Byline: James Lileks; Staff Writer

Usually I leave movie reviewing to the pros, those hardened experts whose job requires them to attend 10 a.m. screenings of movies whose credits end with "Directed by Rob Zombie." But I suspect the mainstream media will utterly ignore the latest Barbie feature film, and that's wrong. Thirty-seven million parents have been hearing about this movie ever since the first promotional Barbies appeared in their translucent coffins in the Target toy aisle. First, the obligatory old-coot rant, based on the fact that my daughter has five Barbie movies, one for each year of her existence on the planet, and I spent my first half-decade with nothing more exciting than Captain Kangaroo talking to a mute washcloth. Why, when I was in the youth demographic, we didn't get movies about our toys. Once every other year Disney would put out "Another Rote Piece of Crap With Dean Jones" starring Kurt Russell, and they were all the same: Herbie the Car runs over the cat with nine lives who ate Flubber, or something. It should be noted that we had to walk 47 miles to the theater with no boots - no epidermis at all, in fact, our fathers having sold the tender and much-prized "kid skin" to the European glove market - and once we got to the theater, our bare raw feet stuck to the floor until the manager came out and splashed kerosene down the aisles. Now everything's...