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Overall6.5
This was always going to be one of those movies one is either going to have a blast with, be utterly confused by, or made deeply furious by. There will really not be a whole lot of other outcomes with this unabashed Feminist idea being put through a pseudo-typical romcom grinder by way of the vast bulk of the American audience being at least passingly familiar with the expanded universe of the Barbie mythos.
With “Barbie,” Oscar winning writer/director Greta Gerwig has given us as close to a live-action Toy Story” as we’re likely to come across.
Barbies and Kens all live in Barbie Land, where they go through their idillic day to day routines in the bliss and happiness of the surety that over in the Real World. Their presence has helped empower generations of women, and made them feel positive about themselves. Stereotypical Barbie (played to a T by Margot Robbie) suddenly begins having thoughts about death, and things start to go akimbo around her (like her make-believe breakfast coming out burned and expired), she sets out to find out what’s going wrong with her.
SNL alumni Kate McKinnon plays a particularly unique Barbie variant. She helps Robbie’s Barbie realize someone is playing with her doll in the Real World. The player is having these thoughts, which are seeping through, and impacting Barbie’s world around her. So, she has to set out to navigate the barrier between the worlds, and discover both the person who’s been playing with her, and realize the effect of the Barbies on the real world might not exactly be what they had been imagining all this time.
Along with the myriad Barbies is the almost as numerous Kens, and at their forefront is Ryan Gosling as the Stereotypical Ken. His entire day is made up of trying endlessly (and hopelessly) to get Barbie to notice him. Within Barbie Land, it’s the Barbies who run the show, with the Kens going about their relatively vapid boyfriend routines. Ryan’s Ken hides in Barbie’s car as she heads out to the Real World, and once there he discovers “patriarchy” and “horses” (though I could have sworn Barbie had horses at one point in the past), and he dives headlong into becoming a typical dudebro.
He leaves back for Barbie Land, bringing his newfound insights into the amazing thing that is the patriarchy back to the rest of the Kens, setting up for a third act showdown between the Kens and the Barbies. In the end, Gerwig does handle the conversation rather astutely, as Ken expresses his frustration that he was always, “Barbie…. & Ken””, he was never his own entity. In his case, he didn’t even have a job, he just hung out around Barbie waiting for her to use him as a boyfriend for a time before heading back to her dream house.
The film is brilliant in how it does genuinely subvert so many of the tropes within the whole debate around Barbies’ effect on generations of kids, how it impacted self-image of women vs. did all of the various job versions of her were meant to encourage that she could to anything. Barbie being told that she made many girls feel badly about how they looked, rather than bringing them joy, and Robbie’s reaction to the news is not glossed over. On the Ken side, it’s laudable that the story is trying to encourage him to discover his identity for himself rather than just being an “&” with Barbie. However his always seeking to be with her and to live with her (and while he never outright asks for sex, the subtext is not subtle, even given the fact that neither of them have genitalia). This is where the challenge for me came in, as it harkens dangerously close to the incels’ chest-thumping insistence that the deserve sex and relationships and to be walked behind simply because he happens to be a Ken, rather than being someone interesting enough to want to be involved with.
There are a lot of solid messages in this film. It is to Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach‘s credit how well these come across overall. We already know Robbie is a first-rate actress, but it takes a special kind of skill to fully embody this classic doll, and also imbue the character with depth. As a viewing experience, it’s a fun film, if a bit disjointed. In the end, the film manages to create a solid message, even if the people who need to hear it most will be the ones least likely to watch it.
“Barbie” opens July 21st in theaters everywhere. It runs 1 hour and 45 minutes.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10 stars.
