Barbie & Her Sisters in a Pony Tale

Barbie & Her Sisters in A Pony Tale pits Barbie (or as her Swiss relatives call her; Bobby) and her siblings in a formulated story in which they visit a relatives ranch that is in danger of being shut down by the local competition. I think the story is kind of similar to both Camp Rock and Camp Fred. It’s up to Barbie and her kin to take a crash course on horse riding and help the ranch win against the competing, and defending champion, ranch that wants to buy them out. The prize money could help them keep the ranch open and their victory could draw in new students. 

 

Along the way Barbie gets a glance at a beautiful wild white horse that the ranch stable master admits is somewhat of a fairy tale animal. He believe they exist, but alas, no one has ever captured one or even gotten a picture of one so they can’t be real. Barbie knows better. 

 

The film offers up moderate laughs, several music video montage moments, and, even though it’s formulaic, the story is well executed. All in all, I think if you have a Barbie fan in your household they will enjoy the film. So how did it look on Blu-Ray?

 

PICTURE QUALITY:

Of course Barbie on BD is going to be lush in vibrant hues of pink, lavender, and all of the other bright colors of the rainbow that Barbie has incorporated over the years. Clarity is not an issue as everything is CGI and has no real depth, a problem live action Blu-Ray’s face, especially during wide out shots. The problem I had with the BD was the texture. Sure, the dogs, wolves, goat, some horses manes, and even some human hair looks pretty good. It has fluidity and movement, but everything else is so flat. 

 

Barbie and the rest of the cast look mostly as if they’ve come back from a botox treatment. I know they are supposed to look like dolls come to life, but their mostly motionless features combined with the flat textures of the world around them make it way to easy to drift away from the spell films like this should put their viewers under. Immersion is a chore. Other then that it looks decent. 

 

BONUS FEATURES:

~Outtakes: Okay, let me be honest here, these are a bit of a joke. I’ve covered a lot of animated films, some of them did not include outtakes, because really, what’s the point. Others included outtakes featuring mistakes made by the voice actors. I found these to be hilarious. These outtakes are alternate cuts of scenes form the film created to look like outtakes. Kids will likely enjoy them but I thought they were unfunny because they aren’t real. 

~Music Video

~Barbie: Life In The Dream House Music Video

~Barbie Life In The Dream House Episodes 1-3

~BD/DVD/DIGITAL VERSION