.
Barbie is Corinne, a country girl who wants to be a Musketeer, so in the hopes of becoming said Musketeer she travels to Paris with a letter for the Musketeer captain but her initial impressions only lands her a job as a maid along with three other girls wanting to be Musketeers as well. During an incident involving a chandelier which showcases some of the girls talents for fighting, an elder maid named Helen decides to train them in secret.
After another incident, this time involving the Prince, everyone decides to go out into the streets to investigate but during an altercation in a dark alley, Corinne works out that the attacker holds a Ruby left at the scenes of the previous incidents, putting this all together she finds out that there is a plot to assassinate the Prince. (Or overthrow, age rating and all) So the Musketeers disguise themselves and enter the Royal Ball where they stop the evil plans of Philippe. Upon winning the battle the girls become the Royal Musketeers while Corinne ends up with the Prince.
First off, I approve of using Tim Curry as the voice of the villain but the script is so bloody awful that it looks awkward, also I tend to forget that a lot of former anime voiceovers tend to get used in these films but again the script they get is so awful I feel sorry for them.
If Barbie was trying to showcase the idea of women being strong and independent then this is not the best example, the characters borrow far too many tropes from the catalogue of girls cartoons, so alot of their strengths are hidden amongst coincidences, dumb luck, right place at the right time and the constant irritating notion that all males are morons.
The fight scenes are abysmal, you mean to tell me that you can beat trained soldiers with a sling shot, ribbons, a pair of fans and one sword? It also has a mascot character which of course is always annoying, to make it worst this is pretty much the dynamic for most of Barbie's films. Barbie wants to be great, by some coincidence she ends up exactly where she wants to be, she makes friends instantly without even trying, the villain tries to stop her for some really convoluted reasons, Barbie then saves the day by either doing a ripoff Disney Princess Transformation or finding a convenient plot point that may as well be "press button to win", Barbie then ends up with the male lead, male lead comes across as really stupid or oblivious, there's often an annoying mascot character and I've pretty much saved all you viewers from several more reviews of this franchise.
From an observational standpoint I've never seen the color pink as a very intelligent color; in franchises that rely on color coding such as pop idol shows, magical girl shows or any series that relies on a traditional princess as an important character tend to have the same type of female character, they all wear pink and they tend to follow the same personality; optimistic, happy go lucky and full of energy but not necessarily intelligent, sometimes portraying ditziness as a "cute" and "quirky" trait that makes her popular with the other characters, it's not just cartoons but video games and anime have the same problem but why do I hate this and tolerate say Precure?
Well Precure use other colors to make up it's team of characters more effectively and are backed up with differing personalities that can play off the lead in pink. Barbie on the other hand has three friends who might as well be Barbie as a brunette, red head or African American who only wear different colors to tell her apart from Barbie herself, it also doesn't work in her favor that Barbie has done 100 different jobs and careers so looking at all four characters is like another Barbie from another dimension with slightly different quirks but may as well be the same. Also they are taking a well known novel, gender flipping it and just made it stereotypically girly, they couldn't just be the three Musketeers, to look at the actual three Musketeers, Athos is a divorcee who is also a drunk, Aramis is a womanizer, Porthos is one morality point away from being a thief; D'Artagnan is the original blueprint for the fool hardy reckless hero much in the same way the Scarlet Pimpernel is the original blueprint for pretty much every superhero comic so portraying him is easy, but the other characters come with faults that make them anti heroes in the eyes of the cardinal trying to overthrow the King; Barbie does away with these faults and instead you get four D'Artagnans which means you don't give the audience a choice of diverse characters you just pick from a palette swap of Barbie and I think the target audience for this deserve a lot more credit than what the film gives them.
And yeah the whole men are morons thing? Cut it out.
To conclude, this franchise is too outdated to be relevant in the social media age and considering how easily offended the internet gets from stupid things, I'm actually surprised that Mattel can still sell Barbie dolls.