Barbie (2023) — Film Review
Welly, welly, well. After 14 years of development hell, Barbie has finally arrived on the big screen. I must admit, as a nearly 28-year-old man, it feels a little strange going to see a movie as bedazzled in pink and glitter as this movie is. That said, the film is directed by Greta Gerwig, who, with this and her previous efforts, including Little Women (2019) and Lady Bird (2017), shows much stylistic range in her talent. She co-writes the screenplay with her partner, Noah Baumbach, another immensely talented creator. With them at the helm, it told me there would probably be a little more to this movie than a simple play-doll adventure. Having seen it, yes, there certainly is, though not always for the best.
In some respects, Barbie feels like a little girl’s playset in her room blown up to life-size proportions. Many different Barbies and Kens live in this fantastical Barbieland; their houses don’t have walls, they drink nonexistent liquids out of plastic cups, the ocean waves are just hunks of plastic, and the Barbie’s feet are always on their tippy toes. Of all the Barbies who live here, there is only one Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) who’s perfect in every detail until one day; she isn’t. Her feet go flat, leading to one of the movie’s more humorous jokes, and she begins thinking thoughts unbefitting of the perfect matriarchal world she lives in.
When judged as a production, Barbie is a cheeky satire of its brand and the effects of the toy line on the perception of femininity. There are numerous in-jokes and gags spattered through the world the film creates, thanks in part to the production design of Sarah Greenwood and costumes by Jacqueline Durran. This is a film unafraid to work with unrealistic proportions and celebrate absurdity. From the opening image of Barbie standing in place of the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as little girls smash their baby dolls, one gets a pretty good idea of how preposterously playful the movie is going to be.
With that, there comes a self-aware, breaking-the-fourth-wall-style story. Barbie must travel to the human world to seek her owner and find out what’s going on with her identity, and all the while, Ken (Ryan Gosling) follows her aiming to win her heart after being passed up so many times. Once they reach Los Angeles, there’s a lot of that fish-out-of-water comedy to be expected. Moreover, there’s a lot they take in as observers learning truths for the first time. This is where the film plays into people’s discussions about the Barbie brand ever since its inception. Does it empower women or exploit them? Is Barbie an ideal image of what girls should become, or is it wish fulfillment that belittles them?
At the center of this is Robbie, in a role she may have been born to play. Robbie has been one of the gorgeous bombshells of modern movies, and the film utilizes her perfect figure, delightful smile, and big blue eyes to fully embody the dream image of what Barbie is. As the film moves on and she learns that maybe her role didn’t help to empower, many little gestures like a single tear running down her face become a big picture. Through Robbie, the film shows the plasticity within a world created out of plastics.
This is where much of the pointed commentary comes in. Barbie is anything that the corporation wants her to be, and wouldn’t you know it, the most famous girl’s toy line is operated by a board room filled with men, led by Will Ferrell. All the while, Ken roams around and learns of this concept called “patriarchy” for the first time and gets a childlike fascination with it. Yeah, the commentary of Barbie is anything but subtle. I wouldn’t expect anything else out of a movie based on Barbie dolls, of all things, but is it well-written or thought-provoking commentary? Not really. As the film comes to a screeching halt to bring its characters to their lowest point, it does begin to feel like it’s becoming more self-serious than it should be as characters make emphatic statements and question their purpose, and you know the drill from here.
I can’t say that Barbie is necessarily a good movie overall, but it does have good parts. This is a slightly grown-up vision of Barbie that maintains much of the little girl’s spirit but pokes fun at itself to understand the complicated ideas it represents. Had it stuck to that and not gone too far off the deep end with the societal statements, it probably could’ve been a far more entertaining and cleverly constructed movie.