Here's what will happen if you see the Barbie movie

I don't have any opinion on the Barbie movie, or what it means if you're excited to see a Barbie movie. I expect it will be duly postmodern and knowing and work on several levels, but if I wanted to spend two hours saturated in pink I'd eat some raw chicken and hug a barrel of Pepto Bismol.

What worries me about its likely success is the inevitable toy movies that will follow, because I fear that would make me write a banal and obvious column, filled with things like this:

Boy, what's next, a movie about a yo-yo? I can see it now! Tagline: "Life has its ups. And downs." Critics are raving, calling "Yo-Yo" the best comeback movie since "Rocky X." It's a plucky tale of a yo-yo who lives in a large rambunctious family, the Oy-Oys. Ever since he can remember, the family has spent its days going up in the air and coming down, but he has a dream: What if we went down first, then up? His father is furious — that's just not the way it's done! But his mother, Yo-Yo Maw, is secretly supportive, and wants him to follow his heart. Also his string. The budget is $275 million.

Ten years ago, I'd go see that, if Pixar did it, because Pixar could release a movie about a plastic fork, and I'd love it. (Note: They actually did, and I did.)

A movie about a Jack-in-the-box would work if it was directed by Andy Warhol, and consisted of one bored waif model slowly turning the crank for six hours until the thing finally went off. That would be critically acclaimed, and the Walker would hold an annual showing. No one would leave during the movie, because everyone would want to say they were there when the lid finally burst. With my luck, I'd be out in the lobby getting some Raisinets because, man, this movie has been going on forever. And then I'd hear "Pop goes the weasel" and realize I'd missed it.

I would trust Steven Spielberg to make a movie about Matt Mason, one of my childhood toys. Matt Mason was an astronaut. He drove a hover-sled around the moon and did astronaut things, like plant flags and do experiments so more people could come to live on the moon — to do things like plant flags and do experiments. He bent at the elbows and the knees, until the wires inside broke, and then his leg and arm just flopped around.

Spielberg could get two hours out of that. I know I did.

Another board-game possibility: David Lynch's "Hungry Hungry Hippos." Opening scene: an abandoned zoo with a sign: HIPPO CAMPUS. A mime wearing tiger stripes does a slow dance in a cage in the background. A man wanders into the scene, and another man (David Lynch) says, "They're hippos," with a terrible sense of conviction. "Hungry, hungry, hippos." The man wakes screaming — it's only a dream — and goes about his daily life. For the rest of the film, he catches glimpses of an obese man he will call Dr. Pottamus sitting in a restaurant, smiling down at a single Triscuit, which he never eats. The movie earns 25 minutes of sustained booing at the Cannes Film Festival, but 101 years later it is regarded as a masterpiece.

Or maybe "Monopoly," directed by Martin Scorsese, which would mean it would take as long to watch as the game takes to play. We follow a scrappy kid from Brooklyn who works his way up wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, brutally beating anyone who stands in his way with things like a tiny iron or a small wheelbarrow, while the soundtrack plays ironically cheerful pop songs from the '60s. The hero would claw his way to riches, a railroads and utility magnate, only to end up in jail, where he dies after ingesting a board game piece and suffering a bowel obstruction. As his fanciful voice-over puts it, "And you know, after all that, I didn't pass Go."