Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has been mocked for posting a 43-minute review of the Barbie movie which starts with him setting fire to dolls in a trash can.
“My producers dragged me to see ‘Barbie’ and it was one of the most woke movies I have ever seen,” Mr Shapiro tweeted on Friday afternoon. “My full review of this flaming garbage heap of a film will be out on my YouTube channel tomorrow at 10am ET.”
Mr Shapiro shared an image of himself looking sceptical in front of a Barbie poster. Twitter users were quick to note that Mr Shapiro was wearing a black T-shirt with black pants – the exact outfit worn by Ryan Gosling as Ken in the film’s musical performance.
“My brother in Christ. You are wearing a Ken cosplay,” one Twitter user said.
The review starts with Mr Shapiro waving a notepad at the viewers, claiming to have plenty of gripes with the film. The YouTube video is entitled Ben Shapiro DESTROYS The Barbie Movie For 43 Minutes.
He says that he wasted “two hours of my precious time, two hours I will never get back, two hours around my deathbed I will wish that I had not spent that time doing. It makes me viscerally angry”.
The rightwing pundit claims that the intended audience for the film is seven-year-old girls and thusly argues that many parts of the film are too mature for such an audience, including referencing a major Supreme Court case, sexual remarks, and the main character thinking about death.
He criticised the film for including a transgender character and dismisses the claim that the real world in the film has a patriarchal system.
“I mean, Greta Gerwig is a lady. She’s making a good living off of this,” Mr Shapiro says about the director of the film. “Margot Robbie is playing the lead. In fact, the entire cast aside from basically Ryan Gosling is women, so it seems like women are doing okay.”
The pundit was mocked for going to the movie just to make himself furious.
“Dude went to go watch Barbie just to get mad lmao,” YouTuber Mutahar tweeted.
Twitter troll Comfortably Smug said: “Admit it - you hated the film because Barbie is taller than you.”
“They finally make a movie for people who are 12 inches tall with no genitals and those people don’t even like it,” comedy writer Jesse McLaren said.
MSNBC host and former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki wrote: “That does it…I was not sure if I would go see it….but now I will definitely go….at a minimum maybe Barbie will tell us all what woke means…”
Actor Bradley Whitford added: “Failed screenwriter says what?”
“Just like my sister ‘forced’ me to watch America’s Next Top Model when I was younger,” Connor Franta tweeted.
“Let’s say, hypothetically, I am a Barbie girl. Okay, let’s even say I’m in a Barbie world. Right so, in this scenario, I would know from personal experience that life in plastic is fantastic. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume you could brush my hair and undress me everywhere?” Nathan Zed wrote.
