Spoilers ahead!
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie knows exactly what it is, and that’s exactly why it works so well. Gerwig, who wrote the script along with Noah Baumbach, leans fully into the fun absurdity of doing a Barbie movie. That’s the magic that made Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse, the 2012 web series such a hit, with me at least: fun and smartly written with a wink to the absurdity. Barbie is also exactly what makes going to the movies so much. They brought to the big screen the life of a doll, and of course, there’s something particularly intriguing about bringing Barbie, a storied toy, to life. In other words, I think Gerwig and the cast imbue Barbie with the perfect amount of self-awareness to enable both genuine hilarity and sincerity in equal measure.
Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, who absolutely should get nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, is the “stereotypical Barbie,” aka perfect, beautiful, and living her best life with all of the other Barbies, including President Barbie, Supreme Court Barbies, and Doctor Barbie, and the Kens, including the Ken played by Ryan Gosling (also deserving of an Oscar nomination), whose “occupation” is “beach,” in Barbieland, a distinct fantasy land separate from our “real world.” However, Barbie randomly experiences existential dread: “Does anyone else think about dying?” That cracked me up. Then, Barbie’s morning routine changes when her “shower” is cold, her milk is expired, and instead of floating down to her Barbie car, she drops to the ground. As it turns out, a rupture has occurred in the continuum between the “real world” and Barbieland. The rupture has occurred, presumably, because a little girl in the “real world” playing with Barbie is feeling what Barbie is experiencing: existential dread, complicated emotions, and imperfections, including the dreaded presence of cellulite.
Barbie meets with Weird Barbie (played by Kate McKinnon in a memorable role), who became Weird Barbie because her child deformed her, and Weird Barbie advises Barbie to go to the real world, find her girl, and fix everything. So, Barbie, and unbeknownst to Barbie until she’s driving away, Ken, go into the real world. Once there, Barbie does encounter the girl, Sasha (played by Ariana Greenblatt), who says Barbie has set back feminism 50 years, encouraged rampant capitalism that’s destroying the Earth, and sends Barbie away in tears by calling her a fascist. Meanwhile, Ken is galivanting around the “real world,” captivated by a world where men rule instead of women. Ken has discovered the patriarchy, and he loves it. He especially loves that to him, the patriarchy means horses, lots of horses. Ken goes back to Barbieland with his newfound “knowledge” of the patriarchy, converts his fellow Kens to his manly ways, and brainwashes the other Barbies to become stereotypical women slavishly embracing of the patriarchy.
Mattel itself gets involved when they realize Barbie has crossed over into the real world in an obviously funny role by Will Ferrell, who plays the CEO of Mattel, and the script pokes fun at Mattel in myriad ways, such as the boardroom being men-only, cheerleading that they’ve had two women CEOs in its history, and so forth. The CEO and his minions follow Ken and Barbie back to Barbieland.
Ken’s impetus for embracing his new manliness, by the way, is that he essentially feels friend-zoned by Barbie, but to be charitably fair to Ken, his “occupation” is “beach,” and he feels directionless in Barbieland, where Barbie doesn’t want anything to do with him. Barbie returns to Barbieland with Sasha and Sasha’s mom, Gloria (played by America Ferrera), who is actually the person who was drawing Barbie as experiencing existential dread and complicated feelings. It’s Gloria, who I have to think is a nod to Gloria Steinem, who breaks Barbie out of her own stupor (she gives up trying to take Barbieland back, essentially) with a rousing monologue about the contradictions and pressures women face to be women in the real world, and how that even filters down to dolls like Barbie. Barbie at one point pities herself for being ugly, which Helen Mirren as the narrator, notes in a funny meta way that the filmmakers shouldn’t have casted Robbie if they wanted to make that point. Through Gloria’s rousing speeches and trickery with manly stereotypes, the Barbies are able to reclaim Barbieland, and Barbie even apologizes for treating Ken the way she has, and encourages him to find his own way and path forward, which he does.
Having returned Barbieland to the Barbies, Barbie is ready to embrace the real world and be a human, even knowing that means her death. Her first order of business: to see a gynecologist. Which I’m not sure about that decision. I actually thought it would be funnier and more fitting for the last scene to be Barbie sitting on a therapist’s couch, given her talk of existential dread and complicated feelings. Instead, she’s apparently getting a vagina after a hilarious joke earlier in the film about her and Ken not having genitals! On the flip side, I loved the opening to the film where Mirren narrates how girls spent eons growing up with babies until Barbie (Robbie in giant form) came along to show girls another way: this leads the girls to smash their baby dolls against their teacups.
The set pieces in the film are predictably gorgeous and on point, truly bringing to life the Barbie dreamhouses most of us have seen in our real world, and Barbieland mixed with real life actors looks incredible. There’s a funny scene where Ken wants to show off for Barbie, so he runs into the ocean only to bounce back against the fake waves. The costumes, which are obviously myriad, including hilariously Barbie and Ken walking through Los Angeles in cowboy outfits, are so well-done. Unless some other movie’s costuming blows me away in the next five months, the costume designer, Jacqueline Durran, better win the Oscar for Best Costume Design.
I was a bit iffy on Barbie apologizing to Ken at the end and being the one to console him. After all, that felt like the patriarchy to me: The man makes a mess of things because he feels scorned by a woman, and even when she’s apologizing, Ken takes that as invitation to go for the kiss, twice! But a friend who also saw the movie made a good point to me, which I mentioned earlier that, to be fair, Ken is a such second-class citizen, for all intents and purposes, within Barbieland.
Overall, though, I thought Barbie was a fantastic film bringing to life a character who can indeed be a feminist icon in some respects (although Sasha’s own feminist critique of Barbie is still a valid one worth reckoning with), and in other respects, a vehicle for a new kind of feminism (through the rousing speeches Gloria gives, including recommending to Mattel’s CEO the “ordinary” Barbie), as well, as you know, a film that’s just a fun fantasy played extraordinarily well by Robbie and Gosling, who are all in in their respective roles, and directed and written with the perfect touch by Gerwig.
Barbie, who tries to be all the things for everyone (a different Barbie for every occupation and occasion), as the movie, Barbie, is also all the things for everyone, unless you’re one of those stereotypical manly men who feel attacked by the parodies of supposed manliness in the film.
Milam's Musings 