Product Description

Barbie™ and Teresa™ tell us the fairy tale story of Liana™ and Alexa™, best friends who shared everything including their love of music. One day their simple lives change when they are given an enchanted mirror and befriend the girl trapped inside! To save their new friend, Liana™ and Alexa™ embark on a dangerous journey to the hidden Diamond Castle that will put their friendship to the test. But through the power of song and with the companionship of two adorable puppies, the girls face their challenges together and learn that friendship is the true treasure.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5004 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-09-08
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 76 minutes

Synopsis
Everyone's favourite blonde, Barbie, returns for another fantastic, feature-length adventure. BARBIE AND THE DIAMOND CASTLE is an enchanting musical fairy tale featuring Barbie and her best friends. Includes free Best Friends photo frame.

Customer Reviews

Another treat for little girls (and boys),

This latest Barbie video, a cross between a fairytale fantasy and a "Best Friends" story, is one of the more original films Mattel have produced and my seven-year old children thoroughly enjoyed it.

It begins with Barbie and Teresa practicing a guitar duet when a smaller girl bursts in having just had a terrible row with her best friend. Barbie starts to tell her a story of two friends who were put in great danger because each thought her friend had betrayed her, but their friendship won out in the end ...

The friends concerned, Liana and Alexa, share everything, including their love of music. One day they are given a magic mirror - and find a girl, Melody, magically hiding inside it.

Melody is an apprentice to the three muses who use the magical "Diamond castle" to inspire and spread music through the land. Unfortunately one of the muses, Lydia, wants to be the sole ruler of music. With the aid of her magical flute and an evil winged serpent called Slyder, Lydia has turned her fellow muses to stone. Melody has the secret key to the Diamond castle, so Lydia and Slyder are searching for her.

Alexa and Liana set out to help Melody rescue the petrified muses and overthrow Lydia - they will face dangers and deception along the way.

The story is one of friendship rather than romance, but "Ken" makes an appearance as Ian and Jeremy, a pair of rascally but warm-hearted twins who are travelling musicians. Ian and Jeremy share the role of comic relief with two adorable puppies, Sparkles and Lily: the twins have been given some quite amusing dialogue with plenty of ironic banter, probably intended to keep adults who are watching the film with their offspring amused.

Before we first rented one of the Barbie videos for my daughter, I was expecting them to be trite, over-commercialised, over-sugary and over here. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

Yes, they do have a lot of commercial spin-offs and a high saccarine count, but the quality of the Barbie films we have subsequently bought or rented, including "The Diamond Castle" was significantly higher than I would have originally expected, and the quality has kept rising as each successive Barbie film seems to be more beautifully made than the last. They have not just kept my children engrossed for hours - including my son as well as my daughter - but introduced them to some beautiful stories and truly wonderful music.

Prsonally I love classical music and want my children to have the opportunity to learn to appreciate it. So it was a big positive for me when I was listening to CDs of classics such as Beethoven's pastoral symphony, or "The Queen of the Night's aria" from Mozart's magic flute, and my daughter, then aged five, recognised the music, and correctly remembered which Barbie film had used it. ("Magic of Pegasus" and "Mermaidia" respectively.)

With one exception the soundtrack to "The Diamond Castle" isn't taken from the classics, the songs in the musical are all modern. The exception is a pastiche of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" which plays when the castle finally appears near the climax of the film. The orchestral accompaniment was recorded by a top rank classical orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra. In my opinion Arnie Roth, who conducted the orchestra and co wrote the music with David Blamire, did a good job of it - almost as good the music he wrote for "The Princess and the Pauper" which has the best soundtrack of those Barbie films which have new music rather than scores taken from the classics.

Those people who enjoy criticising what the Barbie franchise represents will not have much difficulty finding things in this production to sneer at. If you, or more importantly your kids, are allergic to an excess of twee sweetness, then this film and the Barbie videos generally may not be for them.

And the female characters are all on the thin side of plausibility: I'm not worried that watching this is going to give my own daughter anorexia as she likes food too much and has a good sense of the difference between fantasy and reality. However, if you are worried that your children may be forming an unrealistic idea about how thin a healthy female body shape is, it is not quite impossible that this film may contribute to it.

Barbie is often accused of reinforcing gender stereotyping, but I don't think the charge is entirely fair, and less so for this film than most of the others. Insofar as gender stereotypes are present in "The Diamond Castle" the film appears to be taking the mickey out of them.

On the plus side: it is beautifully made, it will hold the attention of most small children for long enough for the typical exhausted parent to clear the mess they have made in several rooms of the house or collapse for an hour's rest after doing so.

Or alternatively, if you want to watch it with your children, there are a fair number of more sophisticated jokes thrown in to keep you amused.

Great songs, great film
Another great Barbie film and addition to the collection, the songs were quite poppy and very catchy and as usual there is a clear moral to the story. My daughter loved it and can't wait for Christmas Carol to come out!

I doubt this will ever be watched again
I bought this Barbie movie at the insistence of my Barbie mad little girls. They love the Barbie Movies and I thought this one would be the same. However as much as it looks cute and pretty and innocent it sometimes isn't. It had one of my girls in tears absolutely terrified of the Evil Muse. Even I was shocked at some of the things included in the Movie, such as casting a spell over one of the main character Barbie's and telling her to walk of a cliff, which isn't something you would expect in a movie aimed at little girls. Most of the rest of the story is okay and there are light hearted jokes for adults to enjoy that is if your child isn't in tears. I doubt that my girls will ever watch this movie again. It certainly is much darker than that of 12 Dancing Princesses and Island Princess. I wouldn't recommend it.