Me and Stefan Sasse were going to make our Boiled Leather Audio Hour discussion of Barbie a Patreon subscriber exclusive, but then we said no, the people need this. Go listen for free, and consider subscribing for more like it!

Somehow I was the target demographic for all of these blockbusters, despite the fact that if I’d addressed many of their images and themes to my folks in the form of direct questions I’d have been as summarily dismissed as I was when I first asked if Santa Claus was real. I had discovered a societally sanctioned way to see things I wasn’t supposed to see, hear things I wasn’t supposed to hear, think things I wasn’t supposed to think, feel things I wasn’t supposed to feel. I’d cracked the code. I’d beaten the game. I’d gotten to stay up past my metaphorical bedtime. 

That’s not a phrase I throw around lightly. Watching Sam Malone make preposterous passes at Diane Chambers or Rebecca Howe was one thing; I knew it was just 9:07 P.M. and my dad had his favorite show on and I happened to be watching on my way upstairs to dreamland. But these movies were for me, for us, for kids, even when the material in them wasn’t. Whether because they had faith in our intelligence or blithe unconcern for our moral fiber was immaterial. They were giving us something we needed without knowing how bad we needed it: a taste of the adult, in the form of “Hey, kids! The movies!”

Barbie is a return to this grand tradition. Directed by Greta Gerwig from a script by herself and her frequent collaborator Noah Baumbach, it’s a throwback to the kid-appealing adult blockbusters of yore.

This Ken has no dick: I wrote about Barbie, Ghostbusters, and the era (and return?) of the edgy kinda-but-not-quite-for-kids blockbuster for Decider.