Just as there are countless Barbies—Volleyball Barbie, Travel Barbie, Mermaid Barbie, and so on—there are also countless sides to Barbie, the movie directed by Greta Gerwig.
One celebrates the way that the emergence of the first Barbie, in 1959, opened up play possibilities for little girls previously limited to baby dolls (as depicted in the film’s amusing, 2001-inspired opening sequence). Another acknowledges the problematic legacy of Barbie dolls, particularly when it comes to the question of female body image (a teenager eviscerates Margot Robbie’s Barbie at one point for her crimes against girl humanity). Yet another side to the film is a self-aware wink at the corporate creep overtaking studio filmmaking, as Mattel is both a producer of the movie and a key plot point, with Will Ferrell as the company’s CEO. On top of these permutations, the film also offers a hot-pink parade of comic costumes and effervescent musical numbers.
It’s a wonder, then, that Gerwig—who wrote the script with frequent collaborator Noah Baumbach—manages to juggle all this as deftly as she does, breezily addressing every wriggling concern in the can of worms that such a monumental cultural object like this tends to open. Calling Barbie an anti-capitalist, feminist manifesto would be stretching things (imagine, for instance, a version from Sorry to Bother You’s Boots Riley or Women Talking’s Sarah Polley). But you can still watch this Barbie with your brain turned on and leave the theater smiling.
That’s because Barbie works best as comedy, one less interested in solving the problem of the iconic doll than pointing out the problems of patriarchy—or at least making fun of patriarchy’s dopiest forms of expression. It turns out the surprising secret weapon of the movie is Ken—Beach Ken, to be precise—played by Ryan Gosling. Treated as an accessory by Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie in pastel-powered Barbie Land (it’s sort of a materialistic variation on Wonder Woman’s female-centric Themyscira), Ken longs to be a more integral part of Barbie’s life. And so when she heads on an adventure into the real world—to find the girl who has stopped playing with her, which has allowed thoughts of death to creep into Barbie’s head—Ken stows away in her Corvette convertible. Once in Los Angeles, he discovers patriarchy (it’s not hard to encounter) and decides to import it back to Barbie Land, turning it into a hideous world of “Mojo Dojo Casa Houses,” “brewski beers,” and flat-screen television sets that only show two things: galloping horses or The Godfather.
As some of that description suggests, the production design of Barbie Land is a clever, comic delight, consisting of eye-popping life-size reproductions of Barbie playsets and accessories. Barbie’s traveling montage from Barbie Land to L.A. is also a visual highlight, as she and Ken are positioned in exaggerated theatrical tableaus—riding a snowmobile, clinging to a spaceship—which offer the tactile pleasures of a pop-up storybook. Compared to Gerwig’s previous two films as a solo director—Lady Bird and Little Women—this takes place in an entirely different stylistic universe.
Thematically, you can see more connective threads. Those two movies were variations on the bildungsroman—novels tracing the psychological coming of age of a central character. Here, this is the case for both Stereotypical Barbie and the mother and daughter she meets in L.A., played by America Ferrera and Ariana Greenblatt, respectively. Mother and daughter’s conflicting feelings about Barbie—that aforementioned can of worms—begin to undermine Barbie’s own sense of self, just as she was gaining a new self-awareness.
At least all three women can agree on one thing: Ken must be stopped. (An underrated comedian, Gosling gets a laugh from almost every gesture and line reading.) As they prepare to retake Barbie Land, Ferrera launches into a feminist monologue that—while spiritedly delivered and full of truth—is both on-the-nose and treacly. Barbie works better when making its points through comedy (an early gag, in which Stereotypical Barbie realizes her feet have gone flat and vomits plastic in response, wittily riffs on the pleasure-pain predicament of women’s footwear).
Indeed, the movie’s silly-smart pleasures are almost endless: the Barbies waving maniacally to each other every morning and saying, “Hi Barbie!” ad infinitum; Simu Liu being athletically ridiculous (and ridiculously athletic) in the dance numbers as a rival Ken; Lizzo’s tongue-in-cheek “Pink” on the soundtrack. Put it all together, and it’s as if Gerwig had dumped all of her own complicated feelings about Barbie onto the screen. This Barbie isn’t a problem to solve, then, but an experience to share.
(7/19/2023)