I admit that I let myself get overhyped for "Barbie." By the time I actually sat down and watched the movie, I'd had most of the better gags and laugh lines spoiled for me. And after wading through all the different takes and analysis on the movie's messaging, I was expecting something a lot more assertive about being a feminist, progressive, forward-thinking satire on consumer culture and gender dynamics.
What we got instead was a very silly, very weird piece of entertainment that is careful to ensure that the audience is having a good time. Rest assured that "Barbie" is about breaking down the idealized image of the Barbie doll and pointing out the impossibility of living up to that standard. However, it does so in very gentle terms, making room for plenty of nostalgia, musical numbers, and feel-good girl-power moments. "Barbie" was also made with the full cooperation of Mattel, using all of their branding and intellectual property, so don't expect anything too critical when it comes to their corporate practices. "Barbie" keeps its focus almost solely on the gender divide, and all the messages are very familiar and very safe.
Writer/director Greta Gerwig and her co-writer Noah Baumbach have constructed a life-sized universe for Barbie based on the toy lines and all of those commercials for Barbie dolls we saw as a kid. The worldbuilding here is not very sturdy, because Barbie only had the sketchiest outlines of a backstory, based mostly around bright, girlish, aesthetics. And wow, those aesthetics look great on the big screen. Everything in Barbieland is bright and cheerful and surely there's never been so much pink in one movie before. The laws of matter and physics conform to how children play with their Barbie dolls, so Barbie floats down from her Dreamhouse to her car instead of walking down the steps. There's no real water anywhere, hair length can change from moment to moment, and Barbie herself is always permanently on tiptoe to accommodate high-heel shoes.
Pointedly, the Barbies occupy all the important roles in their society, including presidents, doctors, scientists, and judges, while the Kens are essentially accessories. In keeping with Mattel's own diversity efforts, there are Barbies and Kens of all colors and body types. So we have Barbies played by Issa Rae, Alexandra Shipp, Hari Nef, Dua Lipa, Emma Mackey, and Sharon Rooney, while the Ken actors include Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, and Ncuti Gatwa. Everything looks like plastic perfection in Barbieland, and if you've ever played with Barbies you'll probably be able to spot something familiar among the sets or wardrobe choices. There's a ton of Barbie paraphernalia recreated for the film, and even obscure side characters like Pregnant Midge (Emerald Fennell) and Ken's Buddy Alan (Michael Cera) show up.
The story of "Barbie" is about one Barbie, a Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), who starts having very un-Barbielike thoughts of death one day, and starts losing her Barbieness. Her feet go flat and she can't float anymore. After consulting with the local guru, Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), our heroine learns she must go to the Real World to find out who's been playing with her, and try to resolve this existential crisis. She's joined by the Ken (Ryan Gosling) who is infatuated with her, and they soon meet the mother/daughter pair of Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), who help to clue the dolls in on how the Real World operates.
If you haven't worked it out by now, the "Barbie" movie is aimed at adults, and contains some instances of adult humor - nothing explicit, but plenty that touches on mature subjects. While you can definitely call the entire movie an extended commercial for the Barbie brand, I like that it's honestly less about the doll and more about the complicated relationships that multiple generations of women and girls have had with the doll. Gerwig seems to be honestly trying to reconcile all the competing ideas and criticisms about Barbie that have been around since her inception, and acknowledging everyone's POV. Gloria is nostalgic and positive about Barbie. Sasha dismisses her outdated and lame. The Mattel execs talk the talk, but are shown to be massive hypocrites. Even the creator of Barbie, Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman) gets to put in her two cents.
This doesn't result in a very cohesive narrative, however. "Barbie" has a lot of great ideas and notions, but feels very piecemeal and underdeveloped, with everything sort of thrown together. The one part of the movie that absolutely works is Ryan Gosling's Ken discovering the patriarchy, bringing it back to Barbieland, and turning the place on its head, revealing its systemic problems in the process. Gosling's performance is already iconic. His Ken is a himbo manchild who flirts with toxic masculinity, but really just needs to learn to love himself. Margot Robbie is even more perfect as Barbie, the harder role to embody, and it's a shame that Barbie's existential crisis just doesn't pack as much of a punch as I wanted it to. There are bits that don't go anywhere, like the Mattel executives, led by a blundering CEO (Will Ferrell), who really don't need to be in this movie, and way too many distracting little references and product spotlights.
The filmmaking itself is lovely. Gerwig's work is very playful, zipping between a "2001: A Space Odyssey" homage for the opener, to explorations of Barbieland and the real world, beautifully choreographed musical numbers, chase sequences, travel montages, and spoofs on the familiar Barbie commercial format. Some of the one liners and sly asides are all-timers, and I so appreciate that Gerwig isn't afraid to get sentimental and lean into the fuzzy feelings. Despite all the emphasis on how impossible it is to be a woman in the real world, there's no question why Barbie would still choose to be one. I'm also impressed that Mattel was willing to poke this much fun at itself, though "Barbie" still looks very tame next to projects like the recent "Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers" movie.
However, it's hard to get away from how half-finished the movie feels. The mother-daughter story and Barbie's progression into a real girl are both awfully thin, and so much of that fantastic cast ends up stuck in the background. I'm happy that "Barbie" is doing so well financially, but as a movie it leaves a lot on the table, and the audience has to do way too much of the heavy lifting. I'd still recommend seeing it, because "Barbie" is so uniquely a cinematic spectacle from a female POV that nobody else has ever attempted on this level. And it could very well be that I set my own expectations too high. If I'd have gone in pre-hype, without knowing anything except that the movie was about Barbie, I probably would have loved it.
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