Ben Shapiro is so furious about the Barbie movie, he set fire to all his dolls
Far-right commentator Ben Shapiro has filmed himself burning a pricey set of Barbie dolls during a cringeworthy review of the summer’s biggest blockbuster.
The notoriously anti-LGBTQ+ political pundit published yet another furious movie review to his YouTube channel on Sunday (23 July) after tweeting that he believed Greta Gerwig’s Barbie to be “one of the most woke movies I have ever seen”.
Shapiro was so upset by the film that he decided to buy an entire set of Barbie and Ken dolls just to set them ablaze.
The film currently has a 90 per cent rating on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, proving that, once again, Shapiro finds himself wildly out of step with the rest of the world.
To protest the Barbie movie, Ben Shapiro lights Barbie & Ken dolls on fire.” pic.twitter.com/R6Wc5BkwM6
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 22, 2023
During the clip, Shapiro appears to be burning the Barbie Off-Road Jeep – £26 ($13) – the promotional Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling Barbie and Ken dolls – £45 ($21) each – and the generation 81 Leopard Barbie doll, which costs £15.49 ($14) – all prices were researched at the time of reporting.
This means that, in a segment proving how much he hates Barbie, which he later describes as “a flaming pile of dog s**t”, Shapiro potentially spent at least £131.49 ($69) on Barbie dolls.
While the rest of his 44-minute review consisted of his typical ramblings about the evils of “woke” politics, the doll-burning segment was just too much for social media users to handle.
“If you put together a crack team of 11 of the world’s [cringiest] incels and gave them an unlimited budget and access to any resource they required, they will still not be able to out-cringe the cringe Ben Shapiro just cringed out of his little baby body,” one user wrote.
"Go Woke, Go Broke," a four-act play starring Ben Shapiro. pic.twitter.com/m7kX21fiTX
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) July 24, 2023
it was just pointed out to me that Ben Shapiro went to go hate watch the Barbie movie dressed exactly like Ken lmao pic.twitter.com/Cek4xVz3Sn
— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) July 22, 2023
i’m so tickled thinking about ben shapiro excitedly waiting for barbie tickets to go on sale, until he figured out it was woke and feminist, at which point little mushroom clouds start coming out of his ears pic.twitter.com/wjnUanyqnX
— matt (@mattxiv) July 21, 2023
“Ben Shapiro burning Barbie dolls is the logical follow on from Tucker Carlson getting p**sed off with an M&M character,” one user wrote, referencing former Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson’s bizarre rant that the green M&M mascot had become “less sexy.“
“These ‘really serious men’ have never grown up and spend their adult lives grifting fabricated, fetishised grievances of the stupidity of other menchildren.”
Indeed, Shapiro was far from the only fragile pundit to be angered by Barbie‘s success. While the film has received rave reviews from both critics and audiences alike, men have been sharing their unwanted outrage over the film across the internet.
One such review complains that themes around the “patriarchy” are shoe-horned in and accused director Greta Gerwig of “projecting her bitterness” into the film.
Another criticises the film for being “emotionally complex”, and says they weren’t expecting serious themes from a Barbie film.
Some even resort to full-on conspiracy theories, with one reviewer claiming that the film was trying to transmit “hidden messages” to the audience.
This toxic outpouring of sad testosterone has resulted in some excellent meme action, with one online comedian turning standout lines from bad reviews into taglines for the Barbie movie posters.
I took 1 star reviews of #Barbie from furious men on letterboxd and put them on the posters because it makes the film seem ever cooler. pic.twitter.com/V4YzmnB8bj
— TechnicallyRon (@TechnicallyRon) July 23, 2023
No matter how furrowed Ben Shapiro can make his brow when getting angry that a movie about Mattel’s best-selling doll can have nuanced social commentary as part of its themes, Barbie is making waves at the box office.
The film smashed cinematic records in just a few days following its release, grossing $70.5 million on its opening day and a collective $155 million on its opening weekend.
The Guardian’s Mark Kermode described the film as a “riotously entertaining candy-coloured feminist fable” that “manages to simultaneously celebrate, satirise and deconstruct its happy-plastic subject”.