The Barbie movie is fantastic. To me, it was hilarious all the way through and, as you might have already heard, includes some witty social commentary. This is so much more than a kids’ movie about toys.
Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling put on incredible performances, though there was nothing I’d call chemistry between the duo since the dolls don’t share a romantic relationship of any sort. There are some great quips about their lack of both genitals and sexual awareness whenever the pair get into a somewhat intimate situation. This maintains the film’s air of innocence and fun. It’s great.
The set design is incredible. A departure from modern filmmakers’ overindulgence in CG sets, characters and props, in Barbieland, everything appears to be real… because it is. And it’s beautiful in a way that’s reminiscent of musicals produced in Classic Barbie’s day (1959), like White Christmas (1954), where the sets are as integral to the story as the characters. I loved the throwback style of dance sequences that rolled smoothly onto dramatically abstract flat-colored backdrops. Honestly, if Ryan Gosling singing I’m Just Ken isn’t supposed to remind us of Danny Kaye singing They’re Doing Choreography, then I don’t know what is going on.
(Caveat: I’m not even a film buff, so I probably don’t know what’s going on. But, look—there’s even a dude with a bowl cut resembling a black beret back there! Am I crazy!?)
Overall, Barbie is a marvelous deluge of hyper-social-aware jokes, song, and dance that skewer every view of the doll and “the patriarchy.” And it is indeed intentional that the film feels so evenhanded in its portrayals of Barbie. In her interview with The New York Times, Barbie writer and director, Greta Gerwig describes her desire to celebrate and criticize the whole phenomenon: “Things can be both/and… I’m doing the thing and subverting the thing.” She does an incredible job of capturing our 64-years-long love/hate relationship with the figure.
Spoiler Alert – The following paragraphs give away the ending. You might want to come back after you’ve seen Barbie for yourself.
It’s only at the end of Barbie where the messaging becomes disappointingly unbalanced with the Barbies’ treatment of the Kens. As Erik Kain writes for Forbes, “… the real world… may not be an entirely equal world, but it’s a lot more equitable than Barbieland!”
And so it ends, with Barbieland practically unchanged. Once the Kendom uprising is squashed, the Kens are put back in their place as furniture. To give you an entirely honest account of the film, the Barbies did offer a small concession: Some Kens may have positions in lower courts, but none shall sit on Barbieland’s Supreme Court.
As mercifully sheltered from reality as Barbieland appears to be, it suffers the same plight as the real world. Our society’s never-ending march toward equity and justice is not a march at all. If we marched steadily, we could stop on a dime at perfect equilibrium. Instead, we swing like a wrecking ball, back-and-forth, bashing each other in both directions until we all tire of hurting and getting hurt. The Barbies—a fantastic reflection of their creators—have a tragic taste for vengeance.
Speaking of our love of mutually assured destruction, Oppenheimer is a decent movie too. If you’re planning to partake in the double-feature of the year, I suggest Barbie first, so you can actually hear it. As a good friend of mine put it…
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsI used to have eardrums like you, but then I watched Oppenheimer in IMAX
— karma (@0xkarmacoma) July 21, 2023
Split Wood, Laugh Out Loud 