Barbie

I remember when it was first announced that Greta Gerwig, the writer/director who had made some interesting and affirming films such as Little Women and Lady Bird, was making a movie about Barbie. The first thing everyone was making sure was out there was that this was not a movie about Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie, but an actual live-action film starring Barbie and Ken. There were two major views to this news. Some were ecstatic, especially after the casting announcements were released. Some, myself included, looked at this idea with a great deal of trepidation. On the one hand, I had grown to really appreciate Greta Gerwig’s talent; on the other…it was a live-action Barbie movie. After all those animated movies, all I could think of was a live-action version of that. And then the first trailer hit…

That first trailer, which is basically just the first minute of the movie proper, didn’t dispel those feelings. Yet, this was Greta Gerwig, known for making films that were about important topics. She doesn’t make fluff films. Still, I honestly felt like this was going to have a very limited appeal and would burn itself out quickly, losing a lot of money. Boy was I wrong. What I hadn’t counted on was a large crowd of young people, teenagers, and early twenties who would devour this thing up like it was the greatest thing to hit theaters in years. On top of that, there was a brilliant marketing strategy that emerged, juxtaposing this bubblegum film with the three-hour-long Christopher Nolan historical drama about nuclear annihilation, Oppenheimer. The duo, both releasing on the same date, were dubbed Barbenheimer, and it became a must-do for people to go see both films that weekend, preferably back-to-back. It became a social media sensation to post which of the two you saw first and why. Attempts have been made to replicate this ingenious marketing strategy, but it was simply something in the zeitgeist that has yet to be successfully replicated.  

But it wasn’t just clever marketing that got butts into the theaters for Barbie. There was a significant amount of buzz going into it, and, inexplicably to me at least, people everywhere wanted to see it again and again. I have to admit that I went opening weekend, after I saw Oppenheimer, simply to be able to say I did Barbenheimer. I had no real hopes that this film would speak to me. After all, it’s a movie made for girls about their dolls. What I saw that day won me over enough that I later took my wife and daughter to see it, and we own a copy on disc that I watched again today so that I could look at it with fresh eyes. 

What is ultimately the most surprising thing about Barbie is that it makes little attempt to be original. How many times do we need to see an IP enter the real world with the intent to help someone? We saw that in Fat Albert, and there have been similar conceits in films like The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle among many others. The catalyst in Barbie is a mother struggling with depression as her daughter has grown distant as she grows older. The mother, Gloria (America Ferrera), works for Mattel, the company that makes Barbie, and longs for the days when she and her daughter, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), played with them together. Now that Sasha has grown angsty and distant, Gloria has started playing with the old Barbie dolls and feeling depressed.

These emotions have spilled over into Barbieland, where stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) starts experiencing things like her perfect days going awry, her thoughts on the inevitability of death, and cellulite. After a visit to Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), a doll that was overplayed with, Barbie is set on a quest to the real world to find the person that is causing all of this to happen. Along for the ride is Ken (Ryan Gosling), who is struggling with his feelings for Barbie, specifically that he feels he has no identity without her. While the two are in the real world, their eyes are opened to the realities of the world, and Ken, finding that the real world isn’t dominated by women, sets out to make some changes once he gets back home. 

This is a Greta Gerwig picture through and through. As such, it is no surprise that there is a strong message of female empowerment. What ultimately becomes a problem with this picture is that it doesn’t strive for a message of equality among the sexes. It swings for a strong one-sided viewpoint that sacrifices equal rights for a message that men are inferior. Barbieland is shown as a female-dominated society where the men are insecure and preening, constantly seeking the attention of the Barbies. The Barbies are all self affirming while the Kens compete with each other for the Barbies’ attention.

When Ken returns from the real world, he tries to shift the narrative by invoking toxic masculinity but freely admits that he grew bored of it almost immediately. But before that happens, he and all the other variations of Ken have brainwashed the Barbies into being mindless servant girlfriends, leaving behind their identities and accomplishments. There is no nuance to any of this. Greta Gerwig is usually a better writer than this, carving things far more finely than what she is doing here. 

The resolution is frustrating, too. It amounts to spouting off a monologue about how hard it is to be a woman, something that magically removes the brainwashing and aids the Barbies in reclaiming Barbieland. On top of that, the Kens are easily distracted into fighting amongst themselves, leaving them unable to cast the votes needed to take over the government of Barbieland. Instead, they have to settle for lowly positions that have no real power. From the perspective of a little girl, this kind of thinking may be understandable, but for a film aimed for all ages, it is too one-sided to be a satisfying message. Even the inclusion of Mattel, run of course exclusively by incompetent men led by the unnamed CEO (Will Ferrell), sends this anti-male message. Is this the message we really want to be presenting impressionable young girls? Men are inferior and shouldn’t have a say in anything? 

Getting past the troubling message, this film has a lot that is enjoyable. Margot Robbie is perfectly cast as the stereotypical Barbie, even when she falls apart and feels she is not good enough. Margot brings an innocence and purity to Barbie that this property needs. Everything we need to know about her and the world she lives in, we get in the introduction to Barbieland, complete with musical accompaniment. We get a basic understanding of this world and how everything reflects the imaginations of the little girls in the real world who are playing with their Barbie dolls. 

All of this innocence is lost, however, when we get the first scene with Ken, and suddenly we are getting double entendres on a nearly R-rated level. Even worse is Kate McKinnon making lewd comments about what Ken is packing underneath his clothes. It is possible to include jokes made specifically for the adults in the audience without digging in the gutters for them. I’m not a prude, but I don’t need dick jokes in a film marketed towards young girls. These moments stand out from the rest of the film as being out of place. Kate McKinnon can be immensely funny—she was the best part of Ghostbusters: Answer the Call—but she is painfully mugging in this film, and it all just feels like a desperate bid to force in some off-color humor. 

Ryan Gosling is perfectly cast as Ken, specifically Beach Ken. His insecurities are the driving force of the film’s narrative, especially after seeing how a man can be an absolute ruler in the real world, from Ken’s perspective at least. But he is not a real man, and when he tries to instill patriarchy into Barbieland, it quickly turns sour for him, and he only keeps up with the charade to save face and to try and show Barbie that there is more to him. But even then, he doesn’t understand a world where it isn’t Barbie and Ken. Even after everything he goes through, at the end, he is still trying to push himself on her and falls apart when she steps back from him.

This film basically wastes the talent of America Ferrera, who at this time was starring in the hit series Super Store. She’s playing the straight person, there to drive the plot but not be a part of the comedy. She has the sob story about drifting away from her daughter, but this story basically falls by the wayside when everyone arrives back at Barbieland. Her best moment is when she is giving her monologue but that moment is brief and feels like Gerwig sermonizing. Ariana Greenblatt also loses her arc at this time; her personal anger issues with what Barbie represents dropped almost immediately. This bit of drama feels so superfluous that it never really comes back after this moment, and it feels unresolved. 

This is a messy movie. That being said, it is still a rollicking good time so long as you don’t think about it’s message too much. I referred to it earlier as a bubblegum movie, and it is just that, complete with enough pink paint that the film’s production caused a shortage in the dye. Greta Gerwig was trying to make a message film, and to a degree, she succeeded. There is a beautiful montage near the end where Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman), the woman who invented Barbie, shows her what it is all about being human and how the experience of parenthood, mothers, and daughters, is tied together with that experience. It’s a beautiful moment set to the Oscar winning song “What Was I Made For?” and wisely doesn’t try to punctuate it with a joke. This is an impressively poignant moment that comes on the heels of some seriously broad humor in the form of an all-out war amongst the Kens. 

In the end, is this a film worthy of all the money it earned at the box office? No. It muddles its message and struggles at times with what tone it is going for. But it is a good, if somewhat disposable, film that is just funny enough that it can overcome most of the moralizing and sarcasm. It’s pleasantly diverting and goes down easy. It’s not the feminism-asserting dynamo that it wants to be, but it is just good enough, or should I say “It is just good Kenough”, to be worth the watch. I may see the faults it has more now that I have a bit more distance from the original release, but that doesn’t mean I don’t see the fun that is to have with this. I just don’t see it worthy of the critical accolades that it received at the time. 

Academy Award Nominations: 

Best Picture: David Heyman, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, and Robbie Brenner

Best Supporting Actor: Ryan Gosling

Best Supporting Actress: America Ferrera

Best Adapted Screenplay: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach

Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran

Best Original Song: “I’m Just Ken” by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt

Best Original Song: “What Was I Made For?” by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell (won)

Best Production Design: Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer

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Release Date: July 21, 2023

Running Time: 114 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Starring: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell

Directed By: Greta Gerwig