On July 23, Tess and I decided to see a movie and like millions of Americans there were two obvious choices. One film was a grim tale of a dystopian nightmare come true. The other was about the invention of the atomic bomb.

Released on the same day, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” have proven to be the big summer blockbusters they were intended to be. In the  first 11 days  of release, they have a combined gross ticket sales of more than a half-billion dollars. Individually, “Barbie” has almost lapped “Oppenheimer,” with gross ticket sales of $336,422,000 compared to the $181,420,000 in gross sales for “Oppenheimer.”

Tess and I quickly agreed on “Barbie” for a reason that many of you in our age group can appreciate. We noted that the running time for Oppenheimer was three hours. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. We agreed that neither of our bladders could hold out that long. This, by the way, is the same reason I have yet to see “Elvis,” which I know is heresy for someone who grew up just down the road from Elvis’ birthplace. Three hours is three hours. I’ll catch “Elvis” and “Oppenheimer” when they are streaming free in a pause-able format.

So “Barbie,” with a running time of 114 minutes, was the way to go even though I was far more interested in the subject matter of “Oppenheimer.”

Since one of the major themes in “Barbie” is how women adapt or defy or defer to patriarchy, I thought one man’s review of the movie would be consistent with the theme. For what it’s worth, right?

By now, if you haven’t seen Barbie you probably have no plans to see it, so I’m not going to worry much about spoilers.

Although the original Barbie and I are both 64 years old, I was not much acquainted with her as a kid since I didn’t grow up with sisters. It wasn’t until I had a daughter and nieces that I began to get to know Barbie and came to realize that, despite all of her marvelous material pink possessions and career accomplishments, Barbie is ultimately a tragic figure. Based on my observations and confirmed by many of my Barbie-owning female friends, there is only one fate for Barbie: To be found naked and scalped or headless in a bathtub. Every Barbie follows the plotline of an Investigation Discovery Channel  true crime program.

To my surprise, the movie does not conform to this reality. The movie ends not with decapitation, but with Barbie, suddenly a real person a la  Pinocchio, enthusiastically visiting a gynecologist’s office, one of the many nuances that escape me, being a male. I’m not excited about seeing a proctologist, but to each his/her own, I guess.

I won’t pretend to understand all of the plots and subplots, themes and symbolism in the film. The one thing that was clear to me is that the film doesn’t suggest that the solution to patriarchy is matriarchy. Barbie’s fantasy world is a girl’s world and Ken is an accessory. In the actual world, just the opposite is most often true. Both fantasy matriarchy and reality patriarchy are problematic.

It is a feminist view of the world, but not an inaccurate one. I did not find, as some conservative pundits have concluded, that “Barbie” is “anti-man,”  although it is pro-woman. Those don’t have to be contradictory views.

Right-wing columnist and social media provocateur Ben Shapiro was so upset with the film that he burned a Barbie and dumped her in a burn barrel on his YouTube Channel (thus defying decapitation/bathtub-dumping orthodoxy). So you may want to consider Shapiro’s view.  I always give great weight to the opinions of grown men who are compelled to burn plastic dolls.

No matter your politics, what you will find is that the film is an equal-opportunity skewer of both the male and female egos and stereotypes. Both guys and girls get to laugh at themselves and each other.

I suspect that what the audience takes away from Barbie depends on how much or how little you want to lean into the themes. I think the success of the film is that it works at whatever level speaks to you.

As a guy, I found the movie to be funny, clever and interesting. Perhaps that’s a superficial take on the film since Barbie has never meant to me what she has meant to girls over all these years.

But I was pleased to find that Barbie didn’t wind up headless and naked in the bottom of a bathtub.

That’s progress.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].