Barbie

I could never have predicted being excited for a Barbie movie. I never had any particular experiences with the doll when I was younger, as both my brother and I had pretty stereotypical “boy" interests growing up. And none of the girls I were friends with were big Barbie fans, at least not by the time I met them. Not that I never encountered Barbie: they were in toy chests or at a friend’s house if they had a younger sister, not to mention the ever present TV commercials and general pop culture pervasion. But my only enduring thoughts on Barbie was that she played a role in pushing the importance of being impossibly thin on girls at a young age. If I thought about her: more often, I just paid her no mind. So when I first heard about this movie, I wasn’t really interested. I’ve since come to respect and appreciate Greta Gerwig (her Little Women is incredible, and Lady Bird is interesting), but at the time, I hadn’t seen any of her films, so her being in the director’s chair meant nothing to me. Even hearing about the incredible cast didn’t move me, as I gravitate towards stories, not people, even actors I adore.

Then, long after its initial release at the end of last year, I saw the Barbie teaser. An homage to the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

From that moment on, I was in. The marketing was telling, nay screaming, at us that this was going to be different. This wasn’t going to be a shameless cash grab. It wasn’t going to be a nostalgia piece. It wasn’t going to be a kids’ movie, despite being based on a toy aimed at children. It was going to be weird, and surreal, and meta, and vibrant. We didn’t really know the story we were going to get, but that was fine, because we got the vibe, and the vibe was exhilarating.

So what is the movie actually about?

Our protagonist is “Stereotypical Barbie” (Margot Robbie) (henceforth just “Barbie”), the original model of Barbie from 1959. Everything is perfect for her every day, always has been, and always will be, as the narrator (Helen Mirren) informs us. But suddenly, during one of her famous girls’ night parties, she’s struck by thoughts of death, which proceeds to unravel her whole life. She must journey to the Real World in order to track down the owner of the doll she’s tied to (it’s complicated; I’ll address it) and figure out the problem, lest she be doomed to become another Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon).

But here’s the thing. Barbieland is a mirror image of our world, a society ruled by women, where women hold all the meaningful jobs and have full independence, while the men are just kinda…there. And while its relationship to the Real World is never made super clear, they believe that their existence influenced the rest of the world as well. In the eyes of the Barbies (and of the narrator), Barbie’s existence solved sexism and misogyny and the glass ceiling and more in our world. So we spend the opening not only establishing how fun and light Barbieland is, and giving Stereotypical Barbie a reason to go on her adventure, but also setting up Stereotypical Ken (Ryan Gosling) (just “Ken” from now on) as craving Barbie’s attention. He feels a lack of purpose, almost like he doesn’t exist unless Barbie is looking at him. And he’s bitter and resentful, which we see come out in the level and intensity of competition between Kens.

As such, the trip to the Real World is jaw dropping for each of them in very different ways. Barbie is horrified and disturbed to find that she feels objectified and in danger for the first time in her life, whereas Ken is ecstatic to find a society where people who look like him run everything.

Which reveals part of what Gerwig is doing here. This is a very sharp satire, despite how lighthearted and wickedly funny it remains for much of the runtime. It’s using the mirror of our patriarchal society to demonstrate just how twisted it is. To highlight the problems with all the subtle and overt ways in which all people are held down when society favors one group over all others. To play out how people get dug in, how they double down even harder to hide what it’s all really about. Gerwig approaches this topic with both empathy and frustration, building fully realized characters who only hurt others in their quest to fulfill themselves, not out of malice. And yet, intentions be damned, they did cause very real harm.

Both Barbie and Ken go on huge internal journeys which hinge on coming to terms with who they are and what they want and need. Identity is at the core of the movie, be it through the character’s understanding of their own or the impact they have on each other’s, and how binding your sense of self to other people and to your job is damaging and self-limiting. This leads to a number of scenes in which the movie slows down to hit some dramatic beats, most of which land hard. They all slot in so nicely with what’s been going on previously that they don’t feel out of place, despite the shift in tone. Even once my excitement for Barbie set in weeks ago, I never would have predicted I’d cry during it. But it absolutely got me, multiple times.

Of course, one of the biggest issues for the movie to grapple with is that just because everyone knows Barbie doesn’t mean everyone likes Barbie. And rather than pretend otherwise or try to spin that or anything, Gerwig steers straight into the skid, addressing that aspect throughout the movie. She refuses to let you forget that Barbie is controversial, and has had a mixture of effects. Sometimes, it’s through saying the opposite, such as when the opening narration talks about how Barbie eliminated sexism. Other times, it’s through direct statements from characters expressing a whole range of opinions on her influence, none of which are straw men. Even better, the movie doesn’t settle on one answer, telling us how we should feel about Barbie. Instead, it plays out the idea that your experience with Barbie is a personal one. For some, it was negative, absolutely, making them feel like they’ll never be good enough. But for others, it was positive, showing women in roles the rest of pop culture and society insists are “for men”. And for even more children, it was both at the same time.

See, the beauty of this movie is it makes no attempt to flatten Barbie, to make her an avatar of anything, to make her perfect or idealistic or problematic or misguided. She’s just messy. Everything surrounding her is complicated and layered and differs based on who you are and your situation in life and the color of your skin and class and more. She is so, so many things all at once. The movie doesn’t try to avoid that, nor does it try to solve it. Instead, Barbie forces us to sit in it, to stare it down, to contemplate it.

It does all this while making us laugh. This is a hilarious movie, be it through over the top, absolutely insane situations, or weird dialog, or taking elements of the doll and her accessories to their logical extreme, or taking aim at targets such as Mattel (yes, Barbie’s parent company takes a heaping helping of criticism). The core of much of the humor is absurdity, but it’s all carefully controlled and serves a larger purpose. Maybe it’s that Ken’s job is “beach”, or that Barbie starts each morning by drinking a cup of milk which doesn’t actually pour anything, or just taking note that Mattel’s entire executive suite is male. Occasionally, it slightly missteps by being too blunt or by calling attention to the joke or just by throwing a stinker at us, but those are only so memorable because they’re so rare.

And the style of this film! Barbieland is not just separated from the Real World by the color palette and Barbie’s Dream House. The use of cartoonish painted backgrounds, of an ocean made of plastic, of birds and clouds on wires. It’s the way physics works, the way it’s lit, the design. It gives off strong Wes Anderson vibes: not in specifics, but in the strength and cohesion of vision, how easily you sink into it, and how it still can serve as a platform for yet more jokes.

The style even extends to the way in which it engages with the IP. They more or less had to provide nostalgia hits, of course. But they didn’t have to do them in such a way that everyone watching would get a huge kick out of them. There are certainly tons of background things I’m sure I missed, which Barbie fans will have a blast seeking out, as with any popular adaptation. But for the rest of us, there’s stuff like when Ken is throwing Barbie’s outfits to her, and they perfectly unfurl as momentary stop-motion with a label telling us what they are for a moment, pausing in mid-air. There’s talk about some of the Barbie or dolls as discontinued. Hell, there’s even a point at which Ken creates his Mojo Dojo Casa House, and we cut to a warehouse where someone’s talking about how they’re selling like hotcakes. The movie wholly acknowledges that in some senses, it’s a commercial, but it can be more than that at the same time.

The performances are all exactly what they need to be, pitched very big and just somewhat off-kilter. No one’s phoning it in, and everyone is having the most fun anyone’s ever had making a movie. My favorite is probably Michael Cera as Allan, with Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie a close second, but the best are undoubtedly our two leads in Robbie and Gosling. They very effectively carry the nuance required to make all sorts of scenes and story beats play out, especially as we get near the end of the movie and everything comes into focus. I’ve also got to shout out America Ferrara as Gloria, who does a great job capturing the feeling of a conflicted adult, torn between the pressures of the real world and the inability to recapture her childhood. One of her scenes was the first to make me tear up, and the heart on display had a lot to do with that.

I don’t have a lot of complaints. It has a tendency to call attention to itself in ways that feel obvious, and to hand wave away big story beats that don’t make much sense, including one core one that makes for an odd message and vibe in the third act. But it does know to not explain the mechanics of its world. For example, we learn that the Barbies’ well-being is tied to a doll that exists in the Real World. Which makes zero sense for a bunch of reasons. But it’s fine, because in the confines of the story it makes as much sense as it needs to, and then moves on. The same goes for Barbieland’s relationship to the Real World: how would their existence solve our problems? For that matter, what does it mean that they were invented, but are also alive? It’s unclear, but also irrelevant. The narrative doesn’t dwell on it, so you don’t either. Which is the right approach, in my opinion. If the mechanism itself doesn’t impact the story, then it’s best to not try to explain how it works, because doing so just highlights all the ways it doesn’t. Sure, people might come away with questions, but if your movie tells them it’s not important, they’re less likely to care.

It’s over twenty-four hours after I left the theater, and I still find myself dumbfounded. How in the hell did Gerwig pull this off? I’m not even talking about the hype or success or any of that. Just the movie itself is a bananas achievement, in the best possible way. She covered so much ground, spat in the eye of Mattel (while making them a ton of money, sure, but still), wrangled a huge cast, and walked this incredibly thin tightrope with a character who most people have a strong opinion about. And what came out was earnest, heartfelt, nostalgic, sharp, hilarious, meaningful, poignant, and delightful. I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the huge part Robbie apparently played in getting the project off the ground and keeping it moving, as well as bringing Gerwig on board. But at the end of the day, it’s Gerwig whose name and vision are on the line, and she could barely have done a better job.