Barbie movie review & film summary (2023) – Roger Ebert

“Barbie,” director and co-writer Greta Gerwig’s summer time splash, is a blinding achievement, each technically and in tone. It’s a visible feast that succeeds as each a gleeful escape and a battle cry. So full of impeccable consideration to element is “Barbie” that you simply couldn’t presumably catch all of it in a single sitting; you’d need to commit a complete viewing simply to the equipment, for instance. The costume design (led by two-time Oscar winner Jacqueline Durran) and manufacturing design (led by six-time Oscar nominee Sarah Greenwood) are continually intelligent and colourful, befitting the ever-evolving icon, and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (a three-time Oscar nominee) offers every part a shiny gleam. It’s not simply that Gerwig & Co. have recreated a bunch of Barbies from all through her decades-long historical past, outfitted them with quite a lot of clothes and hairstyles, and positioned them in pristine dream homes. It’s that they’ve introduced these figures to life with infectious vitality and a understanding wink.

“Barbie” will be hysterically humorous, with big laugh-out-loud moments generously scattered all through. They arrive from the insularity of an idyllic, pink-hued realm and the bodily comedy of fish-out-of-water moments and selection popular culture references as the skin world more and more encroaches. However as a result of the advertising marketing campaign has been so intelligent and so ubiquitous, it’s possible you’ll uncover that you simply’ve already seen a good quantity of the film’s impressed moments, such because the “2001: A House Odyssey” homage and Ken’s self-pitying ‘80s energy ballad. Such is the anticipation industrial advanced.

And so that you most likely already know the fundamental plot: Barbie (Margot Robbie), the preferred of all of the Barbies in Barbieland, begins experiencing an existential disaster. She should journey to the human world so as to perceive herself and uncover her true objective. Her kinda-sorta boyfriend, Ken (Ryan Gosling), comes alongside for the journey as a result of his personal existence is dependent upon Barbie acknowledging him. Each uncover harsh truths—and make new mates –alongside the highway to enlightenment. This bleeding of stark actuality into an obsessively engineered fantasy calls to thoughts the revelations of “The Truman Present” and “The LEGO Film,” however by way of a wry prism that’s particularly Gerwig’s.

This can be a film that acknowledges Barbie’s unrealistic bodily proportions—and the sorts of very actual physique points they’ll trigger in younger ladies—whereas additionally celebrating her function as a feminist icon. In spite of everything, there was an astronaut Barbie doll (1965) earlier than there was an precise lady in NASA’s astronaut corps (1978), an achievement “Barbie” commemorates by displaying two suited-up ladies high-fiving one another among the many stars, with Robbie’s Earth-bound Barbie saluting them with a sunny, “Yay, house!” That is additionally a film through which Mattel (the doll’s producer) and Warner Bros. (the movie’s distributor) at the least create the looks that they’re in on the surprisingly pointed jokes at their expense. Mattel headquarters incorporates a spacious, top-floor convention room populated solely by males with a heart-shaped, “Dr. Strangelove”-inspired lamp hovering over the desk, but Will Ferrell’s CEO insists his firm’s “gender-neutral bogs up the wazoo” are proof of variety. It is a neat trick.

Because the movie’s star, Margot Robbie finds simply the fitting steadiness between satire and sincerity. She’s the good casting selection; it’s inconceivable to think about anybody else within the function. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed stunner fully appears to be like the half, in fact, however she additionally radiates the form of unflagging, exaggerated optimism required for this heightened, candy-coated world. Later, as Barbie’s understanding expands, Robbie masterfully handles the extra sophisticated dialogue by Gerwig and her co-writer and frequent collaborator, filmmaker Noah Baumbach. From a blinding smile to a single tear and each emotion in between, Robbie finds the best vitality and tone all through. Her efficiency is a pleasure to behold.

And but, Ryan Gosling is a constant scene-stealer as he revels in Ken’s himbo frailty. He goes from Barbie’s needy beau to a swaggering, macho doofus as he throws himself headlong into how he thinks an actual man ought to behave. (Viewers accustomed to Los Angeles geography will notably get a kick out of the locations that present his inspiration.) Gosling sells his square-jawed character’s earnestness and will get to faucet into his “All New Mickey Mouse Membership” musical theater roots concurrently. He’s a complete hoot.

Inside the movie’s huge ensemble—the place the ladies are all Barbies and the boys are all Kens, with a few exceptions—there are a number of standouts. They embrace a gonzo Kate McKinnon because the so-called “Bizarre Barbie” who locations Robbie’s character on her path; Issa Rae because the no-nonsense President Barbie; Alexandra Shipp as a form and succesful Physician Barbie; Simu Liu because the trash-talking Ken who torments Gosling’s Ken; and America Ferrera in a vital function as a Mattel worker. And we are able to’t overlook Michael Cera because the one Allan, bumbling awkwardly in a sea of hunky Kens—though everybody else forgets Allan.