‘Barbie’ Review: Repeat After Me, You Are Kenough
A Totally Reel Review
Rate It Out of Eight:
6/8
Before I dive into my review of Barbie, I just want to say how excited I am that people are coming back to movie theaters. As an avid movie watcher, it’s been depressing watching the box office the last few years be dominated by superhero franchises and CGI-filled spectacle . There’s nothing wrong with these, but I also don’t want more diversity than indie flicks and big-budget reboots/sequels. That’s why this weekend’s box office (with Barbie breaking the record for opening weekend of a female-directed movie) being one of the all-time largest weekends for the industry is such a huge deal.
Whether you saw Oppenheimer, Barbie, or both, it’s an incredible feeling to be part of this united cultural moment on the internet. It’s especially satisfying to see a movie as unapologetically hyper-feminine as Barbie blow up box offices when most hits like Mission Impossible (as much as I love them) are clearly catered towards the male gaze. Regardless, the energy this weekend was unmatched and I am so happy to see people excited to go to the movies.
That said, Barbie was not what I expected. It could’ve easily gone off the rails and been as superficial as the doll itself, but I had high hopes because I absolutely adore Greta Gerwig. Add on the fact that Ryan Gosling said this was the best script he’d ever read and… I might have had unrealistically high expectations. The first half of the movie is so much fun, I’d inject the neon pink serotonin into my veins if I could. It’s in the second half that I start to find some more problems with it, which really boils down to one major complaint. But overall, Barbie is incredibly fun and lighthearted with serious moments of tenderness. It’s a thin line to balance and I think overall Greta Gerwig rose to the challenge of adapting a controversial doll into something with actual substance.
The Euphoric First Half of Barbie
First, I want to talk about everything I loved about this movie. It’s so campy and it brought back chldhood memories of playing with Barbie. Even if you don’t have a personal connection, the innocence and insularity of Barbieland is the perfect escapist fantasy for the first act of the movie. It’s clear that everyone working on this project, from production design to the actors, loved what they were doing. Greta Gerwig and everyone involved had such a clear vision. For example, the fact that Barbie floats from the top of her house to her car because no child playing with Barbies ever used the stairs is such a tiny detail that adds to the magic. This is not to mention that the entire dreamhouse was built to be 23% smaller so that Margot Robbie would tower over everything like actual Barbie dolls do in the house . Even something as small as using light shades of pink rather than white added to the fantasy that this movie is selling.
Margot Robbie was the perfect Stereotypical Barbie; her unblinking eyes in the first half hour or so were so doll-like it bordered on creepy. She had the perfect smile pasted on her face and it was obvious that the entire cast was having so much fun. The dance party sequence contributed very little plot-wise, but was one of my favorite parts. I just wish the whole perfect day in Barbieland section lasted longer before Greta introduced the main conflict, but I understand for a movie already pushing 2 hours that it has to move briskly.
I’ve been holding it in, but I have to say that Ryan Gosling absolutely stole the show. He is the perfect Ken and he has been so in character throughout the press tour. He’s a trophy husband and he’s proud. His GQ essentials interview is one of my favorite things and such ingenious marketing. Ken is a tricky role to play — he’s clearly taking the backseat to Barbie and it can be insulting for an A-lister to play such an auxiliary character. But Ryan Gosling took it all in stride and wanted to give Ken a voice (especially fitting that his daughter threw her Ken doll face-down next to a lemon). He’s incredibly underrated as a comedic actor (Crazy Stupid Love’s backyard fight still makes me laugh) and can obviously handle more dramatic roles. He didn’t shy away from campiness and embraced the role of beach. Just beach. And some spontaneous dance numbers.
The On the Nose Feminism
SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen the movie yet, please skip to Campy, Fun, and Just Enough Substance.
Some jokes didn’t quite land for me and I can overlook minor complaints, but my single biggest gripe with this movie is America Ferrera’s rant about two-thirds into the movie. As a woman, yes I am aware of how contradictory patriarchal beauty standards are. I know that anything a woman does is a catch-22. I loved the movie because it’s an escape into Barbieland where none of those problems exist (at least for women) and it’s entertaining to watch Barbie fumble when she escapes into the real world.
At first I appreciated the speech for vocalizing the impossible double standards, but that speech just went on for too long. It was preaching to the choir and really took me out of the story. There are more subtle ways of getting your point across: I absolutely love the Cool Girl monologue from Gone Girl. It gets the point across that women will bend over backwards to cater to what men want at the expense of our own identities: we will forge ourselves into the image of what we think men want. And yes, Greta gets to this exact point later in the movie, but this whole rant could’ve been shortened or deleted altogether and the movie would’ve been better for it.
This monologue breaks a basic rule of good writing: show, not tell. Greta already showed us how differently women are treated in the real world when Barbie gets harassed within minutes. She had made her point and a strong script shouldn’t have to spell it out for the audience. Personally I just found the monologue to be unnatural and scripted, though I can’t blame America Ferrera for that. Don’t get me wrong, I still really enjoyed this movie, but I’m just disappointed because of how much I love Greta Gerwig. I absolutely adore her interpretation of Little Women and how she changed the ending slightly to reflect Louisa May Alcott’s wishes. I just know she can do better than this cheesy, in-your-face monologue.
That monologue was the beginning of where the movie unraveled for me. The third act was so tonally inconsistent, going from angry and fed-up to frivolous (the Ken dance off was also just a tad long) to existential and despairing. I experienced emotional whiplash as I laughed and teared up at various points in the movie. The final montage of little girls playing with Barbie gave me PTSD to Babylon’s ending and is a little too on-the-nose for me to find inspiring.
I do want to touch on the debate of whether Barbie the doll is a feminist symbol and how this movie tackles it. Kudos to Greta for acknowledging the complicated relationship that little girls have with Barbie. The tongue-in-cheek jabs at Mattel (there must’ve been at least two female CEOs right?), Ruth Handler (tax evasion be damned), and of course Barbie herself were witty and appropriate ways to acknowledge the criticisms. Ultimately, I just have to remind myself that Barbie is a lighthearted movie and Greta can’t dive into all of the nuances of the complicated history of this doll.
My personal interpretation is that Barbie the doll represents something different to every person. For some, she’s a symbol of unattainable beauty standards and Sasha is a stand-in for that. For others, like her mother Gloria, Barbie is a symbol of childhood and mother-daughter bonding, a source of comfort. There’s no one answer. Barbie can be anything and it’s important to note that she was created in 1959, a time when most girls’ dolls relegated us to traditional, domestic roles (a cheeky reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey in the opening). Barbie had broken down barriers in this fantasy world long before women were able to do the same in the real world. Margot Robbie herself said it so aptly: Barbie was already exploring the moon at a time when women weren’t even financially independent yet. Barbie was an outlet for little girls to dream big.
And even today, looking at the box office success of this movie, Barbie combats the idea that women who are hyper-feminine (who dress in pink, who like girly things) are any less competent; Barbieland is a utopia in which we don’t have to prove ourselves to men and we don’t have to fit ourselves to their standards to be successful.
“Every little girl needed a doll through which to project herself into her dream of her future” — Ruth Handler for the New York Times, 1977
For me, at least, Barbie the movie is a way to imagine a world in which we don’t have to deal with sexism and the patriarchy, in which you can embrace your femininity and not be dismissed for it. But alas, it’s never quite that simple with Greta.
Balance is Key
I walked out of the theater very confused about the ending, especially after Barbie talks to Ruth Handler. At first glance, I suppose some critics might take away the message that Greta Gerwig’s brand of feminism is all about female supremacy, but then they would’ve missed the entire point of the movie. Barbie is all about balance — too much of one thing isn’t sustainable, or at least not truly meaningful.
Looking into the feminist message, for example, Barbie is not advocating for only women to hold positions of power and privilege in Barbieland. Barbie realizes by the end of the movie that she had taken Ken for granted and that no one should live in the shadow of another person (or gender). Ken had no idea who he was outside of his relationship to Barbie and he was constantly bending over backwards to impress her. In so many ways it’s an ingenious parallel to women in the real world. Ken lived a sad existence with no voice, no power, no money, no job, and no car. There needs to be a balance for them all to live harmoniously together, though I did laugh when President Barbie allowed Kens to serve on lower courts and not the Supreme Court. Perhaps one day Kens will get as much power as women have in the real world.
Personally I found Barbie’s arc to be more compelling during her time in the real world. When she sits at the bus stop and just observes humans around her, we see her slowly shed a tear as she feels sadness for the first time. Barbieland is so artificially upbeat, but there was a poignancy in Margot’s performance as Barbie experienced the whole gamut of human emotions. Somehow I ended up tearing up in this scene as Margot looks at the old lady on the bench. She is so overwhelmed by how much a person can feel and it was the first hint at just how existential this movie can be.
Life in plastic isn’t so fantastic when you think about how one-dimensional those Barbies are. They are molded to feel only the most superficial emotions and have no agency — their only purpose is to be played with by humans. But by venturing into the real world, Barbie realizes that there is so much depth in human emotions and discovers negative emotions of depression, despair, and anxiety in addition to positive ones maternal love and comfort. Human life is all about change and balancing the negative as well as the positive emotions we feel. In the very end, when she is given the choice to remain a doll or become human, Barbie is empowered and for the first time in her life, has a real sense of agency. Sure, it’s terrifying that we inevitably die, but that’s part of the human experience.
On the topic of embracing one’s agency, we also see that in Ken’s story arc. Barbie herself goes through stages of grief after returning to Barbieland and discovering that Ken brought the patriarchy back. She felt like an imposter who wasn’t pretty enough (again, not the best casting choice as Greta acknowledged) and also not smart enough because she didn’t have a career like all the other Barbies. Imposter syndrome is a universal experience, but especially more pronounced for women, whether it’s in academic or professional settings. But as she progresses on her hero’s journey, she imparts wisdom to Ken as well, encouraging him to discover his identity independent of Barbie. Ken may have been created as an accessory to Barbie, but he deserves to be his own person. His sweatshirt perfectly sums it up: he is Kenough (and of course Mattel is shamelessly capitalizing on this moment).
Missed Potential of Maternal Bonding
The relationship between Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) and her mother Gloria (America Ferrera) was underutilized in the movie. I know Greta Gerwig has previously tackled mother-daughter relationships, but this one struck me more personally. As I get older, I find myself sympathizing with moms more in teen movies with angsty, bratty teenage daughters. The more independent I’ve become, the more I realize how much I’ve taken my mom for granted. The montage of Sasha and her mom playing with Barbie captured the purity of their bond and how heartbroken Gloria was to see Sasha grow up. We see them heal their relationship, but they’re largely relegated to the backburner as Barbie focuses on saving Barbieland from Ken and his Mojo Dojo Casa Houses. I just wish there was more depth to the mother-daughter duo, though I do understand that the movie is focused on the titular character.
Going in, I had no background knowledge on the Barbie doll, but I find it sweet that Ruth Handler created and named the doll after her daughter, Barbara Handler. The movie touches on the power of maternal love and we see Ruth act as such a figure for Barbie in her moments of need. At the very end, her line that “We must stand still so our daughters can look back and see how far they’ve come” made me tear up. Mothers sacrifice so much for us and pass on their hopes and dreams that they didn’t have the opportunities to pursue.
That moment was incredibly powerful and I again want to highlight how much I love the scene of Margot sitting at a bus stop in Los Angeles. Greta Gerwig herself said in an interview that the scene could’ve been cut, but it is the heart of the film: “The idea of a loving God who’s a mother, a grandmother — who looks at you and says, ‘Honey, you’re doing ok’ — is something I feel like I need and I wanted to give to other people.” Those two scenes are warm embraces and reminders for everyone in the audience that you’ll be okay. I just wish that we could’ve seen even more of this dynamic with Gloria and Sasha.
There’s an interesting interpretation of the final line I saw that Barbie not only chose to be human, but may be securing her own legacy by having a child one day and coming full circle to become that maternal figure. I’m not sure that I necessarily want to see Barbie use her newfound freedom to become a mom, but again, the beauty of movies is that it’s up to each person’s interpretation.
Campy, Fun, and Just Enough Substance
Despite my relatively low score, I did really enjoy Barbie. It’s not only an escape from the real world, but also a movie about identity, balance, and maternal love. It’s simultaneously superficial and unflinchingly realistic as it tackles topics like imposter syndrome, depression, and independence. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling were perfect castings for Barbie and Ken, the production design was incredibly gorgeous and clearly a labor of love, and Greta Gerwig added substance to an otherwise one-dimensional movie.
I have my complaints about this movie, but at the end of the day, I have to give credit to the entire cast and crew for bringing this vision to life. Barbie is an incredibly personal symbol that means something different to everyone; I can see this movie being divisive, but that’s ultimately up to you to watch and form your own opinion. For me, it’s incredibly fun and not to be taken too seriously. It’s a simple reminder that life in plastic is fantastic, but life in the real world isn’t so bad either.
And now some Letterboxd reviews to lighten up the mood a little.
