Barbie evaluate: A brisk satire that mocks the men’s rights movement

I grew up in a Barbie family, in addition to a deeply feminist family. Along with My Little Pony, Cherry Merry Muffin, and (prized above all) my in depth assortment of She-Ra motion figures, my mom gave me and my sister Barbie dolls for “imaginative play,” one thing Mom inspired simply as a lot as she inspired us to play video video games — for hand-eye coordination and for our potential careers in STEM, naturally. Our TV habits have been mediated with feminism in thoughts, too; I watched and rewatched She-Ra: Princess of Power on VHS, however I barely knew He-Man, whom I thought-about as irrelevant as Ken. As I grew older and met different children, although, I noticed I had been residing in Opposite Land. Everybody else knew He-Man higher than She-Ra. The female-dominated world of Barbie, She-Ra, My Little Pony, and so forth was a farce. The actual world was made for Ken.

Heading into the press screening for Barbie, I regressed again into the stunning, childlike misconceptions of my toy assortment. I spent my drive to the film pondering again on my love of Margot Robbie in Birds of Prey and I, Tonya, in addition to my admiration for Greta Gerwig’s physique of labor, from Frances Ha to Little Women. Even realizing this film must wrestle with Mattel’s involvement and management over the huge Barbie model, I knew director Greta Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach would discover their very own method to unpack and analyze trendy requirements of femininity and feminist thought. I figured it’d be a bit humorous, a bit deep, possibly a bit too fundamental, however hopefully smarter than The Lego Movie.

I didn’t anticipate Barbie to be a film about Ken — and extra importantly, a film Ryan Gosling steals with such superb aplomb that I can’t even be that mad at him for it.

[Ed. note: Minor setup spoilers ahead for Barbie.]

Photo: Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros.

Don’t get me incorrect. Margot Robbie isn’t any slouch as what the film calls “Stereotypical Barbie” — the blond bombshell that children in Mattel focus teams level to when introduced with numerous Barbie dolls and requested, “Which one is Barbie?” Stereotypical Barbie begins the film as a assured girl who is aware of precisely who she is, and doesn’t ever need something to alter. She lives in Barbieland, a fantasy realm conjured by Mattel that’s powered by the imaginations of children who play with Barbie dolls. It’s a world dominated by Barbies, and unashamed of conventional female tropes. The president is a Barbie (performed by Issa Rae, in a pink silk “President” sash). The Supreme Court is all Barbie. And each Nobel Prize winner in historical past is — you guessed it — a Barbie. Every pink-washed DreamHouse mansion in Barbieland is owned by a girl who makes her personal cash and spends her free time indulging in “girls’ nights” the place all people shares a wonderful communal wardrobe.

Stereotypical Barbie has no motive to go away this stunning female realm. She’s compelled to trek into the harsh world of Reality solely as a result of someplace, somebody is enjoying together with her whereas experiencing such intense existential angst that their feelings are reaching Barbieland and drilling into Barbie’s psyche. Her real-world proprietor is inadvertently inflicting her to consider demise, get precise cellulite on her thighs, and even develop articulated ankles that expertise all-too-real ache when she stuffs her ft into stiletto heels.

But even earlier than the wall between Barbieland and Reality begins breaking down, it’s all too clear that that is Ken’s film. At the movie’s outset, Barbie has all of it, and Robbie sells Barbieland’s bland, uncomplicated happiness with a frozen-but-satisfied smile. For Ken, although, it’s by no means been that easy. Barbie is joyful by default, however Ken is just joyful when Barbie acknowledges him. In a world the place each night time is women’ night time, Ken can by no means expertise satisfaction.

Ken isn’t simply pissed off about competing with all the many different Kens for Barbie’s affection — though that is a matter, with sizzling, comparatively youthful it boy Simu Liu enjoying a model of Ken who makes Gosling’s Ken sweat bullets. Ken lacks goal in Barbieland, and he desires that to alter. Without Barbie, he’s nothing — and most of the time, Ken is with out Barbie. He’s an afterthought whose predominant function in life is holding her purse.

Photo: Atsushi Nishijima/Warner Bros.

Barbie begins off sluggish, doing the work of creating the cutesy realm of Barbieland so there’s a transparent, darkish distinction when the movie finally enters Reality. But even on this opening act, Gosling swipes every scene from the sidelines, his face wracked by the near-constant heartbreak of Barbie’s lack of curiosity in him. As a viewer, I used to be way more drawn to his arc, whilst I apprehensive, Is it a foul factor that Ken is the neatest thing about the Barbie film?

But Barbie stays one step forward of that thought, as a result of it’s all main as much as an knowledgeable commentary on how little women will all the time understand, ultimately, that the actual world is run by males, and that its Kens have extra energy than its Barbies. And as soon as Gosling’s Ken makes it to Reality, he realizes this too, and he goes full men’s rights activist, transitioning from Barbie’s placeholder boyfriend into one among the most fascinating antagonists in trendy pop cinema.

The movie’s comedic but incisive commentary on poisonous masculinity is its strongest throughline, because it infects Gosling’s Ken, and finally all of the remainder of Barbieland’s Kens and Barbies. Whenever the film is joking about the patriarchy and the very thought of the men’s rights movement, it sings. It additionally actually sings, with frequent in-jokey background songs, and a sequence the place all the Kens bore their respective Barbie girlfriends to tears by whipping out acoustic guitars to sing at her slightly than to her. We all know what we don’t need in a person. The far tougher level to make, it seems, is about Barbie herself, and what she represents. Who is Barbie in 2023?

Margot Robbie’s Barbie asks that query in a number of other ways, however the reply turns into no clearer as soon as she visits Reality. It’s helpful to capitalize Reality when describing Barbie, as a result of not like Splash or Enchanted, this film doesn’t try to depict a recognizable model of our human world. Reality as depicted in Barbie is as a lot of a caricature as Barbieland, filled with recognizable tropes: sexist, catcalling development staff; fist-pumping health club bros; and well-heeled white-collar executives who helpfully clarify how the patriarchy works. That works completely for instance the excessive cartoonishness of men’s rights as interpreted by Ken, but it surely falls a bit brief in the case of illustrating the complexities of Barbie’s identification as a doll, a world model, and a social phenomenon, a lot much less a personality trying to know up to date American womanhood.

Image: Warner Bros. Pictures

There’s a 3rd rail that Gerwig and Baumbach scarcely dare to the touch in Barbie: physique picture. Barbie designers at Mattel have struggled on this area, too, as Barbie’s nonstandard however idealized physique proportions have remained controversial, whilst the firm has launched a number of variations in recent times. (They embrace a “curvy” Barbie, a “petite” Barbie, and a Barbie with articulated knees who can use a wheelchair.) Yes, Barbie can have each profession possible — she may be president, even when real-life girls can’t — however can she handle to rise above a measurement 6?

In the Barbie film, she actually can. Robbie undoubtedly doesn’t have the proportions of the authentic “stereotypical Barbie,” though I’d say she’s shut sufficient. (I don’t care to lookup the numerical comparability, as a result of it will solely depress me.) But this film’s full forged of Barbies would completely not be capable of share their outfits, which the film by no means explicitly addresses or resolves. Sharon Rooney of Hulu’s My Mad Fat Diary will get to be a Barbie with out her measurement ever being talked about. Hari Nef, the first transgender mannequin to signal with IMG Models, can also be a Barbie. Like all the different Barbies (and in contrast to so many trans individuals), she by no means has to fret about anyone questioning her genitalia, as a result of no one in Barbieland has any genitalia by any means.

Barbieland is a fantasy of excellent inclusion, but it’s additionally a flattened one, as a result of even in Reality, the points dealing with non-Barbie-type girls by no means absolutely floor. They get a fast, pointed acknowledgement from the mouth of Gloria (America Ferrera), a put-upon Reality mother who works for Mattel and nonetheless loves Barbie regardless of all the baggage that comes together with her. At one level, Gloria runs down the ever-expanding listing of double requirements that trendy American girls face, comparable to the stress to be “thin,” which girls should declare is as a result of they wish to be “healthy” in order that they don’t look useless or shallow, regardless that they’ll actually simply be judged for not being skinny. None of the non-thin Barbies react so far, as a result of they don’t fairly work in a story that has to simplify all the social and gender points it raises, at the least if the credit are ever going to roll.

By the identical token, the nonwhite Barbies and Kens argue about “the patriarchy” amongst themselves upon studying about it, however they don’t ever appear to find out about racial politics, regardless that Simu Liu’s Ken wouldn’t have existed 13 years in the past. (The first-ever Asian Ken doll was, um, “Samurai Ken” in 2010.) And Kate McKinnon, enjoying a so-called Weird Barbie who skilled an excessive haircut and makeover at the fingers of an experimental baby, by no means really solutions the query anyone would have upon seeing her gay-ass haircut and realizing the actor’s sexuality. Yet even when nobody says it, Weird Barbie is clearly Gay Barbie.

Image: Warner Bros.

Skipping over all these conversations isn’t an oversight: It’s a collection of intentional selections designed to maintain an already overstuffed, heady, and cerebral movie transferring alongside at a sprightly tempo. I don’t want the Barbie film, dropped at me with Mattel’s approval, to supply incisive political commentary on each challenge of the day. It’s greater than sufficient that it unravels so lots of America’s masculine anxieties of the second, and that it does its job backward and in excessive heels.

Barbie the doll needs to be all the things for everybody, and she or he’s by no means succeeded. Barbie the film has been requested to carry out the identical unimaginable trick — and similar to I nonetheless really feel a sentimental attachment to Barbie, I really feel an amazing fondness and admiration for the film’s daring try to make it work. I had forgotten that I had ever even skilled the dream world Barbieland provided me as a younger lady. Barbie made me bear in mind. That alone is sufficient to make the complete film sparkle with stunning, refreshing fireplace.

Barbie opens in theaters on July 21.