YMMV / Barbie as the Island Princess

• Awesome Music: A few shoutouts:
  • "Here On My Island" is a catchy tune, which evokes the tropical island feel.
  • "I Need to Know" is an emotional ballad; first sung as a solo by Ro as she tries to figure out her past, then transitioning to a duet with Antonio.
  • Ro and Marissa's duet of "Right Here in My Arms" is tearjerking and heartwarming all at once.
• Broken Aesop: A source of conflict in the movie is that Ro and Antonio fall in love and want to marry but can't because Ro isn't of royal blood. Eventually they just say, "screw it," and decide to marry anyway, giving the moral that it doesn't matter if two people are from differing social classes, they should be allowed to be together if they're in love. However, at the very end, it's revealed that Ro is the long-lost Princess Rosella of Paladia, meaning that she was royalty all along, which kind of cancels out the intended aesop.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The rats' song about cheese. They could have shown the montage of them poisoning the kingdom's animals in silence and nothing would've changed.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Luciana, for being a rare heroic Romantic False Lead.
• Heartwarming Moments: Ro reuniting with her mother, and the two singing the full version of the lullaby together. You can feel the joy.
  My love is always with you, whether near or far.
  • Antonio stops chasing Arianna on horseback after he sees that an unfortunate bystander was almost knocked down the bridge, helping her back up. Immediately chasing after Arianna again afterwards.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Apollonia had a princess named Sofia years before Enchantia made it cool.
• Ho Yay: Azul has several camp traits to his name, and he and Sagi bicker Like an Old Married Couple and basically raised Ro her entire life.
• Narm: Queen Arianna's Skyward Scream after she falls into the pig pen sounds more like she's at a rock concert than actually being in despair. Especially with the way she points her fingers.
• One True Threesome: Ro/Antonio/Luciana, given that the two girls genuinely get along, with Luciana only refusing to marry Antonio because she sees that he's in love with Ro. Many think that Luciana deserves better than to end up with some guy who doesn't even have a name, so they just integrate her into the existing relationship.
• The Scrappy: Tika is by far the most hated character in the film, due to her creepy design, her grating voice, and being incredibly selfish.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The animals designs haven't aged that well, but by far the worst is Tika, with her glassy human-like eyes (which are also much closer together than a real elephant's eyes would be), her human teeth, and her ridiculously lush eyelashes; to be fair, it is a straight-to-DVD film.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Tika is meant to be sympathetic due to her being The Baby of the Bunch and feeling out of place in the kingdom, and not wanting to lose Ro. However, this pretty much boils down to her whining about wanting to go home nearly the entire movie and actively sabotaging Ro's relationship with Antonio by stealing his letter. Thus, she instead comes off as a Spoiled Brat.
• The Un-Twist: Considering it's right in the title, Ro being a long-lost princess is hardly shocking.

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