Movie Review: Barbie
The opening ten minutes or so of Great Gerwig’s Barbie are truly magical. Through the voiceover of Helen Mirren, Gerwig establishes that there are two worlds: there is the “Real World”, where real humans live, and Barbieland, a matriarchal utopia that is inhabited by several different variations of Barbie, like President Barbie, Doctor Barbie, and Lawyer Barbie, among other occupations. Their counterparts in Barbieland are all named Ken (and there is one named Allan, played by Michael Cera), and all the Kens do is “beach” all day while the Barbies run the land and live in complete happiness.
We are introduced to a stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), the kind of Barbie that you think of when you hear the word “Barbie”. She wakes up every morning in her Barbie mansion with a smile on her face and greets all her neighboring Barbies. Her heels never touch the ground, imaginary water comes out of her shower, the toaster pops her breakfast perfectly on her plate, and the only way she can get down from her house is to take a slide on the side of the house or float down because Barbie mansions don’t have a proper staircase and that’s exactly how a child would have them go from the top floor to the bottom floor. This is a stunning way to start a movie. It is full of life, energy, color, humor, and creativity and you mostly understand how this world works.
But then stereotypical Barbie starts going through a crisis. She has thoughts of death, her feet become flat, and her happiness seems to be waning. She makes a visit to Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), an outcast of Barbieland because she was played with too hard and now has drawings on her face, a haircut, and wild clothes. Weird Barbie informs stereotypical Barbie that she and everyone else in Barbieland is actually a doll and that her depressing thoughts are coming from a girl from the “Real World” named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) who owns her and the only way for her to stop them from continuing is to go through the magical portal to the “Real World” and fix it. Accompanied by a Ken (Ryan Gosling) who is infatuated with Barbie, they go through the portal and end up at Venice Beach in California.
We’ve seen movies like this before, most recently in Olivia Wilde’s divisive Don’t Worry Darling, where our main character’s world is thrown for a loop when they begin to question everything around them. But this is where Barbie’s plot starts to get wobbly. While in the “Real World” Barbie and Ken see that it is nothing like Barbieland. It is a man-run world, which comes as exciting news to Ken, who has devoted his entire life to Barbie, trying to impress her, and be her boyfriend, only for her to always push him to the side. Ken takes this new knowledge of patriarchy and masculinity back to Barbieland.
Meanwhile, Barbie learns that she is not as inspirational to little girls and women as she thought and that Sasha genuinely hates Barbie and what she represents. Barbie then discovers that the thoughts weren’t coming from Sasha but from her mom Gloria (America Ferrara), a receptionist at the Mattel office. Gloria began playing with Sasha’s Barbie during a midlife crisis and transferred her worries to stereotypical Barbie.
At this point, I have a few questions about why these things are happening. Why are Gloria’s thoughts just going to stereotypical Barbie? Do thoughts transfer from the owner to the Barbie? If so, how many Barbielands are there? There have been over one billion Barbies sold, so are there millions of Barbielands with other Barbies who get thoughts from their owners? What happens to the Barbies that nobody plays with or that are sitting on shelves or at garage sales?
More questions arose when Barbie, Gloria, and Sasha go back to Barbieland and find that the Kens now control Barbieland and all the Barbies have gone from being doctors, lawyers, and veterinarians to arm candy for the Kens. But wait, I thought the thoughts of the characters in Barbieland came from their owners, so how are the Ken’s able to change Barbieland themselves and able to change the personalities of the Barbies if those are controlled by the person who is playing with them? This gets even more confusing when the CEO of Mattel (Will Ferrell) gets a phone call from his warehouse saying that a new Ken version of Barbieland is selling like crazy. This doesn’t make sense for two reasons. The first is because there is a scene where the Mattel CEO meets Barbie, he tells her that they never worry about Ken or anything related to Ken ever. So with that, how are they putting into production a new Kenland when they never think about Ken? Are the Ken’s controlling the minds of the people creating them and playing with them?
As Barbie began to get more and more confusing, I kept thinking of a far better movie with a similar idea, The LEGO Movie. The rules of the LEGO world made sense as to why everything was constantly changing and when it was revealed that the world was a child’s imagination and his father was the villain, it made even more sense. In Barbie, the more the movie goes on, the less everything makes sense, which is a real bummer because Gerwig started the film on such a high note, and it just gets progressively worse and more confusing.
There is a fair amount to like about Barbie. The production design and costumes are spectacular. It is vibrant, fun, and full of personality. Robbie is a superstar and Gosling is hilarious in a performance reminiscent of Derek Zoolander. And the film has strong messages about self-worth, gender roles, and existentialism. And while this is a movie about a doll most little children play with; this is not a movie for children. They might find some stuff to connect with, but this movie earns its PG-13 rating.
Some people might look at the questions I’ve asked and think I am taking this too seriously and look, I get that this is a surreal comedy about an iconic doll, but that doesn’t mean the plot and world shouldn’t make sense.
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