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"Friendship is the true treasure."

Barbie & The Diamond Castle is the thirteenth installment of the direct-to-DVD Barbie film series, releasing in 2008 between Barbie: Mariposa and Barbie in A Christmas Carol.

In this movie, Barbie and Teresa tell Stacie the story of two best friends, Liana and Alexa. Although the two girls do not have much, they have each other and a love of music. It gets worse when a nasty storm destroys all the flowers they would usually sell, but an act of kindness grants them a magic mirror.

Inside the mirror dwells apprentice muse Melody, who used the mirror as a means of escaping evil muse Lydia, who intends to grab the key to the muses' Diamond Castle and plunge the world into a state of grim darkness.

Now, Liana and Alexa must journey to the Diamond Castle themselves and stop Lydia from controlling all the world's music and dooming it to darkness forever.


Includes examples of:

  • All Trolls Are Different: This one poses a riddle to cross the rainbow bridge. The penalty for failure is being eaten. He angrily disappears in a poof when the heroes successfully solve his riddle and doesn't seem affected by sunlight at all.
  • The Apprentice: Melody is an apprentice muse.
  • Brainwashed: Lydia uses a hypnosis spell on various characters to get the information she needs.
  • Bumbling Sidekick: Slyder, to Lydia. He retrieves the wrong mirror and sets the girls' house on fire by mistake. His leitmotif is a silly tuba theme, too.
  • The Call Knows Where You Live: The girls are forced to go on their adventure when their house burns down.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Melody's song "Believe" turns out to be the key to revealing the Diamond Castle.
  • Damsel in Distress: Twice in a row for both girls. Alexa becomes the first following her Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure with Liana, with thanks to Lydia capturing her. Since she didn't bring the mirror with her at the time and because she's not wearing her necklace, she is hypnotized into telling Lydia where Liana is, and Liana ends up becoming the second who tries to bring Alexa to her senses.
  • Defeated and Trophified: Lydia betrays and petrifies the Muses, keeping them as trophies.
  • Deflector Shields: The magical barrier produced by the necklaces worn by Liana and Alexa.
  • Disney Death: Lydia appears to die in a magical whirlpool, but returns at the climax.
  • Easing into the Adventure: It takes a while before the girls leave for their adventure.
  • "Eureka!" Moment:
    • After saving the bewitched Alexa from walking off a cliff, Liana takes out her discarded necklace and realizes they protected the girls from Lydia's spell. This in turn leads to Liana putting Alexa's necklace back on her neck, which breaks the spell.
    • After Lydia's first defeat, the girls discover the song Melody sang throughout the movie might be the key to revealing the Diamond Castle. They all sing it together, and the castle is revealed.
  • Evil Always Triumphs In The Middle: Despite the attempts of the heroines to keep Melody out of Lydia's clutches, the evil muse gets her hands on the girl-in-the-mirror and nearly gets her to give up the location of the Diamond Castle before Liana and Alexa arrive to save the day.
  • Evil Brit: The villain, Lydia, speaks with a British accent.
  • Evil Costume Switch: Averted, as Lydia is already wearing a pretty evil-looking outfit in a flashback.
  • Evil Gloating: Lydia engages in this a lot. Her Villain Song is sung to the statues of the muses she imprisoned.
  • Evil Makeover: After turning evil, Lydia casts a spell on her flute to make it match her outfit.
  • Evil Plan: Lydia has one to find the Diamond Castle and control all music.
  • Evil Redhead: Lydia has dark red hair and is quite evil.
  • Fakin' MacGuffin: Liana leaves a normal mirror for Slyder to retrieve while Alexa keeps Melody's mirror safe.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: This movie has flying serpents, witches, good and evil magic, trolls, and muses.
  • Feud Episode: Alexa and Liana part ways when Alexa wants to stay at an opulent mansion that has been given to them and Liana wants to continue to the Diamond Castle and save the world.
  • The Final Temptation: Alexa and Liana come across a mansion with everything they could ever want. Alexa wants to stay, but Liana goes on ahead.
  • Fooled by the Sound: Leana hears a rustling noise in the bushes and thinks it's a snake. It's actually two stray dogs, who she and Alexa adopt.
  • Forced to Watch: Lydia draws Melody out of the mirror by making her watch a mind-controlled Alexa walk to her death, knowing Melody will ask Lydia to stop Alexa.
  • Foreshadowing: When someone falls under the influence of Lydia's Mind-Control Music, their bodies shrivel a little and their eyes turn a sickly green. When Lydia uses her flute on Liana and Alexa to get them to jump into the whirlpool, they shrivel, but their eyes remain their normal appearance. This is a clue to that they're pretending to be brainwashed.
  • Framing Device: Barbie and Teresa tell the story to Stacie, who's angry at one of her friends.
  • Friendship Moment: Liana is able to snap Alexa out of the villain's mind-control spell by replacing her necklace and reciting the friendship chant they made up earlier in the film.
  • Gemstone Motifs: Diamonds, obviously. Liana and Alexa are frequently associated with diamonds, and even wear necklaces made with stones from the titular castle. Diamonds were believed by the ancient Greeks to be able to make a person invincible from harm, and the stones Liana and Alexa wear make them immune to Lydia's brainwashing music.
  • Handsome Lech: Jeremy and Ian unsuccessfully try to woo the girls with a song.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Lydia is done in by her own spell. Twice.
  • Honorary Princess: In the end, Liana and Alexa are rewarded for their courage by the muses, who claim them princesses of music. This do not prevent them to return to their simple life of flowers girls in a humble dwelling, though.
  • Just Between You and Me: Lydia, after capturing Alexa, takes the time to explain exactly how she tricked her because she knows that Alexa took off the necklace that warded off her mind-control spell.
  • Karmic Death: Lydia turned the other muses to stone, and she and Slyder are turned into stone at the end.
  • Kneel Before Zod: Lydia sings that all will bow to her once she rules the Diamond Castle.
  • Large Ham: Lydia can't go one sentence without sounding overconfident and sure of her victory.
  • Least Rhymable Word: Lounge Lizard twins Jeremy and Ian are alternating lyrics in a song to charm the heroines. At one point Jeremy ends a line with the word "orange," and Ian quips, "You know perfectly well nothing rhymes with orange."
  • Letting Her Hair Down: Liana and Alexa's hair falls loose with curls after they transform.
  • Leitmotif: Lydia is represented by the the tune her flute plays to hypnotize people. She plays the same tune four times in the movie, just in different keys.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Alexa and Liana only wear two dresses, which is unusual for a Barbie film.
  • Loveable Rogue: Ian and Jeremy fail to impress the heroines at first, and show up late to their own gig.
  • Lounge Lizard: Jeremy and Ian, who try to serenade Alexa and Liana with a song.
  • MacGuffin Location: The titular castle, which creates every kind of music. Finding it is Lydia's goal.
  • Magic Mirror: Melody hid inside an ordinary mirror, which turned it into a magic one.
  • Magic Music: Music is a source of great magic in this world.
  • Meaningful Name: Melody, who is a musical apprentice, and later becomes a Muse herself.
  • Memento MacGuffin: The necklaces, which act as a sign of friendship between Alexa and Liana.
  • Mind-Control Music: Lydia uses her flute to brainwash people.
  • The Muse: The muses guard all music and watch as new songs are created.
  • Musical Chores: Alexa and Liana sing "Connected" as they clean up the damage done to their garden during a storm.
  • Music Stories: Despite the movie being labeled as a “musical fairy tale”, all of the singing occurs In-Universe.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In the flashback to Lydia leaving the Diamond Castle, she slams the doors hard enough to jostle two heart-shaped stones from it, causing them to fall into a river. The two stones were later found and worn by Liana and Alexa, meaning that Lydia is indirectly responsible for giving her enemies a way to combat her dark magic.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: Lydia's extended villain song has her singing that she loves dogs with rabies.
  • Not Quite Dead: Lydia appears to die when her spell backfires, causing her to vanish, but she reappears in the finale.
  • Obviously Evil: Lydia, even before officially turning on her fellow muses, dresses in an outfit that should have tipped them off.
  • Oh, Crap!: Lydia gets several of these moments when her spells won't work.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Lydia's main henchman, Slyder, is a small, snake-like european dragon who speaks with a lisp. Most of the characters simply call him a snake.
  • Pimped-Out Dress: Alexa and Liana gain these at the end.
  • Pink Means Feminine: Liana wears a pink peasant dress, and in the finale both girls' dresses have pink as a major color.
  • Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Liana and Alexa come across a manor in the woods after running out of supplies, and the mind-controlled servants tell them that they're the house's prophesied owners and that a legend about two best friends has been foretold. Alexa, delighted to have a proper source of food and shelter, as well as a collection of gorgeous dresses and jewels, insists that they should stay there instead of continuing their quest to the Diamond Castle. Liana is aghast at this choice, and calls Alexa out on her selfishness and unwillingness to keep their promise to Melody. The girls subsequently part ways in anger, with Alexa ripping off her heart-shaped diamond necklace in a moment of blind fury. This ends up leaving her vulnerable to Lydia's magic.
  • Power Crystal: The Diamond Castle is covered with them. Each crystal represents a song.
  • The Power of Friendship: This powers the lockets; if one is missing the magical barriers -will not work.
  • The Power of Rock: Ian and Jeremy get magical electric guitars at the end.
  • Precious Puppies: The girls find a couple dogs, just to make things cuter.
  • Pretend to Be Brainwashed: Both Liana and Alexa when Lydia commands them to drown in the whirlpool, only for them to steal her flute instead. They do not become mind-controlled because they hide their necklaces (which prevent them from such) behind their backs.
  • Princesses Prefer Pink: Liana's peasant dress is mostly pink, and Alexa and Liana wear princess dresses with shades of pink at the end.
  • Pseudo-Romantic Friendship: Alexa and Liana live together, sing together, and do everything together. They have more chemistry between each other than with their love interests, Ian and Jeremy.
  • Repeat Cut: When Liana and Alexa's dresses are magically transformed by the Diamond Castle, the effects of the transformation are repeated three times; first at a medium shot, second at a wide angle, and third in close-up for each of them.
  • Returning the Handkerchief: Jeremy and Ian find Alexa's handkerchief after she and Liana spurn their advances, and they use it as an excuse to follow after the girls.
  • Riches to Rags: The girls return from the Diamond Castle to their simple lives selling flowers; their dresses even change back to normal.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Lily and Sparkles, two puppies who accompany the girls.
  • Scenery Porn: The locations are very pretty, the Valley of Flowers in particular.
  • Sealed Good in a Can: Melody is sealed in a mirror.
  • Shout-Out: When searching the wardrobe, several dresses of the princesses from Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses are seen, including Fallon's, Delia's, and Blair's. Alexa picks out Edeline's dress. Princess Luciana's dress from Barbie as the Island Princess is there as well.
  • Sickly Green Glow: Lydia's magic is this color.
  • Signature Instrument: The baddie, Lydia, plays a flute to mesmerise people. She always had the flute before she turned evil and it was connected to a status as a "muse" (basically, a magical band member), but when she turned evil she gave it the mind-control powers.
  • Single-Minded Twins: Ian and Jeremy often finish each other's sentences.
  • Smug Snake: Lydia is often very overconfident and assured of impending victory, which makes her reactions when something goes wrong quite funny.
  • Sorry I'm Late: Ian's quip when the twins rescue the girls from Slyder.
  • Source Music: Despite being billed as a "musical fairy tale," only one of the songs can be considered non-diegetic: the villain's song, "Wonderful Me." And even that may be diegetic, as her minion applauds at the end.
  • Spoiler Cover/Trailers Always Spoil: The DVD cover and all trailers and promos spoil Liana and Alexa's princess gowns which they receive when the castle is revealed. Their dolls even call them princesses, spoiling them becoming such at the end of the movie.
  • Sycophantic Servant: Slyder is completely devoted to Lydia and often tells her how wonderful she is.
  • Take Over the World: Or in Lydia's case, taking over Diamond Castle and all the world's music.
  • Taken for Granite: Lydia freezes the other muses this way. It happens to her and Slyder at the end.
  • Team Pet: Lily and Sparkles, two cute puppies who help the girls at times.
  • Technicolor Death: Lydia's spell backfiring, which causes her to vanish in sparkles of light.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Despite being hungry enough to play at an inn for their dinner, Alexa and Liana soon leave the food behind to go to the Diamond Castle.
  • Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Ian and Jeremy are rare male examples who seem to see themselves as heroes in a fairy tale, and assume Liana and Alexa dropped their handkerchief on purpose as a call to romance.
  • Timmy in a Well: Sparkles leads the twins to the girls, Lily picks up Alexa's necklace and drops it over the cliff to the girls.
  • Vain Sorceress: Lydia wants to be the world's only Muse, and keeps the mirror Slyder retrieves to look at herself.
  • Villain Song: "Wonderful Me" by Lydia.

Friendship is the true treasure.
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Barbie & the Diamond Castle

When Liana, Alexa and their party cross the Diamond Castle bridge, they undergo a sparkly transformation.

How well does it match the trope?

4.5 (8 votes)

Example of:

Main / GorgeousGarmentGeneration

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