Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling Star in Greta Gerwig’s Vision in Pink: It’s Fantastic!
DIRECTOR: GRETA GERWIG/2023
She’s a Barbie girl, he’s just Ken, and though we may not live in Barbie Land, how fantastic it is to live in a world with the Barbie movie.
Anyone with a passing interest in Greta Gerwig’s feature based on the Mattel toy has speculated about its plot details thanks the open-ended trailer, both a rare move in the 2020s and a surprisingly smart one given all the marketing snafus at Warner Bros. lately. Since part of the fun of Barbie’s adventures is never knowing where we’re going, feel free to choose your own adventure just like our bubbly, beatific, and blonde heroine does. Part 1 of this review will avoid specifics and stay spoiler-free; Part 2 avoids major spoilers but is best enjoyed once you’ve seen the film. C’mon Barbies, let’s go party!
Part 1: He’s Just Ken (Spoiler-Free)
As revealed in the sparkly Barbie trailers, Barbie (Margot Robbie) lives with the other Barbies (including but not limited to Dua Lipa, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, and Alexandra Shipp) and pals like Midge (Emerald Fennell) in Barbie Land. We also can’t forget the Kens, though anyone who grew up playing with Mattel’s dolls knows he’s an afterthought compared to his supermodel girlfriend. Robbie’s Barbie is dating our main Ken (Ryan Gosling) who is flanked every day at the beach by his bros Ken (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Ken (Simu Liu), Ken (Scott Evans), Allan (Michael Cera), and, oh, Ken (Ncuti Gatwa). (For sake of clarity, all references to Barbie and Ken going forward will be to Robbie and Gosling unless otherwise noted.) The best perk of being Barbie? Every day is the best day ever! Until one day for Stereotypical Barbie, it isn’t. After a horrifying morning involving burnt toast and—eek!—flat feet, she decides she needs answers and goes on a journey to discover how she can live the best day ever again. Oh, and Ken’s coming, too—why not, I guess?
Is Barbie an instant classic? Perhaps it’s too of-this-moment for that kind of longevity, and by definition, it is a lengthy advertisement for a toy company, not to mention Birkenstock, Chanel, Chevrolet, and—thanks to a sick burn that made me feel too seen—Duolingo. (Yeesh, was there more product placement I missed?) But Barbie is too artistically accomplished to reduce the movie to its least altruistic elements, and it’s also far too weird. An almost-musical with dance numbers inspired by Busby Berkeley leading to a denouement modeled on Gene Kelly’s ballet in An American in Paris? A fantasy citing inspiration from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Wizard of Oz? A statement with politics in mind as much as its weekend rival Oppenheimer? As best I can tell, Barbie is all of those things, and it’s so assured in its iconography and world-building it doesn’t feel pastiche in any of those arenas. (Contrary to public posturing, studios forced critics at least in St. Louis to choose in the Barbenheimer showdown by previewing both films the same night, so I can’t speak with authority on any comparisons to Christopher Nolan’s atomic bomb drama.)
Most of all, though, Barbie is a comedy, one that made me laugh so hard I cried. The jokes come so fast in some scenes I’m certain I missed some, and with the exception of a few of his shrieks and yelps in The Nice Guys, Gosling is the funniest he’s ever been. I am shocked that in the year of our Lord 2023 Mattel signed off on a series of punchlines about their doll’s troubling reputation (which is why I wasn’t allowed to own any growing up) and some of their more disastrous product lines. I also can’t believe the gunning-to-be-number-one enemy of creators, working artists, film history, movie marketing, and journalism David Zaslav didn’t stunt an original, singular vision because it makes a joke at the expense of The Snyder Cut. Its joke hit rate is exceptionally high, but that’s not the only reason it feels like a possible classic in the making. Barbie made me laugh so hard I cried, but it also just made me cry.
Part 2: She’s Everything (Spoilers)
When Wonder Woman premiered in 2017, its depiction of female warriors was surprisingly moving for female audience goers like me. I had never seen an action sequence starring only women before, and I hadn’t realized that absence until that moment. Barbie Land is 2023’s Themiscyra, but instead of watching physically powerful women dominating their environment, we are watching emotionally healthy women thriving in their relationships, work, and communities. Yes, this is a world where everything is coated in a pink finish and our President Barbie (Rae) wears a kitschy sash to show this matriarchal society, but the Barbies’ drama-free, supportive sisterhood echoes the best versions of my own most authentic female friendships.
Gerwig’s vision sings with its clearest tones in Barbie Land, and I’ll need another viewing to decide if the more perfunctory energy in The Real World is a feature or a bug. Exhausted mom Gloria (America Ferrera) and jaded tween Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) serve as avatars for the idea of the hassled and disillusioned modern woman, but they never become well-rounded characters in the same way that a Barbie doll can only symbolize 20th century ideas of Western womanhood without revealing them. The pair at least remain accurate avatars, moving us to tears with the power of a pitch-perfect monologue from Ferrera and making the viewer privy to the feelings women have in a room full of men. Do I need to be worried about my safety, or do I just need to be worried about a lecture on the greatness of The Godfather? Is he attracted to me as a person or just how I would look next to him? Will he treat me like a capable individual or just an object for his own pleasure?
Who knew real-life partners Gerwig and Noah Baumbach could turn Barbie and Ken into the new representation of archetypal battle of the sexes? Barbie lives somewhere between the weak stereotyping of ‘90s “women be shopping” sitcoms and the vitriolic Battle of the Exes Marriage Story, just as funny as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (another movie that made me laugh so hard I cried) but with more lasting cultural insight. No one less beautiful than Robbie and Gosling could have played Barbie and Ken, and as Pauline Kael wrote about Bonnie and Clyde, “Actors and actresses who are beautiful start with an enormous advantage, because we love to look at them.” But perhaps no other actors could have played them, period. Case in point: Gosling’s famous handsomeness is often the only respite from the characters he chooses to play: tortured lover (The Notebook), tortured artist (La La Land), tortured strong-and-silent type (First Man), tortured hero of a film bro’s dream franchise revival (Blade Runner 2049). Ken becomes a send-up of much of his career, critiquing the roles who superficially coast on his good looks and the self-serious ones that make Claire Foy accuse him and his friends of behaving like “a bunch of boys” playing with toys.
It’s no accident the pals that flank him on Barbie Land beach have played a kung fu fighting Marvel superhero and Malcolm X in an Oscar-bait drama, or that their fragile egos send them into “Greased Lightning” dance-offs and Rocky Balboa’s fur coats. But because he’s a movie star with plenty of goodwill, because the script is witty, and yes, Ms. Kael, because he’s handsome, his tortured, silly, and insecure Ken is still lovable. Barbie is questioning the consumerist (and sometimes violent) embellishments we use to define our femininity and masculinity, but as the most optimistic piece of feminist pop culture since Parks & Recreation, it isn’t questioning the whether or not men and women can live together in a world where everyone thrives.