What a way to wind up July, right? I have to be honest, I was never really into Barbie when I was a kid. I had a couple of them, but I was always more of a My Little Pony girl. Ergo, I have to give credit where credit is due: Seeing Barbie was my son’s idea. My sixteen-year old son with the impish sense of humor.
So yeah, here we are. Talking about Barbie.
Yay.
I didn’t have much hope for this movie because the trailers looked incredibly inane, and the one other film of Greta Gerwig’s I’ve seen is Little Women, which a lot of people love but which I loathe, because the way Gerwig kept going back and forth between Alcott’s novel and Alcott’s life robbed both narratives of any resonance in my opinion (Read my blog post about the novel and film here).
In Barbie’s case, though, I was pleasantly surprised. The first scenes are of Barbieland, with everything bright and shiny, plastic and perfect, and all incredibly cute. Ken’s there, too, of course, but he and the twenty other guys named Ken are more accessories than anything. Meanwhile, the dozens of ladies named Barbie control everything from the Supreme Court to, well, life, and every night is Girls’ Night. Barbie is all about showing that girls can do anything. The only Barbie we don’t see is Teen Talk Barbie because obvious.
Naturally, when Stereotypical Barbie wakes up with morning breath, discovers cellulite and suddenly thinks about death, she freaks out. Her feet have even gone flat, which causes all the other Barbies to gasp.
It could be worse, ladies. At least Barbies have feet, unlike Bratz dolls. Anywhoo…
After a visit to Weird Barbie, the wisest and ugliest of the Barbies, Stereotypical Barbie finds out she has to venture into the real world, where guys are equal to women, people are mean, and life isn’t as perfect as she thought. Girls hate her. Gasp. Barbie’s got to cut through all of this and find the human who plays with her, because she’s a toy and what goes on in the real world affects her. Ergo, only the human who plays with her can put Barbieland right.
Ken tags along too, of course, and when a woman asks him the time, it goes to his head. Suddenly, he’s got to learn about something called The Patriarchy, courtesy of a stack of books from a middle school library. And then he’s got to tell the other Kens about it. Barbie’s not going to like it when she gets home.
Where do I start with this movie? In a nutshell, Barbie is the equivalent of Sound of Freedom to certain people (and they know who they are). It may not be QAnon (for that matter, Sound of Freedom wasn’t QAnon, either), it’s not based on a true story, but it’s insidious. It’s about Keeping Ken Down. It’s woke. It’s about The Patriarchy. It’s got subliminal messages courtesy of the Chinese Communist Party. Don’t take your kids to see Barbie. It’s garbage.
Uh huh, about all of that.
While the movie does make the Battle of the Sexes a thing, and the word, “patriarchy” is bandied around at least ten times throughout the movie, it doesn’t so much celebrate woman-loving and man-hating as it makes fun of the expectations put on both women and men and goes into great detail about how crazy it all is. And yes, Ken is kept down at first, but considering the number of Ken dolls in relation to the number of Barbie dolls out there, that’s pretty expected. In the end, though, men are amazing, women are amazing, and what counts is being oneself. For the most part the movie’s philosophy is very innocent.
Awesome. That’s refreshing. Just take Barbie for what it is, y’all, no matter where anyone lands on the political spectrum.
Once I got into Barbie, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed myself. The movie is goofy as all get-out, it’s crazy, fizzy, and fun, not to mention it is so doggone creative.
Well, for the most part, anyway—it is slightly derivative of Lego movies, The Nightmare Before Christmas and the Toy Story franchise in that it’s all about worlds colliding. The product placement is a little bit shameless, not just from Mattel but Warner Bros. and Chevrolet. It does get a bit preachy now and then, and since Barbie and Ken are such fish out of the proverbial water there’s a lot of exposition. And some elements are for the grownups, but I’m not going to spoil anything.
I can’t imagine anyone but Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling playing Barbie and Ken. Margot is very accessible as Barbie while also looking the part, and Ryan is more of a goofball than a pretty boy, although he is a cute guy. Everyone in this movie really flexes their comedy muscles to their best advantage.
There are also some choreographed musical numbers, too, and one of them looks like the Crazy Veil scene from Singin’ In the Rain but without the Crazy Veil. After a while I forgot my incredulity and lack of Barbie fandom and just went with whatever happened next. It felt fine.
Am I sorry I saw Barbie? Nope. I’d see it again, actually. Does my son like good-natured trolling? Yep, and I love him.
Oh, and little memo to Hollywood: Please don’t ever make a live-action My Little Pony movie. Never, ever, under any circumstances. Not even with CG ponies. Or real horses using whatever creepy thing they did on Mister Ed to get the title character’s lips to move. OK? Thanks so much.
Barbie is currently in theaters. Rated PG-13.
My grade: B
Principal Cast: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon, America Ferrera, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, Sharon Rooney, Ana Cruz Kayne, Ritu Arya, Dua Lipa, Nicola Coughlan, Emerald Fennell, Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ncuti Gatwa, Scott Evans, John Cena, Helen Mirren
Directed by Greta Gerwig.
Written by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach.