Hurley made them inconsequential to the story.įurther, in all three films, Owen Hurley and his cracknut team relegated the moral messages to bookends featuring a seriously traumatized Kelly. Barbie in the Nutcracker has the good sense of making children sound like children, but in turn, Mr. In Barbie as Rapunzel, they’re mysteriously short teenagers. These munchkin-sized doll-people were often never treated as children at all. However, Owen Hurley’s biggest blunder lay in the way he dealt with children in his stories. When he didn’t deal with ballet (see: Barbie as Rapunzel), he threw everything and the kitchen sink into the screen: Witches? Dragons? Magic wands? Pick one, Hurley! He had a fixation on inserting Barbie into ballet, but it never worked. His visual language was disappointedly limited.
His film’s morals were blatantly obvious at best and nonsensical at worst. Hurley’s three entries in the Barbie oeuvre were a trip, stumble, and wipe-out away from a smooth transition into cinema history. Hurley (to be a fly on the wall in that dollhouse!) but I think we could safely assume that somebody over his head sat down and watched Barbie of Swan Lake.
Not a spectacular feat by any means, but a notable triumph considering BPP was the first film to arrive after the stepping down of Barbie auteur Owen Hurley. Obligatory Pink Vehicle: A pink horse carriage, of course!īarbie as the Princess and the Pauper (hereon referred to as BPP) is to its release date, the best Barbie film of the series.