04 Aug Barbie Review

BARBIE

dir. Greta Gerwig, starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Will Ferrell, et. al

Barbie and Ken are having the time of their lives in the colorful and seemingly perfect world of Barbie Land. However, when they get a chance to go to the real world, they soon discover the joys and perils of living among humans.

A follow up to her 2019 masterpiece film Little Women, co-writer and director Greta Gerwig returns to screens with a story that couldn’t be any more different. Throughout Barbie, it’s clear that Gerwig and husband Noah Baumbach had a clear story they wanted to tell, a message they wanted to get across, and a visual theme that couldn’t have been adapted from its source material any better. While Gosling’s Ken almost takes over the story in a similar fashion of his attempt to take over Barbieland, Gerwig still manages to keep the focus solidly on Barbie and her journey of self-discovery. That overarching theme, the idea that a person’s worth is theirs to own and not attached to anyone else, is the story’s throughline that’s beautifully handled and realized at the film’s conclusion. It’s this strong narrative hand that adds Barbie to the list of the best type of comedies: those that make the audience both laugh and think.

Starring Margot Robbie, Barbie is a role many could have played but Robbie fit perfectly. One of Hollywood’s symbols of radiant beauty and intelligent poise in the current era, Robbie’s skills as an actress are still her greatest strength, letting the comedic bits wash over her while dominating the screen with a dramatic presence. When things turn serious, Robbie turns another gear and helps to elevate what could’ve been a goofy tonal failure of a screenplay with a weight that keeps the story anchored from going overboard. With her role as the mentally unstable Harley Quinn, it’s sometimes easy to forget that she can bring the heat when needed.

Ryan Gosling as Ken almost manages to steal the show. Gosling understood exactly what was needed of him and delivered in spades. While no stranger to comedy (Gosling is one half of the Nice Guys after all), it’s rare to see a comedic performance this open and outrageously silly from the normally dramatic actor. Ken and Barbie’s emotional journey through the film mirror each other, and while those journeys are wildly divergent, they arrive at similar conclusions. While it’s enjoyable to watch each character go through their own personal catharsis to reach said epiphanies, Gosling gets the additional honor of carrying the brunt of the comedy as well, giving him the opportunity to flex a new set of skills and turn in a performance quite unlike any other.

One of the scarce criticisms of the film could be applied to America Ferrera and Ariana Greenblatt as the two real humans of the film. A mother and daughter couple, Ferrera and Greenblatt have a somewhat tumultuous relationship at the film’s start which provides fertile ground for development between the two that is ultimately wasted in favor of Barbie and Ken’s story. While admittedly, the title of the movie is Barbie and she rightfully deserves to be the focus, Ferrera and Greenblatt feel like a wasted afterthought, characters meant only to assist Barbie accomplish her ends in the real world. While both performances are great, the potential to seed a story about the women who eventually age out of the Barbie fantasy and discover life’s ills is too great to ignore. The same goes for Will Ferrell’s character, the Mattel CEO, who basically reprises a version of his role in The Lego Movie, only far more superfluous. While in The Lego Movie Ferrell serves a person who holds his hobby so close he won’t even share it with his own son, here in Barbie his entire storyline of a CEO desperate to set things right in Barbieland could be almost entirely axed from the film without much of value lost (indeed, it’d free up more time to explore Ferrera and Greenblatt’s relationship).

Greta Gerwig is one of the hottest directors working. After the critically acclaimed A24 hit Lady Bird followed by Little Women, Barbie is Gerwig’s coming out party, her announcement to the household viewer that a fresh new voice in film is here to stay (despite her having already been in the industry almost two decades). While some have criticized the film for its heavy-handed application of its critical look at patriarchal societies, Gerwig’s approach is never mean spirited towards men. She uses Barbieland to hold a mirror to our own reality: if you feel bad for the Kens of Barbieland, whose entire identity is tied to that of their various Barbies, the same feels should be reflected in how that applied for the women of the real world.

How Gerwig tells this story is masterful. The production design, overly pink, candy coated, and obscenely fake (the water isn’t even real) that encompasses Barbieland is in stark contrast to the real world Barbie finds herself in. This constant partying, the feeling that everything is awesome (Barbie shares a few things in common with The Lego Movie) serves to begin Barbie at the highest high as the film proceeds to strip this away from her, helping reveal to herself who she is at her core. At 114 minutes, Gerwig sets a fine zippy pace, oscillating between laugh-out-loud bits and brutal truths.

Overall, Barbie is a welcome and refreshing change of pace from the barrage of noisy summer blockbusters that feature all action and little heart. Margot Robbie’s performance, as well as Ryan Gosling’s elevate the film from schlocky to endearing, creating characters that are memorable with one foot in the absurdity of the story with the other foot firmly planted in the reality of today’s issues. Gerwig’s clear direction in the balancing act of touching on relevant social issues while keeping the tone comedic keeps the story from being too saccharine or too nonsensical. A necessary movie for its time, with a message that hopefully will leave viewers with some self-reflecting, the film is one of the year’s best. Barbie is currently in theaters.

Review by Darryl Mansel