BARBIE – Review by Pam Grady
It’s not easy being a stereotypical doll. At least, if your name is Barbie and you find yourself unexpectedly facing an existential crisis. It has been a year of hype for this exuberant rendering of the life of Mattel’s classic toy. So many photos of Margot Robbie and a bleached blonde Ryan Gosling, as Barbie and her boytoy Ken, both pretty in pink, spread across so many websites along with stories about just how much pink (and in so many shades) the production used to achieve the perfect Barbie universe. It was a candy-colored mystery but with Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, Little Women) at the helm and a script by her and husband Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story, White Noise) it seemed likely Barbie would not be a feature-length kiddie toy commercial. And it isn’t. This is, to borrow a phrase from the Eurythmics, sisters doing it for themselves. With dolls.
A terrific soundtrack embroiders the story. Cyndi Lauper, Lizzo, Spice Girls, Indigo Girls, Billie Eilish, and Dua Lipa are among the performers. Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice incorporate Aqua’s Barbie Girl into Barbie World. One song that does not appear in the film but would not have been out of place is Hoku’s Perfect Day, the tune that kicked off 2001’s Legally Blonde. There are parallels between Barbie and that film’s Elle Woods. But it is love for a man that sets Reese Witherspoon’s Elle on her path to self-realization. Barbie’s quest is entirely self-directed. Ken is a mere accessory.
In the world Barbie inhabits along with all the other Barbies, the Kens, and supporting dolls like Skipper and Midge and the outlier Allan (Michael Cera), Barbies run the show. The chic, immaculately dressed dolls own all the dream houses and hold all the jobs from president and supreme court justice on down, while the Kens are empty-headed pretty boys that work at “beach.” This only adds to Barbie’s dilemma. As Stereotypical Barbie her function is simply to be sunny and look perfect. It’s enough for her until the day that it isn’t. Ken, who lives for her and with the bitter knowledge that she’s just not that into him and that he will never be as good a dancer as Simu Liu’s Ken, goes along for the ride as she confronts her malaise head on.
Robbie and Gosling, and in fact, all the actors playing Barbies and Kens are excellent. Kate McKinnon and Cera add another layer of hilarity as Barbie world’s oddballs. Jacqueline Durran’s costume design and Sarah Greenwood’s production design are fantastic, Barbie clothes and accessories so familiar to kids who grew up playing with somehow even more impressive when blown up to life-sized dimensions. Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography is glorious, capturing all the eye-popping color of this doll universe. Musical numbers sprinkled throughout, including a glorious dance number by the Kens, add to the fun.
But this is not simply a doll’s movie. There is a human element represented by Gloria (America Ferrera), a low-level Mattel employee and lifelong Barbie girl, frustrated at work and saddened by the growing gap between her and her cynical tween daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt). This is also a movie of twin hearts. Barbie is one. Gloria is the other and Ferrera gets the single best monologue in the movie that lays out explicitly the dilemma facing modern women, especially mothers. In a way, Barbie is a movie about the messiness of life. Barbie is upset because her own perfection leaves her feeling empty (yet she is not vapid, which may be the root of her problem) while the human world’s conflicts and contradictions weigh on Gloria.
Barbie begins with a hilarious homage to a certain Stanley Kubrick classic that limns the way the introduction of Barbie forever changed the relationship between little girls and dolls and introduces Robbie in the most striking way. The film is full of allusions to classic Barbie and how she has evolved over the years. Rhea Perlman even appears as Ruth Handler, the co-founder of Mattel who invented Barbie in 1959 and named the doll after her own daughter.
The many iterations of Barbie that exist today, a doll seemingly for every profession and occasionally even representing celebrities (the Tippi Hedren Birds Barbie is a personal favorite), sets up the dichotomy that powers Gerwig’s vision: The dolls are all powerful. In the real world, women continue to struggle for full equality. But the director wraps that message in a comedy overflowing with laughs and charm. And, sure, in some ways, Barbie is the aforementioned epic toy commercial but there are certainly worse ways to leave the cinema than wanting to go home and play with dolls.
