Barbie review

Hey, you! Yes, you! Are you looking for a piece of art that validates your rage at a political and societal system that is rolling back on the freedoms that were hard fought for and won by a feminist movement that you’ve read about in history books but have never actually participated in? A piece of art that just so happens to be a multi-million dollar blockbuster because that gives you the impressions that people with money and influence are working to restore the rights you’re steadily losing? Well have I got the movie for you!

Iconic children’s doll

Barbie (as if you didn’t already know) is based on the iconic children’s doll which revolutionised the way toys for girls were made and marketed. Before Barbie girls were largely expected to play with dolls that literally looked like babies, a pastime designed to prepare them for domesticated motherhood and precisely nothing else. But Barbie was a symbol for all that women could be. Initially being a figure of glamour and maturity her first job was as a model. Later, due to her popularity, more responsible minds would dictate that she take on more ambitious forms, like professionals and academics, so that girls would have more varied role models to look up to.

But not all little girls found warmth in Barbie’s aspirational glow. While Barbie’s marketing boasts of the many ways she has progressed our society towards gender equality and how she has struck blows for feminism and diversity, many still see her as a hinderance. They feel to live in Barbie’s shadow is a punishment not a privilege. To live up to the doll’s ideal is a Sisyphean task, thankless and never ending.

This is where we arrive at Barbie’s story. We meet Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), the Barbie you think of when you think of Barbie, in a state of perpetual bliss. She is oblivious to the realities of the modern world, completely unaware that they are creeping towards her, about to crash her Dreamhouse dreams. When she starts seeing things no Barbie should ever be subjected to – normal things, mundane things – she seeks out the wisdom of the one Barbie who can no longer live up to their community’s immaculate ideals (Kate McKinnon). On her advice, Barbie seeks out the real world and the key to ending her existential dread once and for all. Oh, and Ken’s (Ryan Gosling) also along on the ride for some reason.

An absolute breeze

Now that we’re all caught up, Barbie: The Movie is a blast. Funny, irreverent, and at a runtime just shy of two hours, an absolute breeze. Honestly, the pacing is probably a bit too quick, but considering how much franchise-oriented cinema feels the need to be half a workday long and have at least one genocide per hour, Barbie feels like the most refreshing kind of reaction. Can it be a bit of a mess? Yes. Some characters go AWOL for a long time, while others are forgotten entirely. Some bits overstay their welcome, while others are pushed along far too quickly. Regardless, it is a pastel pink plushie of a movie, one with as much warmth and heart as there is hilarity, with the best punchlines coming out of absolutely nowhere to knock a movie audience out for the count.

Greta Gerwig’s direction is one part Wes Anderson and four parts Spice World, giving just enough cinematic symmetry to a celebration of camp so that the film retains a certain jauntiness, while never feeling sickeningly sweet, even in its most brightly coloured moments. Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s script is whip smart and deftly folds in themes of misogyny and mental health into the otherwise chaotic comedy in a way that feels organic and earned.

Margot Robbie is Barbie

Margot Robbie is Barbie. That’s the sentence. She was genetically engineered in a lab for this very purpose and in an industry filled top to bottom with Barbie hopefuls, she is Barbie in every step, in every line, in every look.

And if you want to stop there, that’s it. Barbie is great fun. A hoot and a half with a great laugh almost every minute. It can do all that and handle an honest discussion about frustrations with Barbie herself and the patriarchal complex at large. Just like the icon herself, this movie strives to have it all and succeeds. But also, just like the titular character, I can’t help but feel something creeping into this review, waiting to dump a harsh lump of reality into an otherwise great time. So if the above is all you wanted to know, you can stop reading. For the rest of you, this ride could get bumpy.

Firstly, and we’ve all seen the poster, ‘She is Everything. He’s Just Ken.’ If that’s true, why am I obsessed with Ryan Gosling as Ken? Why are almost all of my thoughts and feelings about this movie entirely Ken-centric? Well firstly, as Robbie is playing the lead character, she has to allow some space in the role so that she can play surrogate to the audience. That’s the essence of Barbie after all. There has to be a certain nondescriptness to her so that every one of the estimated 40 million attendees worldwide can put themselves in her three inch heels.

Ryan Gosling

Gosling doesn’t have that problem with Ken. He doesn’t have to worry about anyone wanting to walk in his Crocs, so his part can be more bespoke. He can be funnier, looser, dimmer, needier, broader and more pathetic than Barbie ever has the freedom to be. But it doesn’t stop there, while there has been much in the trailers to hype up Barbie as a music video megastar, those promises don’t really amount to much, while Ken gets the greatest surprise musical number since Puttin’ On the Ritz in Young Frankenstein. Seriously, it’s going to be hilarious come next winter when the Oscar Nominations are revealed and the only person in this female-focused film to get one is Ryan Gosling.

Also, it is inevitable with a film like Barbie, a multi-million dollar effort gunning for a billion at the box office, that for all the right on, fist pumping, girl power, there are going to be just as many places where the film gets it as wrong as it gets it right. For all the diverse inclusivity the film rightly brings to the table – a policy Mattel themselves spearheaded for Barbie in the 2010s – the film never really interrogates the fact that Stereotypical Barbie is white and blonde. In a land of her peers, she is first among equals.

Then there’s a subplot involving the Kens, portrayed in the film as a marginalised minority with a lot of queer coding going on, that is going to be super divisive among anyone honestly attempting to critically analyse this film. Depending on which side of the argument you fall on, it’s a reading might not leave the Barbies or Barbieland looking at all like the force for good a film like this demands. Especially during such a high-profile period of industrial action going on in Hollywood.

Hope that things can and will get better

This is the risk you run when you so heavily politicise a big-budget movie like this. This film is going to be divisive in ways that the creators expected and in ways they did not expect and may not like. They want to fuel their audience’s rage and instil in them the hope that things can and will get better. They also want to take their audience’s money. That’s always a messy situation that leaves both sides of the coin with some undesirable compromises. As such, this film’s flaws should not go undiscussed and its cheerleaders should be made to justify their signal boosting of a corporate entity that will never actually care for them or the causes they champion.

But that is an incredibly hypocritical take for me to have. Why shouldn’t fans of female-focused films get to ignore the problematic elements of the films they love? Why shouldn’t the joy they feel at witnessing a long-awaited cinematic event blind them to a film’s hypocrisy? I’m a white male in his 30’s who writes about media. I do this all the time and I know everyone else in my demographic does it too. We do it unconsciously, but there are also times we know exactly what we’re doing, and we’ve been getting away with it for decades.

I’m certain these irksome issues which troubled me throughout my viewing are only doing so because the film doesn’t speak to me in the way it would speak to its target audience. Hell, it’s probably the reason I was so enamoured with Gosling’s Ken. He’s the male perspective I need to find a way in. But if I can just bat away those same feelings for all the movies that were made with guys like me in mind, why the hell shouldn’t girls get to have their fun without having to watch several dozen think pieces about how the Barbie movie is secretly Zionist propaganda or whatever the hell the YouTube essayists are going to plaster over their thumbnails.

I don’t think watching this movie is a revolutionary act. There’s too much money involved. Too many calculations have been made as to what reputational damage Mattel can endure as long as this movie makes half a billion at the box office. But it is a revolutionary act to someone. And if they’re reading this, here’s what I hope they take from this review. Don’t let this be your one revolutionary act this year. If this movie does truly inspire you, don’t let the catharsis it gives you rob you of your righteous fury. Hold onto that anger and take it to the streets, to the grassroots campaigns being forged in every town and city this film is being shown. Salvation cannot be found in a multi-million dollar project. But it can be found in the hearts and minds of the worldwide audience it inspires.