Movie Thoughts: Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus (2005)

• Released: September 7, 2005
  
• Directed by: Greg Richardson
• Running time: 1 h 23 min
• Rating 4/5

Synopsis

After her kingdom is cursed by an evil wizard, Wenlock, a princess named Annika and her sister (who happens to be cursed into being a pegasus) Brietta set out on a quest to form a Wand of Light, the only weapon that can stop Wenlock.

My Thoughts

Ah, the early 2000s fantasy Barbie movies. I actually have very fond memories of these. Yeah, despite me kind of famously shunning most things considered traditionally "girly" at this age there were two "girl" things I still unequivocally loved: My Little Pony and Barbie. Thankfully nowadays media and toys aren't even that necessarily gendered anymore, but back then they were kind of the exception to my "I don't like girls stuff"-rule.

Pegasus was one of my favorite of these Barbie movies growing up, and I can still see why. Legit, I think this is a good movie (otherwise it wouldn't have this high a rating obviously). I think both Annika and Brietta are really strong characters, and the love interest Aidan is also not bad and has a fun chemistry with Annika. They don't instantly meet and fall in love, they genuinely have to get to know one another and bond over their journey before they get together. And Wenlock, while being a pretty stereotypical "I want to marry the princess or else" villain, is still fun. He has fun mannerisms and dialogue and a pretty neat design. So yeah, while the cast of major characters isn't big, they're definitely good characters.

I quite enjoyed the plot as well. Our main characters not only have to go on this (seemingly impossible) quest, but there's also a ticking clock that if they don't complete it in time the entire kingdom (plus Brietta) will be cursed forever. So we got the stakes, and we got the likable characters, and we got the good character development to go with it.

The world-building I also always loved about this film. At first it seems that we're just in a normal medieval kingdom, but it slowly starts to introduce more and more fantastical elements (the wizard and the griffin, pegasi, the cloud kingdom, giants, etc.) and it just...works. The world definitely has soft world-building because a lot is just left open on what are and aren't the possibilities and limits of magic and fantastical creatures here, but that's something I just always liked about these Barbie movies, especially the more fantasy ones. Sure, there's just pegasi and magic and griffins and nobody bats an eye at it. Not a lot is set in stone but that makes them feel all the more imaginative to me. There seem to be limitless possibilities of what could happen in this world.

Now for my only real criticism with the movie. Okay, I have two, but one is more major than the other: the visuals. Don't get me wrong, this movie isn't hard to look at, but it is very dated by today's CGI standards. The animation is a bit awkward at times (I think they used mo-cap?), the textures can be bad or sometimes nonexistent, the characters with wings cannot physically fold the wings so they have to switch out the CGI models when this happens, and it's just not polished. Granted, it's an early 2000s CGI film, but there's been others that came out around the same time that looked better. 

But I do have to admit that, despite the visuals not being fully up to date: I legitimately do not care. It looks fine to me and since the other elements are so strong the movie being visually dated is the least of my concerns. 

One other tiny gripe I wanted to get at: this movie was released (at least on DVD) partially in 3D. Which isn't bad or anything, but sometimes (especially in the scene with the giant) there's just some shots you know they just added in to show off their 3D effects. By that I mean, shots where a lot of objects are thrown or shoved into the screen, which (when wearing your 3D glasses) would seem to pop out. Of course, the 3D it uses was never perfect (I used to have the 3D DVD and it was a bit awkward), and now that I re-watched this on Netflix there's no 3D option at all meaning that these shots just come across as kind of random with so many thing being pushed into the viewer's face, having lost all its effect now that it's 2D. 

Overall this is still a solid adventure and fantasy film I'd say. Yes, visually very dated, but also just genuinely good in the other departments. I'll probably review more of these early 2000s Barbie movies later because I do have a very fond nostalgia for them.