After two months of being late to the biggest cinematic phenomenon of 2023 (so far), I finally began my foray into Barbenheimer. I started with the former half of that designation and even though I haven’t seen Oppenheimer yet, I do intend on viewing it very soon, and then you’ll get a proper review of that as well.
So far, I got Barbie watched and ready to talk about. Directed by Greta Gerwig, and written by both Gerwig and her partner, fellow director Noah Baumbach, Barbie has been a powerhouse of a movie. Already the top grossing movie of 2023 with 1.4 million dollars at the worldwide box office, Barbie is a definite standout, not only because it’s an outlier in a mostly disappointing year for box office revenue, but also because it stands as the most successful movie ever singularly directed by a woman, which coincidentally does tie in with the movie’s subject matter.
Barbie presents a story surrounding and concerning the timeless fashion doll, created by Ruth Handler and launched in collaboration with toy company Mattel in 1959. The understanding of the movie itself is tied with the legacy of the Barbie doll, which in some ways shaped society’s perception of girls and women for several decades, for both good and ill. The movie tackles the effects of that legacy head on, both exploring what Barbie stood for women in the past, what it stands for women today, and what its role might be going forward as it relates with societal perceptions of womanhood in general.
At the same time, the Barbie movie is also a full-on comedy, with a story surrounding dimension hopping dolls played by real life actors who journey from Barbieland to the real world and are confronted with the reality of real-life human struggles as they endeavor to close an open rift between not only the real world and Barbieland, but also between a mother and daughter with a troubled relationship.
So that’s a lot to handle in the span of two hours. Does Barbie live up to the challenge? Surprisingly, yes, it definitely does. Though not without its missteps, so let’s get into the specifics of what works and what doesn’t.
Presentation:
Barbie has some impressive movie-making techniques on display that really succeed in presenting two very distinct worlds visually, with instantly distinctive characters that say a lot with visuals and sound, rather than with words. By far the most impressive elements of this movie’s technicalities are the production design and costumes. Barbie being a brand made by settings, clothes and accessories, this is an aspect Gerwig needed to get right, and she nailed it. Sets are impeccably put together, lavish with color and work to bring a perfect world to life, while in Barbieland at least. I really felt immersed in this fantastical place and that alone makes it a very impressive work of visual worldbuilding. It’s instantly recognizable if you know anything about Barbie.
Likewise, the costumes accomplish this just as well, and you can definitely see this when Barbie and Ken make the jump to the human world and we see the contrast between their costumes and those worn by everyone else. It’s not just how Barbie and Ken look wackier and more colorful, it’s how the costumes are made to fit Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. They fit them as costumes would fit a doll, more in straight lines, with few places where the costumes fold in on themselves, always looking like they just came out of a box, and that adds a lot to making them feel like aliens in this strange new world.
The cinematography is also pretty good, though there are more things done in front of the camera to create an iconic shot, than behind it. What I mean is that the camera movements are pretty standard, but the way the shots are thought out are what’s really impressive, creating memorable visuals for both thematic and comedic effect.
The music is also a pretty well accomplished aspect. The soundtrack, which comprises several original songs by well-known artists is filled with great tracks that are becoming well-known even beyond the movie itself, some even being performed by the movie’s actors themselves, like “Just Ken”, which is as memorable as it is hilarious, and surprisingly well performed by Ryan Gosling. Beyond the songs, I can’t really remark on the rest of the score. It’s serviceable and works well enough, but it’s not the focus and there are no outstanding tracks to speak of.
The acting is standout across the board. Obviously, this is Margot Robbie’s movie, and she really fades into the character of Barbie. Being an actress that is at this point known for a variety of roles, more notably Harley Quinn, there was a possibility that we would only be able to see Margot Robbie on screen, but no. Robbie really tweaks her performance to present herself as the most generic, “happy-go-lucky” character possible. Aloof, but always sure of herself, effortlessly perfect and constantly cheerful which is precisely what “stereotypical Barbie” is perceived to represent. A false ideal of womanhood, that while being inspirationally ambitious, is also utterly unrealistic and unattainable. This powerful work in character acting is what makes the later scenes of Barbie’s world-shattering work so well, and all the work is put in by the writing but also Robbie in pulling that off.
Of course, I must sing Ryan Gosling’s praises as well. His performance as Ken is truly brilliant, and many say that he steals every scene he’s in. While that’s true in certain moments, I think it’s a bit unfair to Robbie to make it seem like Gosling eclipses her performance. He really doesn’t. People just love to see Ken on screen so much because he’s just hilarious. He’s written to be pompous, vain, ridiculous, and hilariously pathetic in almost all his scenes, and because Gosling’s comedic timing is so good, pretty much all of his jokes land. But that is only so because Ken is not given an arc like Barbie is. Don’t get me wrong, Ken has an arc, a pretty important one at that, but his arc is played mostly for laughs, until it isn’t, while Barbie’s arc is played straightly dramatic at several points in the story. That is the key difference between the performances, and I couldn’t say one is better than the other.
The remainder of the cast is pretty competent as well, both dramatically and comedically, though more so the latter than the former. Their strengths and weaknesses however are more tied with how their characters and the story as a whole are written, rather than the actors’ themselves. America Ferrera, Will Ferrell, Michael Cera, Simu Liu and Kate McKinnon all pull off every joke they’re given, and while I have some misgivings with certain aspects of their characters, specifically where Ferrera and Ferrell are concerned, they really don’t take away from their performances. There are also some pretty funny cameos peppered throughout, but in the end, like I said, this is Margot Robbie’s movie, coupled with Gosling’s assistance, and both knock it out of the park. These two roles might be among their most defining performances ever, and whatever accolades they’re given as a result are well deserved, especially seeing as neither of the two are comedians, or even comical actors by trade.
Story:
I’ll go over the story separately from the characters and themes, because I think they warrant a separate discussion. The story is actually one of my favorite things about the movie because it works so well as a very simple premise that is quite well-structured. We open on Barbie (Robbie) and are presented to her and the world she lives in, with an amazing voice-over narration from Helen Mirren. Barbie and all the other Barbies live in Barbieland, they feel great every day, look great every day, go to their incredibly fulfilling jobs every day and have total collective dominion over their lives and their world. This last point is important, as it’s contrasted with the Kens of the world, who also live their own lives happily within Barbieland, but are defined by Barbies’ appreciation of them and take no part in the running of things in their world. The Barbies don’t seem to register this dynamic in their relationship and remain perfectly content living for themselves and with themselves, filled with nothing but optimistic and cheerful thoughts.
That is, until our protagonist Barbie starts experiencing strange sensations, physical and mental. She contemplates death, her feet no longer stand on tip toes, things start going less than perfectly in her day, and so she’s advised to travel to the real world in order to fix a crisis that must be going on with the girl who has her real-life counterpart doll, thus affecting her existence in Barbieland. Ken (Gosling), of course, tags along, but not because Barbie asks him, he sneaks onto her car and only reveals himself halfway through the trip.
In travelling to the real world, Barbie and Ken are confronted with the predictable reversal of roles. Men are in charge, men have more power, men are in the position of keeping women out of key aspects of society, and way more prone to objectifying and belittling women in general. Ken, of course, prefers this dynamic. Despite this, Barbie is still able to find the owner of her corresponding Barbie doll, a girl named Sasha and realizes it was actually her mother Gloria (Ferrera) playing with it, reminiscing about her past experiences with her daughter, with whom she now has a more strained relationship.
To fix the rift, Barbie takes mother and daughter back to Barbieland in hopes of through it fixing their relationship. Upon arriving, they realize that the Kens have taken over. Our protagonist Ken has brought back with him the ideals of the patriarchy, and through them, he and the other Kens have taken over Barbieland. Barbie now has to liberate Barbieland, redeem the Kens and rehabilitate the image of her namesake doll by also changing the culture at Mattel, and the views of its CEO (Ferrell).
I actually think this is a pretty well thought out structure. As I’ve said in the past, a lot of movies tend to present several conflicts to the characters that require resolution by the end. Barbie is no different. The conflicts in question revolve around Barbie’s relationship with Ken, Gloria’s relationship with Sasha and the world’s relationship with the Barbie brand, personified by the Mattel characters. So, two small-scale personal conflicts and one broad large-scale conflict. But all of these are tied to the same thematic exploration, that of the relationship between Barbie’s idealized values on womanhood, and the by-product of its somewhat outdated perspectives, which on some levels perpetuate sexist views of women.
This is a pretty sound way to schematize the plot and the sequences flow smoothly between each other. The Barbieland conflict is presented, then the real world conflicts are presented, and once it looks like Barbie will be able to resolve her problems in the real world and escape from Mattel back to a “fixed” Barbieland, the final conflict with the Kens rears its head, and only by fixing it, properly, is Barbie able to fix them all. It’s not complicated, it’s simple, easy to digest, and it fits with the ideals of the Barbie brand, which, like it or not, is geared at children.
That said, I do also really like the twist of it being the turmoil within Gloria that affected Barbie in her world, rather than Sasha. Not only because it subverts our expectations, but it ialso just makes more sense. Fewer young girls play with Barbies these days, and they are more precociously presented with the negative stereotypes of the Barbie brand because they see people on social media talking about them. The scene where Sasha lays all this out to Barbie, shattering her illusions about herself, is a bit on the nose, but it’s believably on the nose, because I could see a teenage girl expressing these opinions having been exposed to them from a very young age. Gloria on the other hand, belongs to the generation that actually loved and idealized Barbie as a representation of female potential, which is the mirror positive influence of Barbie to her negative influence.
Narratively, that twist is one of my favorite choices the movie, along with making Ken the ultimate villain, and with that I’ll move on to characters and themes.
Characters and Themes:
The key thematic exploration of the movie, which surrounds every conflict is how the world perceives, defines and treats womanhood, as a whole. This is done, not just in women’s opposition to men, but also between women, and among the overall community, which is why you have a conflict surrounding a mother and daughter, and another conflict surrounding a corporation built on marketed femininity.
I’ll begin this section by saying that as a man talking about a movie’s exploration of themes specifically geared by and towards the perspective of women, mine will a particularly skewed analysis. I’ll endeavor to keep my views as objective as possible, but bear that in mind, as gender relationships are a key factor for Barbie as an intellectual piece of cinema.
When we compare this thematic exploration, as it’s reflected in the movie’s three conflicts, I have uneven thoughts on them. I think the Barbie and Ken conflict is by far the best, not only in structure and comedy, but more importantly, in insight and resolution. Not only is this issue brought up from the very beginning of the movie, it comes back around in a way that doesn’t feel forced, and the way the characters talk about its’ thematic repercussions actually has some pretty interesting reflections on the subject matter.
For example, the way Barbie spouts about the tenets of patriarchy to the other Barbies is based on somewhat generalized statements, but the way the other Barbies translate that into behaviors that men exhibit that women just have to go along with, like ‘mansplaining’, is a great way to turn these somewhat empty statements into tangible ways for the audience to understand and relate with their struggle. It’s almost a textbook version of ‘show don’t tell’, but it works perfectly. A character talks about something and then immediately another character shows us what those words mean in practice. It’s only with the materialization of the concept that the idea is able to be conveyed properly to the audience. In this case, the ways in which men belittle women, even in such small ways as making women care about the things men care about (like Zack Snyder’s Justice League) is a surprisingly effective way of relaying the message. I bet a lot of men and women related with that situation, and for men it comes as an external confrontation with their mistakes, that is not too harsh or preachy, just presented as light humiliation that will make them want to better, hopefully.
The defining moment of this exploration comes when our protagonist Barbie is able to arrive at the core of Ken’s need to perpetuate the patriarchal ideals he was exposed to. Ken (and by extension, men), is defined by his need to have Barbie’s appreciation, and the best way he knows to gain and keep that appreciation is to put himself above her, make Barbie (as in women) inferior to Ken, reliant on him, dependent on him, so that she’ll always appreciate him.
The solution is not to make the Kens see that Barbies are better, it’s to make the Kens see that they can live for themselves as well, without the need to put the Barbies down. For an exploration of gender relations, it’s surprisingly conciliatory, and again, insightful about a key aspect of the relationship between men and women, in how men derive their own value from their dominion over women, and really shouldn’t. And again, the movie makes this plain and clear to the audience in how Ken declares his newfound realization. He is not just Barbie’s boyfriend, he’s himself. It’s superficial, but it works.
In contrast, the two other conflicts don’t get as much focus in how they resolve themselves and the insights they provide. Gloria and Sasha’s conflict is the second best and it starts out great, but we don’t get much time to delve into why their relationship is strained, and by the time they get to Barbieland we don’t really see them externalize how their perspectives are changing. At one point Sasha just declares that they have to go back and help Barbie, because her mom cares about Barbie. Sasha says that she now sees her mom as she is, “weird and dark and crazy”, and she apparently resented her mom for hiding that part of herself, but we only find out about this problem between them in the moment that it’s resolved.
Ideologically, it’s great to have Gloria finally understand that Barbie (and herself) should present themselves as real women are, and not in some neat, tidy way as Barbie stereotypically puts forward, which also ties into how she suggests an ‘ordinary Barbie’ to the CEO of Mattel at the end. However, while all this works pretty well thematically, it’s the road to that realization that could have been better paved, rather than putting it all into that one scene in the Barbie car.
Finally, the overarching conflict regarding Barbie as a marketed symbol of femininity for Mattel, a company that is presented to be overwhelmingly controlled by men, is the weakest conflict as far as thematic exploration is concerned. Coincidentally, it is also the conflict that most directly deals with the societal impact of the Barbie doll, and thus is handling the more complicated social issues, which are left a bit by the wayside. The Mattel CEO is presented not like a cartoonish villain, he is cartoonish, but not very villainous, and after Barbie takes Sasha and Gloria back to Barbieland, he follows them there and then disappears for the whole climax before appearing at the end, completely reformed and ready to learn from his newfound perspective on gender roles and how they should apply to Barbie, as he takes in Gloria’s advice on the ‘ordinary Barbie’. It’s really not a very compelling conflict, and the CEO role in particular is a character that truly faded into the actor who was playing him. I only ever saw Will Ferrell when looking at him, and while he was funny, it was definitely not enough to carry this part of the narrative.
The movie’s handling of the three conflicts and how they work and don’t work is tied with the overarching way the movie is written. It’s written to be bluntly forward and on the nose. Unsurprisingly, this form of presenting characters and themes works for the dolls, and not so much for the humans.
Comedy and Conclusion:
However, don’t let that make you think that this movie becomes unbearably preachy. Even when the movie tries to offer up character resolutions and social commentary that don’t totally land, it is relentlessly funny, and that more than makes up for it. This is definitely one of the funniest movies of the year, it just may not be in the way you expect. First and foremost, even though I said earlier that the Barbie brand is aimed at children, this movie most assuredly isn’t. This is made clear not only by the fact that it’s Gloria and not Sasha who triggers the Barbieland conflict, but also by the rest of the way the script is written. This movie relies more heavily on meta references and humor on stereotypes, rather than on cheap gags and physical comedy, the latter of which works better with children. And with all the pop culture references peppered throughout, it’s not really aimed at older audiences either. This is a movie aimed specifically, and almost exclusively at Millennials and Gen Z. Which is curious given the broad appeal the movie had at the box office. However, after reading some reviews, I saw spectators who either took their kids, or their parents to see the movie, and often both groups left somewhat disappointed or confused, which I understand.
That said, me being in the target demographic, I thought the jokes were actually pretty funny, as I said before. So, with that in mind, I encourage you to give the movie a chance if only for the comedy. It’s most definitely worth it.
Additionally, being a man, I also appreciated the ways the movie invited me to reflect on my own stereotypical behaviors, and how they might be informed by how I perceive masculinity, and also femininity. This movie has plenty to say to men as well, and it does so in a way that didn’t make me feel mad, or angry, or talked down to, or humiliated. I know it did for some, but I genuinely think that has to do with the way the men (and every other character) are superficially presented by the film. The men are pathetic and morons, but that’s because the movie is meant to be on the nose about it. It works because they’re dolls, in fact, it works better because when Barbie has a heart-to-heart with Ken at the end, the conversation is more natural than ever before, and they come across as almost human, and the contrast with their bland attitude at the start makes that land even more.
So, in conclusion, I thought Barbie was pretty damn good. It’s a remarkably creative work of production, it brought to the screen a doll-world in a way that I never considered, and it did so in a way that made me feel very immersed. It spawned two, truly iconic, lead characters, that I think will remain culturally relevant for a while, in a comedic story that made me laugh and think at the same time. While not every idea in the movie is presented in a compelling or insightful manner, those that are, really do bring up some important issues, and they are discussed with surprising nuance for a movie about silly dolls. My sincere congratulations to Gerwig, Robbie, Gosling, Baumbach, and the whole cast and crew for pulling it off. Do definitely check it out, but leave the kids and parents at home, that is unless they really, really want to go.