A flippin' vacation she won't forget!
Barbie: Dolphin Magic is the 36th Barbie movie, coming out on Netflix on September 18, 2017. It acts as a pilot movie
to Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures. The movie focuses on Barbie and her sisters meeting up with Ken at a marine biology institute that he's interning at. However, they then come across a girl named Isla who's actually a mermaid that wants to protect the gemstone dolphins.The movie is preceded by Barbie: Video Game Hero and followed up on by Barbie: Princess Adventure. The movie would get a sequel in 2022 called Barbie: Mermaid Power.
Tropes associated with the movie:
- All-Loving Hero: Both Barbie and Isla show this, but in different ways. Barbie does what she can to appeal to other people (mainly Isla) while Isla shows love more towards animals, though she does come to love humans.
- Animal Lover: Isla definitely embraces this given how much she loves gemstone dolphins.
- Bait-and-Switch: At first, it seems like Marlo captured Isla. However, she actually captured Barbie covered in seaweed so that Isla could get more time to free the dolphins.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Marlo is an interesting case in how she's not really a pleasant person overall. However, she presents herself as a stern, but somewhat reasonable boss while actually being someone who maliciously wants to steal the dolphins for her own benefit.
- Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: When the gemstone dolphins become trapped by Marlo inside the gate, Isal says how she shouldn't have trusted Barbie and goes off. After cooling off, the two have a heart to heart talk and patch things up.
- Character Development: Isla learns to trust humans and Barbie learns to be more mindful with what she does.
- Dramatic Irony: During the third act, Marlo asks Ken in an aggressive voice to close the gate with the dolphins inside, which he does. However, he does this thinking that Marlo is just stressed out and not thinking clearly while the audience knows that she wants to do this.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: While the tone and characterization is in line with Barbie Dreamhouse Adventures, it differs in some ways:
- Everyone fully believes in the idea of mermaids, while in the show, only Chelsea does.
- Skipper has a blue hair streak in the movie while she has a purple hair streak in the show.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After everything that happened, the movie ends with the dolphins being freed, and Isla being friends with Barbie, her sisters, and Ken.
- Endearingly Dorky: Barbie certainly finds Isla's socially awkward behavior endearing. Most notably, during breakfast, she says how the behavior is quirky.
- End of an Age: The last Barbie movie to feature Vancouver-based voice actors before switching to an entire American voice cast beginning with the next one.
- Evil Poacher: Marlo has shades of this since she's planning to hunt down more Gemstone Dolphins for financial benefit.
- Evil Redhead: Marlo has red hair, and she's the villain of the movie.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Both Barbie and Chelsea have blond hair, and care deeply for the mermaids.
- Heavy Sleeper: Once Isla falls asleep, she stays asleep. Not even loud noises are enough to wake her up. She is only woken up by the thought of breakfast sandwiches.
- Snoring Beauty: Isla is a loud snorer, which is shown when she falls asleep at a Slumber Party on her first night on land.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Isla is definitely a big fan of sandwiches. It's best shown in how she doesn't wake up to loud sounds, but instead wakes up to the idea of eating breakfast sandwiches.
