‘Barbie’ Review: A Fashionable Toy Movie

I’ve two daughters, ages 7 and 5, and so they each like Barbie. They play with their small assortment of dolls in a DreamHouse my spouse discovered on sale final vacation season. Sometimes different toys make their means in there, too; I not too long ago discovered a really troubling tableau within the DreamHouse lavatory involving the Fantastic Four. I nonetheless give it some thought.

When I advised my children there was a Barbie film popping out, they actually gasped with delight. But once I confirmed them the primary trailer for the film — the one which largely consisted of a 2001: A Space Odyssey parody the place the Moonwatcher was changed by a dowdy little woman and Margot Robbie’s Barbie performed the function of the Monolith — they had been completely baffled. Not even the temporary glimpse of Barbie’s wildly pink world might quell the onslaught of mortified questions concerning the little woman within the trailer who smashed her child dolls to bits. (“Why would she destroy her toys?!?” my youngest repeatedly moaned, clearly traumatized by the sheer idea.)

Barbie itself is mainly as marketed. I might need assumed that faculty children with pursuits in style and roleplaying could be Barbie’s target market. I’d be mistaken. As its well-earned PG-13 ranking suggests, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is much less a film for women who like Barbie than it’s for girls who performed with Barbies once they had been youthful and wish to reckon with the doll’s affect on their emotional and psychological maturation. In that sense, it’s a much more considerate movie than something known as Barbie has any proper to be; any mother or father who has endured one of many Barbie TV reveals or DTV films at present streaming on Netflix is in for a impolite awakening in the event that they’re anticipating one thing alongside the identical cheerfully uncomplicated traces. But little Barbie followers hoping for one thing akin to a live-action model of a type of earlier Barbie model extensions might discover a baffling expertise that largely goes over their heads.

I think that viewers will like the primary act greatest, although these scenes are largely there to set the desk for the entire satire and social commentary to return. This sequence happen in “Barbieland,” which is basically the last word fantasy of my 5-year-old “fashionista.” (This is what she tells me she needs to be when she grows up! I’m already fearful!)

In Barbieland, Barbie (Robbie) lives an idyllic existence with many different Barbies, every with their very own specialty or job (together with 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 very own monumental and impressively detailed DreamHouse. Barbieland’s manufacturing design by Sarah Greenwood is whimsical and hilarious; children (and the dad and mom who routinely clear up their toys) will acknowledge the eye to element and the idiosyncratic structure. (Each DreamHouse has translucent pink plastic doorways, and a fridge stocked with decals of meals.)

Orbiting across the Barbies on the fringes of Barbieland, adoring them within the barely confused means that solely a doll with no genitals can, are the Kens: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, Scott Evans, Ncuti Gatwa, and most importantly Ryan Gosling’s hunky, bleached blonde “Beach Ken,” who desperately craves consideration from Robbie’s Barbie and desires to be invited to a sleepover at her DreamHouse, though he overtly admits he isn’t completely positive what they might do throughout one.

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Even with that occasional dating-related awkwardness, all the things in Barbieland is straightforward and pink and enjoyable. And as a result of, as Helen Mirren’s droll narrator tells viewers, Barbie might be something, girls in the true world can now be something, too. Whew; glad we lastly bought that entire gender parity drawback sorted out!

Or not. The hole between Barbieland’s fantasy of empowered girls and the true world’s ugly reality begins to contaminate the beforehand unblemished psyche of Robbie’s Barbie (who’s sometimes called “Stereotypical Barbie”). Out of nowhere, this Barbie will interrupt a synchronized dance occasion to ask whether or not the opposite toys have ever ponder the looming specter of demise.

A “Weird Barbie” (Kate McKinnon) with chaotic make-up informs Barbie that somebody who’s enjoying along with her in the true world is unhappy, and her disappointment is now one way or the other infecting her toys: Turning Barbie’s completely arched ft flat, giving her a primary cellulite dimple, and so forth. Barbie’s solely hope of restoring herself to her beforehand unspoiled existence, Weird Barbie explains, is to journey to the true world, discover this unhappy woman, and form of work via their points collectively.

Once Barbie (and Gosling’s Ken) are in the true world, although, they appeal to the ire of the CEO of Mattel, the producer of Barbie dolls (to not point out the producers of this very Barbie film). This unnamed CEO (Will Ferrell) warns that if he and his company minions don’t catch Barbie and Ken and return them again to Barbieland, there might be extraordinarily dangerous however undefined penalties for each worlds.

Hopefully my plot description conveys how little Gerwig, who co-wrote Barbie along with her accomplice Noah Baumbach, cares concerning the mechanics of Barbieland and its sentient doll residents. She’s much more fascinated by what all of it means: What Barbie represents to generations of girls, and whether or not she is a drive for good or a mirrored image of unfavorable stereotypes; whether or not she conjures up ladies to dream large or whether or not she burdens them with inconceivable expectations of themselves.

The reply, in life as in Barbie, is someplace within the center — and it’s to Gerwig’s credit score that she managed to make a Barbie film accepted by Mattel that truly considers the ramifications of those questions, alongside subplots about feminism, patriarchy, and poisonous masculinity. This is a giant swing of a film, one which tries to sort out the massive questions on Barbie, and to make use of them to say one thing about gender roles in society now. It isn’t just a lavish business for Barbie dolls.

But it’s nonetheless form of a lavish business for Barbie dolls, and different merchandise as effectively. (A automobile chase involving Mattel goons is shot like an advert for Chevy — and positive sufficient, footage from it’s at present airing as a part of a brand new business for the 2024 Chevy.) For Gerwig, an immensely gifted filmmaker with a powerful standpoint, telling this story on this means was a little bit of a double-edge sword. (Is there a Barbie that comes with a sword?)

On the one hand, if Gerwig had made a satire a few in style and iconic ladies style doll named, I dunno, “Bambi,” the jokes would have far much less chew, as a result of they might be made at a take away from Mattel’s self-important advertising and marketing and the corporate’s extra weird dolls via the years (Yes, these surprising Ken dolls that pop up in Barbie actually occurred.) On the opposite hand, making an formally licensed Barbie film means for all its speeches about what it actually means to be a robust girl, the movie additionally exists the promote the machine it’s designed to spoof.

Margot Robbie’s Barbie is one more immensely likable but deeply confused Greta Gerwig protagonist looking for her identification (see additionally: Lady Bird, Little Women —  which might even be a fairly good title for a Barbie film, come to consider it).

But the true star of the present, considerably paradoxically given the movie’s themes, is Ryan Gosling — who turns his oafish, self-centered man-child into a determine that’s equally comedian and tragic, and typically each concurrently. It’s a efficiency of monumental nuance — and he’s actually enjoying a buff, bumbling Ken doll. That is a real feat of performing. (Ferrell, surprisingly, is the massive weak spot within the movie; he’s largely wasted in a job that he’s performed a number of instances earlier than, together with in one other subversive toy-based satire.)

All advised, Barbie is an enchanting film, even whether it is often somewhat irritating and infrequently extra enjoyable to have a look at than it’s laugh-out-loud humorous. I feel my daughters will most likely get pleasure from it fairly a bit — once they watch it once they’re a number of years older.

RATING: 7/10