Barbie (2023)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
Barbie, the movie of the summer, has finally arrived with massive buzz, a fair amount of controversy, and delivers a summer blockbuster unlike any you have ever seen.
Margot Robbie proves she is among the finest actors working today, while Ryan Gosling leads a massive supporting cast of characters in a fun, insightful, and unforgettable comedic romp.
Somehow finds a balance between crass commercialism and biting social commentary, a testament to the tightrope co-writer/director Greta Gerwig walks with her latest feature.
NO
Some will feel this film is a two-hour bashing of men and the patriarchy. 1) it is a satire. 2) If the truths shared here threaten you, perhaps you are not needing Barbie to be the catalyst which makes you reflect on how you walk through life?
There is a view that the film delivers mixed messages around empowerment and self-worth. The commercialism argument also lands in those same criticisms. Barbie has proven to be a divisive movie for some viewers.
Your name is Ben Shapiro and you have a YouTube channel.
OUR REVIEW
Full of quotable lines, great characters, and a smart, piercing screenplay packed with nostalgia and reverence, while committing to having a very real conversation with its audience, Barbie is about much more than a bunch of creative-types imagining a fantastical world around a plastic doll.
Under the steady hand of co-writer/director Greta Gerwig, Barbie is an experience, from the opening moments of Helen Mirren’s skillful narration, to the plastic, synthetic Barbieland world where the film first opens. The production design by six-time Oscar nominee Sarah Greenwood is bold and brilliant in its shades of pink and the Barbie-playset-comes-to-life environment the Barbies and Kens exist in. You see, in Barbieland, women, or Barbies, run the world, and the Kens don’t.
Each Barbie is named Barbie and each Ken is named Ken. Adjectives and identifiers separate them - President Barbie (Issa Rae), Writer Barbie (Alexandra Shipp), Dr. Barbie (Hari Nef) are among the Barbie contingent - with Margot Robbie in the lead role as Stereotypical Barbie. She has the “perfect” look - the blonde hair, the statuesque appearance and Stereotypical Ken (Ryan Gosling) is gaga for her. He wants to do more than just “Beach,” the job he and the Kens do in Barbieland. However, Robbie’s Barbie is not super interested in Ken in quite that way and prefers hanging out with her friends.
When a glitch suddenly appears in her everyday routines, Stereotypical Barbie is encouraged to visit the oracle-like Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), relegated to the outer fringes of Barbieland because she was played with too hard.
And so we learn that Barbieland is a parallel universe to The Real World. In The Real World, Barbies are toys people play with. Those shared experiences create individual experiences for each Barbie and have a direct impact on what Barbies do day-to-day. However, in Barbieland, the Barbies do have some sense of a parallel world because, more than once, we are told that Barbies believe they have solved all the problems related to feminism and equal rights.
When Weird Barbie explains the concept of The Real World to Barbie, the film soon shifts into a hybrid dystopia. Barbie and Ken (who sneaks away in the Barbie Dream Car to be with his “girlfriend”) travel through a portal to The Real World and everything seems different. With men in charge in The Real World, Ken becomes immediately smitten with the idea of “the patriarchy,” himself a rapid study on the gender and power dynamics in his new environment. As Barbie emotionally unravels at the realization that things are not what she believed to be true in The Real World, Ken sneaks back to Barbieland, sans Barbie, and institutes patriarchal rule.
I’ll stop there because the film offers many nuances and surprises, but not before Barbie connects with a single mother, Gloria (America Ferrera), and her teenage daughter, Sasha (Arianna Greenblatt).
In balancing pop culture memories with kitsch, humor with observation, Barbie is often an unpredictable delight - a film that zigs when you think it will zag. Though there is a substantial production budget, the film feels adjacent to the typical summer blockbuster experience. Wickedly funny, it occasionally breaks the fourth wall. And for every nod and wink it offers the audience, there is also an urgent call to attention simmering beneath those barbed and razor-sharp quips and puns.
Barbie, for all its pink-plastic aesthetic and awesomely outlandish costumes by two-time Oscar winner Jacqueline Durran, is not benign in its message but far from the controversial flamethrower it has been made out to be. Gerwig, and co-writer and real-life partner Noah Baumbach, speak truth to power with striking satire. As we realize Ken thinks the patriarchy means essentially “Men Rule Everything,” please pardon Gerwig for finding multiple ways to ask her audience, “How’s that working out for all of us?”
Impressionable to a disarmingly empty degree, Gosling is terrific as Ken. He commits fully to the shallow, dumbfounded nature of his character and also creates undeniable charm in his dim-witted reactions and silly power grabs. He plays every beat genuinely. His iteration of Ken may be something of a buffoon, but Gosling finds a way for us to both likewise appreciate and recognize his emptiness in equal measure.
Ferrera is great, delivering an emotional monologue at one point that may bring about cheers and tears in ample supply. However, this is Margot Robbie’s movie. Her empathy, understanding of self, and sense of fairness is so authentic and so heartfelt, we recognize that she is embodying decades of empowerment efforts that rightly, or wrongly at times, has been stitched onto the legacy of the Barbie doll. Barbie has taught girls for decades that they can be anything they want to be. The constant variations of those dolls have tried to drumbeat that message time and again.
Yet in Robbie’s portrayal, there’s a withering recognition that Barbieland is far from the utopia it is believed to be. This presents a fair question: If everything could be turned into a Kendom so quickly, and basically the very moment she looks away, is there ever a true opportunity for the Barbies of the world - the Barbies of all shapes, sizes, and colors - to truly stand on their own?
Gerwig may want to have the best of both worlds at times, but she deftly balances social commentary with some side-splitting, laugh out loud moments that make this such a winning formula for success. Robbie not only can break your heart, or win you over with a tear or a smile, but she also has terrific comedic timing. Her interactions with her Barbie friends and with Gosling prove masterful and show her range as a performer is truly underrated.
While a corporate subplot involving a manic and nameless Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell) falls flat and uninspired, there are many elements of Barbie which work exceptionally well. Gerwig is savvy; she and Baumbach know just how to position their film to ignite a cultural conversation while also leaning into the anticipated criticism of attempting to grab hold of the pop culture zeitgeist.
For all the laughs and all the smiles the film generates - Barbie leaves us with a clear-eyed view of our world where perfection is an imperfect reality.
CAST & CREW
Starring: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Ariana Greenblatt, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, Sharon Rooney, Ana Cruz Kayne, Ritu Arya, Dua Lipa, Michael Cera, Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Scott Evans, Ncuti Gatwa, Rob Brydon, John Cena, Tom Stourton, Rhea Perlman, Will Ferrell, Helen Mirren, Connor Swindells, Emerald Fennell
Director: Greta Gerwig
Written by: Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach
Release Date: July 21, 2023
Warner Bros.