Barbie – Review

While I have no personal connection with the Barbie line from Mattel I very much connect with Greta Gerwig’s work. Her directorial debut, 2017’s Lady Bird, was an incredible directorial debut that should have shocked no one. Her work writing Frances Ha alongside her husband, director Noah Baumbach, should have served as proof of her skills. Her performance in that film, along with those in 20th Century Women and The House of the Devil all but cemented her as a force to be reckoned with. With her signing onto the project in 2021 everyone got quite excited. Between her and Margot Robbie this was sure to be a banger.

It is, just not quite in the way that everyone might have expected.

Whether or not you buy into the concept is up to personal interpretation. Many will be charmed by Barbie’s dream life (and Barbie’s dream house and Barbie’s dream car) in Barbieland, filled with powerful women that fulfill all governmental roles, all upstanding professions (there are garbage disposal Barbies, President Barbie (Issa Rae), Physicist Barbie (Emma Mackey), and a myriad of others), and all of them get together and party every night. The Kens are there, mostly to look pretty and be mindless hunks that don’t really have much going on unless the women acknowledge them, and that’s pretty much what Barbie has been ever since its creation.

Our tale revolves around Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), the basic idea of the doll and the one that does literally nothing but bright, fun, sunny activities with her sisters. Oh, and with Stereotypical Ken (a beautifully unhinged Ryan Gosling), whose only occupation is “beach.” Every day is the best day ever, waking in Barbie’s dream house to pretend shower (she doesn’t need an actual shower because she’s perfect), eating pretend breakfast, picking an outfit, and heading out into the world to have a ball. Small cracks begin to show in her shiny veneer when she begins having thoughts about death, waking up with awful morning breath, discovering a patch of cellulite on her thigh, and her feet are flat and no longer perfectly angled for high heels. She is, in short, discovering the reality beyond the glow of her seemingly perfect life.

You see, Barbie Land is under a fascinating impression regarding the real world. The Barbies believe that their conquest of all professions, levels of government, and open housing design have solved the gender equality gap out in the real world, which they acknowledge exists. Barbies of every size, ability, race, and whatever Allen (Michael Cera) is are meant to be empowering. When our heroine begins to feel like a human being she seeks the wisdom of “Weird Barbie” (Kate McKinnon), who sends her out into the real world to find the girl that’s playing with her and lift her spirits. Ken hitches a ride with her, bringing his incredible neon-yellow rollerblades, and together they enter the real world.

This proves a bit discombobulating for both individuals. Barbie immediately feels eyes on her, with everything from lust to disgust to jealousy being projected onto her. She’s upset to find that the girl she believes is her owner, a snippy tween named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), thinks her to be a symbol of fascist capitalism and a toy designed to make women hate their bodies. Barbie is, in short, learning that Barbieland is not at all representative of what the real world is like.

Ken, on the other hand, is having the time of his life. Entering the real world has allowed him to discover the patriarchy, which he quickly realizes cannot afford him much here but can accomplish a lot for his self-esteem back in Barbieland. Taking a few books that look pulled straight off the shelves of Andrew Tate and Sean Hannitty, he quickly returns to share his finding with the other Kens. Our ditzy blonde beauty has, sadly, been quickly redpilled.

None of this should come as a surprise from director Greta Gerwig, whose naked frustration with the openly misogynistic undertones of the entirety of the Western world have been grating on her for quite some time. She doesn’t keep us in the real world for very long, only enough for us to see what effects that can have on another culture. Nothing is exactly right in Barbieland either, as Stereotypical Ken is from the beginning shown to only have a good day if Barbie interacts with him and Ken, I’m sorry sweetie, but she’s just not that into you. The patina of male subjugation versus the patriarchal society are both viewed with a sad disdain that acknowledges that neither is the correct answer and that perhaps our genders shouldn’t be the only part of our identities that we define ourselves by. That’s not to say that this dismisses the patriarchal control that has gripped the lives of the world for the entirety of its existence. Far from it, the film chooses to pity and encourage growth rather than stab and slash. There’s a love and understanding to it while also letting loose the rage and frustration of the way women are treated and the standards they are held to.

These messages work quite well with the Barbies and Kens but absolutely none of it works without the inclusion of Sasha’s mother, Gloria (America Ferrera). Grounding the story with a real woman, beyond an audience surrogate and instead a complete insertion of the audience into the film, this character is allowed to voice the frustrations of womanhood and motherhood and the pressures that come with it while leaving the Barbies to be themselves. Gerwig and Baumbach were smart to include this character as nothing works without it, no matter how much fun the rest of the cast is having. There’s only so far you can go with the mystic, sugary quality of Barbieland and the hilarity of placing those characters in the real world. Gloria is a victim of a faux-feminist, male-dominated industry herself. She works for Mattel, directly under the CEO (Will Farrell in an “Oh yeah, he’s still in this movie” performance). It’s still silly and it’s still a step out of reality but having that through-line keeps everything just on the right side of too much.

The film is going to be labeled as a man-hating “woke” piece of feminist propaganda. If that’s all you glean from Barbie I feel bad for you. Rather than try to demean or empower one gender it attempts to look at the damage that archaic standards of gender stereotypes and power struggles have damaged everyone and encourages audiences to consider how we move forward. There’s nothing quite like Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and there may never be again, but for a movie about a piece of plastic meant to be marketed heavily to young girls…it’s turned out to be fairly important.

Barbie is currently playing in theatres.