There's a lot of Kenergy out there for Greta Gerwig's long-gestating and heavily buzzed-about "Barbie" adaptation. The actress/writer/director and long-time partner of Noah Baumbach have seemingly cooked up the most twisted, subversive satire using the Mattel Barbie license ever conceived, and it's a real banger of a movie, according to critics.
Thank goodness.
So if you were trying to decide between this and "Oppenheimer" (which both come out on July 21, 2023), then let these review snippets help guide you. "Barbie" stars Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Rhea Perlman, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Dua Lipa, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, John Cena, Michael Cera, Helen Mirren and Emerald Fennell.
The premise
Every day is a great day for Barbie (Margot Robbie). She wakes up in her Dreamhouse, takes a shower, puts on a fabulous outfit, and then heads out to spend time with her friends, who are all named Barbie, and are always happy to see her. That's life in Barbieland for you, always the same and always perfect… Until the day comes when Barbie wakes up, and her day isn't quite perfect. Small things go wrong, and she finds herself haunted by never-ending thoughts of death — not normal stuff for a Barbie.
Fortunately, Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon, usually doing the splits) is able to diagnose the problem: Every Barbie in Barbieland has a corresponding girl in the Real World who plays with her, and something is clearly wrong with our Barbie's playmate. So Barbie leaves Barbieland behind to voyage into the real world, and along for the ride is Ken (Ryan Gosling), who loves Barbie but is frustrated by the fact that every night is girls' night, and she never makes time for him. So, while Barbie is successful in finding her playmate, Ken's spent a little too much time in the Real World learning about the way things work here… and Barbieland may never be the same.
The art design and production is Oscar-worthy
That being said, Barbie isn't just a movie that could never fully escape out from under the weight of its artistic comprises. It's a hoot, a feast for the eyes and ears. Sarah Greenwood's production design is sensorially astounding; Barbie Land is conceived as it's appeared in kids' imaginations for decades — both tangible (plastic shower, toaster, or car) and intangible (invisible water, toast, or motor). The makeup team confidently balances an essence of plasticity without drowning in it to the point of the uncanny. There are musical numbers and A+ cameos. (I'd love to get Lizzo to sing-narrate my life, too, please!)
In Barbieland, Barbie (Robbie) lives an idyllic existence with many other Barbies, each with their own specialty or job (including Alexandra Shipp's Writer Barbie, Emma Mackey's Physicist Barbie, Nicola Coughlan's Diplomat Barbie, and Issa Rae's President Barbie). Each Barbie lives in their own enormous and impressively detailed DreamHouse. Barbieland's production design by Sarah Greenwood is whimsical and hilarious; kids (and the parents who routinely clean up their toys) will recognize the attention to detail and the idiosyncratic architecture. (Each DreamHouse has translucent pink plastic doors, and a fridge stocked with decals of food.)
This is one of the most meta films ever made
This absurd scene sets the stage for the rest of Barbie. The entire movie is packed with similar homages (from "Singin' in the Rain" and Busby Berkeley nods to "The Godfather" references), but they’re explicitly remade in Barbie's, and by extension Gerwig's, image. A more cynical critic might say that Gerwig is simply recycling better films that have come before, but there's no room for cynicism in "Barbie." It's a movie that is as earnest and enthusiastic as its lead heroine.
Gerwig's satire is searching, extending right up to the all-male board of Mattel (the grey-suited villains here) and its bland vision of diversity: You can be whatever you want to be, as long as you're also a Barbie, with all the aesthetic and political palatability that implies. Inevitably, she struggles to neatly close this Pandora's box of critique. So instead, she and co-writer Noah Baumbach [satirize] feminism too, and the way that we optimistically think that articulating the problems with the status quo will actually change things. "By giving voice to the cognitive dissonance of being a woman under the patriarchy you robbed it of its power!" one Barbie tells another, proudly and emptily.
This is a movie that acknowledges Barbie's unrealistic physical proportions — and the kinds of very real body issues they can cause in young girls — while also celebrating her role as a feminist icon. After all, there was an astronaut Barbie doll (1965) before there was an actual woman in NASA's astronaut corps (1978), an achievement "Barbie" commemorates by showing two suited-up women high-fiving each other among the stars, with Robbie's Earth-bound Barbie saluting them with a sunny, "Yay, space!" This is also a movie in which Mattel (the doll's manufacturer) and Warner Bros. (the film's distributor) at least create the appearance that they're in on the surprisingly pointed jokes at their expense. Mattel headquarters features a spacious, top-floor conference room populated solely by men with a heart-shaped, "Dr. Strangelove"-inspired lamp hovering over the table, yet Will Ferrell's CEO insists his company's "gender-neutral bathrooms up the wazoo" are evidence of diversity. It's a neat trick.
It's a stacked cast of Kens and Barbies
Firmly believing that they've fixed all the sexism in the world for good, the ladies are played by the likes of Issa Rae, Sharon Rooney, Dua Lipa, Emma Mackey, and an uproarious Kate McKinnon as "Weird Barbie" — the product of a bored adolescent girl who started to cut her Barbie's hair and paint her face (a phase this woman critic vividly recalls, for all her sins).
They are having so much fun holding all the positions of power in their land that who could blame them for treating the Kens (John Cena, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, Scott Evans and others) as pretty objects, and casually dismissing the harmlessly sweetie-pie Allen doll (Michael Cera in his most lovable role since "Juno")?
In Barbieland, everything is picture perfect, everyday. Barbie (Robbie) is the main character in a land of Barbies, which also includes a Presidential Barbie (Issa Rae), a Physicist Barbie (Emma Mackey), a Mermaid Barbie (pop singer Dua Lipa) and many more. They all live in their Barbie Dream Houses and cruise down to the beach where they're ogled by their Kens, who don't serve any purpose other than to be recognized by their Barbies. (This is the way it's always been with Ken.) Along with Gosling, other Kens are played by "Shang-Chi's" Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, John Cena and more.
Not everyone universally praised it though
There's a streak of defensiveness to "Barbie," as though it's trying to anticipate and acknowledge any critiques lodged against it before they're made, which renders it emotionally inert despite the efforts at wackiness. To be a film fan these days is to be aware that franchises and cinematic universes and remakes and other adaptations of old IP have become black holes that swallow artists, leaving you to desperately hope they might emerge with the rare project that, even though it comes from constrictive confines, still feels like it was made by a person. "Barbie" definitely was. But the trouble with trying to sneak subversive ideas into a project so inherently compromised is that, rather than get away with something, you might just create a new way for a brand to sell itself.
What follows is a hamster wheel of relentless identity crises, musical numbers, tears, tantrums, bland feminist speeches, questionable acting from the huge cast and Ken suddenly turning into a deranged ex-boyfriend. The final "joke" is so eye-rollingly bad it left me grateful I always played with Sindy dolls.
TL;DR
This is a truly original work — one of the smartest, funniest, sweetest, most insightful and just plain flat-out entertaining movies of the year.
It's a thoughtful, funny film that cares about what "Barbie" means to people and it argues that Barbie — like human beings — makes mistakes but is pretty great, anyway.
Weird and wonderful, it's one of the funnest and funniest movies ever made — and is brilliantly spearheaded by actress and producer Margot Robbie, along with writer-director Greta Gerwig.
"Barbie" is both a master's thesis on feminism and an "Austin Powers"-esque romp.
"Barbie" is an impressive and original work of the imagination.
