Is that title overdoing it? Maybe, but it’s not necessarily clickbait either. Look at recent history.
- The Banana Splits are turned into Five Nights At Freddy’s by having the costumes come to life and kill people because they’re mad their show’s canceled. (Make sure the Banana Splits movie you show your kids is the one where they turn into cartoon characters to save a young friend and not the slasher movie.)
- Dora The Explorer gets her own movie and it’s about how she falsely believes she’s a TV/game character so everyone thinks she’s gone crazy.
- As soon as the original A.A. Milne version of Winnie The Pooh goes into public domain we get a slasher movie where a guy in a Pooh costume goes psycho.
- That’s not counting the other kids properties made into adult properties like Transformers or GI Joe.
Now add Barney the purple dinosaur to the list. Apparently Mattel, the same people who approved a Barbie movie that ignores previous Barbie media in favor of what appears to be a cynical take on Barbie’s world versus “reality”, are ready to put out an “A24-type” take on Barney and presumably his three young dino friends. Because as we all know Barney doesn’t get enough abuse from the over-preschool crowd who want to show you how adult they are by trashing a show for little kids.
Why can’t I see some GOOD news about adapting a kids property anymore?
Since The New Yorker wants you to subscribe to their site and only gives you so many free reads (I used up mine to confirm what’s in the article and the related context), I’m linking to a Deadline article that picked up on one section of the interview with Mattel executive Kevin McKeon.
The forthcoming Barney film from Mattel Films to be produced by and star Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya will be an adult-oriented, “A24-type” project, executive Kevin McKeon has revealed.
The forthcoming Barney film from Mattel Films to be produced by and star Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya will be an adult-oriented, “A24-type” project, executive Kevin McKeon has revealed.
“We’re leaning into the millennial angst of the property rather than fine-tuning this for kids,” shared the exec. “It’s really a play for adults. Not that it’s R-rated, but it’ll focus on some of the trials and tribulations of being thirtysomething, growing up with Barney—just the level of disenchantment within the generation.”
When you have to say “our Barney movie isn’t going to be R-rated”, you’ve already gotten something wrong. They want to make an arthouse, if not straight up horror, movie about Barney the purple dinosaur, a show kids grow out of before the third grade. Barney And Friends, the VHS tapes it came from, and the shows and movies that came after it (Deadline is also reporting that a cartoon is in the works and all I can say is Barney’s head design is certainly a choice they made) are not designed for thirtysomethings, nor is it meant to prepare you for the adult life. It’s a way to entertain kids. It promotes imagination, arts & crafts, getting along with each other, and wholesome fun.
Ah, that’s the part they hate: wholesome. It’s been the reason Barney’s been attacked almost from its beginning. Little kids got interested in something that wasn’t edgy and trying to turn four-year-olds into grown-ups and they hate it. It wasn’t made for adults but why should they care. EVERYTHING needs to be made for meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. So when some wholesome property comes along like Barney, Rafi, the Wiggles, and similar (had these clods been around in my childhood they would have hated Romper Room) that kids are entertained by it has to be put under attack.
They literally named him “Baloney”! Gee, sorry to all the thirty-year-old adults without kids who were forced somehow to watch a bunch of people in dinosaur costumes entertaining children with things children actually enjoy. Sorry it doesn’t feature mocking of people you don’t like (how many kids watching Animaniacs knew who Howard Stern was or got the “fingerprints” gag?), that it has singing and dancing, that people treat each other as fellow kids rather than something to complain about, isn’t hip to the latest social cause, and isn’t there to make you think so much as just have fun. Remember having fun without drugs and alcohol, former kids? I bet you don’t or you’d be doing something other than complaining about wholesome kids shows.
I’m not saying you can’t do a fun parody of such shows. I would like to check out Avenue Q sometime, but that’s creating an analog. Baloney up there is a direct analog, Avenue Q more of a general analog probably borrowing more from Sesame Street than Pinwheel or Carrascolendas, which PBS has episodes up for on their website? Really? I didn’t think anyone else remembered that existed. I could probably find more people who remember The Great Space Coaster or New Zoo Revue but those aren’t Sesame Street style shows. Gonna have to watch one of those later.
Anyway, the difference is the same with any kind of parody. You can do one that has some good natured fun, or you can do a full on attack. However, that’s not the case with any of the movies I mentioned. The Banana Splits Movie turns a 60s kids show into a slasher movie, using the exact same four characters. Hey, kids, remember Snorky the silly elephant? Watch him stab this guy repeatedly. Isn’t that hilarious? Dora The Explorer takes the tropes of the show and mocks them, making the child look crazy for breaking the fourth wall and thinking her map can talk to her to tell her how to find her talking monkey friend in the yellow boots. Silly Dora. Can you say “therapist” in Spanish? (I looked it up. It’s “terapeuta”.) Barbie is just another surface view of the toys that ignores why little girls liked Barbie, her whole supporting cast (one article mentions a joke made at the expense of Barbie’s pregnant friend Midge and how Mattel oddly got in trouble for it). Mattel is trying to convince the audience that the actors are wrong about this being some feminist movie but they don’t mind making the movie version of Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” song. At least the Winnie The Pooh thing is just some jerk in a Pooh mask killing people and not THE Pooh bear. Silly ol’ psychopath.
Teaching kids to love and respect each other? To be creative? To not be full of depression and rage like a bunch of immature adults who have issues with childhood and want to pass their bad childhoods onto the next generation? Why is that scandalous? “But Tronix, it’s not out yet!” Very good, kids. Can you say “hype”? As in they made this announcement to get people hyped for an adult-targeted Barney movie about grown-ups who grew up with Barney and was surprised real life doesn’t have dancing dinosaur toys coming to life? Sorry, but I’m not impressed, I’m worried adults who still let their kids watch Barney reruns aren’t going to pay attention and bring them to see this. There’s nothing wrong with letting kids be kids and teaching them to be creative instead of a-holes.
Happy children being nice to each other. What a scary thing?
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