Undoubtedly 2023’s most anticipated – and most aggressively marketed – filmic event, Barbie has finally arrived in cinemas for the masses to ingest in droves.
It’s understandable though that some audiences still are unsure as to how it’ll taste as a whole, as despite its candy-coated aesthetic, pitch-perfect casting, and amusing, if ambiguous trailers, there’s still a question as to what exactly a Barbie movie under the creative mind of writer/director Greta Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach would be.
Well, considering their collective credits include Frances Ha, Lady Bird, Little Women, The Squid and the Whale, and Marriage Story, it isn’t exactly going to be a film that treats its audience with a simplicity; the irony isn’t lost on the type of consumer this film is seemingly marketed towards compared to who will actually enjoy it.
Ultimately, Barbie being a movie unlike its public perception is what makes it so impossibly grand. It’s more Pleasantville than Legally Blonde as Gerwig and Baumbach’s razor-sharp script looks at Barbie as a well-intentioned idea that simultaneously broke the glass ceiling for women, whilst damaging them in the surrounding shards. And the film so intelligently addresses this in a way that never speaks down to Barbie, both as a construct and as a character, played with effortless wit and dedicated emotion by Margot Robbie.
Her Barbie – “Stereotypical Barbie” – is the original make. The first of her kind, she hones a certain queendom in Barbie Land, a lush, pink, artificial setting where every day is perfect. As we are told by narrator Helen Mirren (whose delivery throughout is sublime), the Barbie Land we are witnessing is a physical manifestation of the many melded imaginations of young children across the world who are continually playing with the doll itself; this explains why Barbie simply floats from the rooftop of her dreamhouse into her pink convertible, because children never actually act out the movement of Barbie walking down the stairs.
One morning, however, Barbie starts to feel off her game. She no longer simply floats off her roof, she doesn’t have perfect, unaffected morning breath, and, worst of all, her heels are touching the ground; Hari Nef‘s Dr. Barbie making it very clear as to how the other Barbies feel about such a disgusting notion. Realising that her very existence is being threatened, Barbie visits the outcast Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon, wonderfully leaning into her discarded doll’s eccentricity) – you know, that one Barbie that gets experimented on, with felt pen on her face, lobbed hair, and a constant state of being in the splits – who, in a delicious play on the red pill v blue pill conundrum at the crux of The Matrix, informs Barbie that the human she is tethered to is experiencing a sense of self-doubt and depression, effectively altering how Barbie perceives her “perfect” world.
From here, Gerwig and Baumbach’s topical, commentary-heavy script sends Barbie into the real world, where she is quite tragically confronted with the harsh reality that women aren’t as respected as she had envisioned; one scene where Barbie meets with the young girl she supposedly “belongs” to is suitably heartbreaking as Robbie, so perfectly encapsulating the doll’s hope and optimism, plays this realisation without a hint of faux emotion. Trust Robbie to make us feel sorry for her in spite of how gorgeous she truly is.
Of course, offsetting Barbie’s horror at how the real world treats and views its women – she’s appalled at there being no women construction workers on a nearby site, and then even more perturbed by the catcalls she receives – is the inclusion of Ken. Played to perfection with an amalgamated temperament of himbo, chauvinism, machismo and fragile masculinity, Ryan Gosling is revelatory in the role, and as much as Robbie shines throughout, “Just” Ken is always there to pluck some of the spotlight away from her.
As we learn that “Barbie has a great day everyday” but Ken only has a great day “when Barbie looks at him”, the film toys with the very notion that Ken was always little more than just an accessory for Barbie. Sure, he had multiple outfits and professions too – and similar to how Nef, Emma Mackey (Physicist Barbie), Alexandra Shipp (Writer Barbie), Issa Rae (President Barbie) and Dua Lipa (Mermaid Barbie) play differing dolls, Simu Liu, Kinglsey Ben-Adir, Scott Evans and Ncuti Gatwa are alternative Kens – but he had such little purpose in the grand scheme of the Barbie umbrella, and Gerwig and Baumbach’s firing-on-all-cylinders script leans into his character’s own personality crisis, which is then only exacerbated when he learns the oft undeserved respect men are granted in the real world.
This sets off a chain of events that threatens Barbie’s livelihood both in the real world and back in Barbie Land, and the film is never subtle in expressing how toxic and, well, simple such an existence would be if men like Ken were in charge; let’s just say there are a lot of horses and Matchbox Twenty involved in their vision of patriarchy. Ken’s late-in-the-game dominance also leads the film to showcase one of its most bizarrely hilarious set-pieces: A self-aware power ballad that soars off Gosling’s perfect boyband-adjacent vocals and a culminating dance number that also highlights Liu’s musical physicality. We’d call it high concept, but much like Barbie, Gerwig smashes the ceiling barrier with every creative injection possible.
As easy as it is to say that Gerwig, Baumbach and Robbie are all collectively working with too many ideas, Barbie manages to meld them all together with remarkable ease. This is not a surface-level film in any manner, and whilst some may brand it “dumb” because of such sequences as the aforementioned Ken musical number, or whatever random visual gag Will Ferrell throws in as the head of Mattel (yes, even the company behind Barbie isn’t let off the hook), that perceived stupidity is intentional and ultimately speaks to the intelligence of all those involved.
As the marketing itself claimed that this is a film for those who both “love” and “hate” Barbie, it’s a statement that actually very much sums up its mentality. Yes, visually the film indulges in the pink aesthetic associated with the doll, but the colours in which its personality is shaded with stretch far beyond. Whilst those that “hate” Barbie may enjoy the fact that it calls out the doll’s unrealistic view of women from a physical standpoint, and will probably find themselves oddly drawn to Ken’s narrative, the film ultimately loves Barbie (and women), and celebrates her positivity with a beautiful, realistic lens.
FIVE STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Barbie is screening in Australian theatres from July 20th, 2023.
