Barbie Movie Review: Very Pretty But Not Very Deep – TIME

The fallacy of Barbie the doll is that she’s speculated to be each the lady you need to be and your good friend, a molded chunk of plastic—in a brocade night gown, or a health care provider’s outfit, and even Jane Goodall’s hyper-practical safari go well with—which can also be speculated to encourage affection. However whenever you’re a toddler, your future self isn’t a good friend—she’s too amorphous for that, and a bit of too scary. And you will have affection, or any variety of conflicted emotions, in your Barbie, however the fact is that she’s all the time residing within the second, her second, whilst you’re attempting to dream your personal future into being. Her zig-zagging alerts aren’t an issue—they’re the entire level. She’s all the time a bit of forward of you, which is why some love her, others hate her, and lots of, many fall someplace within the huge and sophisticated in-between.

With Barbie the film—starring Margot Robbie, additionally a producer on the movie—director Greta Gerwig strives to mine the complexity of Barbie the doll, whereas additionally preserving every little thing intelligent and enjoyable, with a hot-pink exclamation level added the place mandatory. There are inside jokes, riffs on Gene Kelly-style choreography, and lots of, many one-line zingers or prolonged soliloquies about trendy womanhood—observations about all that’s anticipated of us, how exhausting all of it is, how unattainable it’s to ever measure up. Gerwig has achieved quite a lot of advance press concerning the film, assuring us that despite the fact that it’s a few plastic toy, it’s nonetheless full of numerous concepts and thought and actual emotions. (She and Noah Baumbach co-wrote the script.) For months now there was a great deal of on-line chatter about how “subversive” the film is—the way it loves Barbie but in addition mocks her barely, and the way it makes enjoyable of Mattel executives despite the fact that their real-life counterparts are each bankrolling the entire enterprise and hoping to make an enormous revenue off it. The narrative is that Gerwig has someway pulled off a coup, by taking Mattel’s cash however utilizing it to create actual artwork, or no less than simply very good leisure.

It’s true that Barbie does most of the issues we’ve been promised: there’s a lot mocking and loving of Barbie, and loads of skewering of the fits. However none of these issues make it subversive. As an alternative, it’s a film that’s enormously happy with itself, one which has reduce a giant slice of completely molded plastic cake and eaten it—or pretend-eaten it—too. The issues which are good about Barbie—Robbie’s buoyant, charming efficiency and Ryan Gosling’s go-for-broke flip as perennial boyfriend Ken, in addition to the attractive, creative manufacturing design—find yourself being steamrollered by all of the issues this film is attempting so laborious to be. Its playfulness is the arch variety. Barbie by no means lets us overlook how intelligent it’s being, each exhausting minute.

That’s a disgrace, as a result of the primary half-hour or so is dazzling and sometimes genuinely humorous, a imaginative and prescient that’s one thing near (although not practically as bizarre as) the dedicated act of creativeness Robert Altman pulled off together with his marvelous Popeye. First, there’s a prologue, narrated by Helen Mirren and riffing on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, explaining the impression of early Barbie on little women in 1959; she was an unique and aspirational substitute for his or her boring previous child dolls, whose job was to coach them for motherhood—Gerwig reveals these little women on a rocky seashore, dashing their child dolls to bits after they’ve seen the curvy miracle that’s Barbie. Then Gerwig, manufacturing designer Sarah Greenwood, and costume designer Jacqueline Durran launch us proper into Barbieland, with Robbie’s approachably glam Barbie strolling us by. That is an idyllic neighborhood the place all of the Dream Homes are open, not solely as a result of its denizens haven’t any disgrace and nothing to cover, however as a result of houses with out partitions imply they’ll greet each other every day with the dawn. “Good day, Barbie!” they name out cheerfully. Everybody in Barbieland—besides the ill-fated pregnant Midge, primarily based on considered one of Mattel’s many discontinued experiments in toy advertising—is called Barbie, and everybody has a significant job. There are astronaut Barbies and airline pilot Barbies, in addition to an all-Barbie Supreme Courtroom. Rubbish-collector Barbies, in matching pink jumpsuits, bustle cheerfully alongside this hamlet’s perpetually pristine curbs. This array of Barbies is performed by a choice of actors together with Hari Nef, Dua Lipa, Alexandra Shipp, and Emma Mackey. The president can also be Barbie—she’s performed by Issa Rae. (In one of many early part’s nice sight gags, she brushes her lengthy, silky tresses with an overscale oval brush.)

Barbieland is a world the place all of the Barbies love and assist each other, like a playtime model of the old school ladies’s faculty, the place the scholars thrive as a result of there aren’t any males to derail their shallowness. Robbie’s Barbie—she is understood, as a method of differentiating herself from the others, as Stereotypical Barbie, as a result of she is white and has the peerlessly sculpted proportions and sunny smile of the Barbie many people grew up with—is the middle of all of it. She awakens every morning and throws off her sparkly pink coverlet, her hair a swirl of completely curled Saran. She chooses an outfit (with meticulously coordinated equipment) from her enviable wardrobe. Her breakfast is a molded waffle that pops from the toaster unbidden; when she “drinks” from a cup of milk, it’s solely pretend-drinking, as a result of the place is that liquid going to go? This turns into a recurring gag within the film, sporting itself out slowly, however it’s pleasant at first, significantly as a result of Robbie is so sport for all of it. Her eyes sparkle in that vaguely crazed Barbie-like method; her smile has a painted-on high quality, however there’s heat there, too. She steps into this function as evenly as if it had been a chevron-striped one piece tailor-made exactly to her skills.

Barbie additionally has a boyfriend, one Ken of many Kens. The Kens are performed by actors together with Kingsley Ben-Adir and Simu Liu. However Gosling’s Ken is the very best of them, stalwart, in a considerably neutered method, together with his shaggy blond hair, spray-tan naked chest, and vaguely pink lips. The Kens haven’t any actual job, apart from one often known as “Seashore,” which includes, as you would possibly guess, going to the seashore. The Kens are usually not wished on the Barbies’ ubiquitous dance events—the Barbies usually choose the corporate of themselves. And that’s why the Kens’ existence revolves across the Barbies. As Mirren the narrator tells us, Barbie all the time has a fantastic day. “However Ken has a fantastic day provided that Barbie seems at him.” And the second Robbie does, Gosling’s face turns into the visible equal of a dream Christmas morning, alight with pleasure and marvel.

You couldn’t, after all, have an entire film set on this extremely synthetic world. It’s good to have a plot, and a few rigidity. And it’s when Gerwig airlifts us out of Barbieland and plunks us down in the actual world that the film’s issues start. Barbie awakens one morning realizing that all of a sudden, nothing is correct. Her hair is messy on the pillow; her waffle is shriveled and burnt. She has begun to have unbidden ideas about loss of life. Worst of all, her completely arched ft have gone flat. (The opposite Barbies retch in horror on the sight.) For recommendation, she visits the native sensible lady, often known as Bizarre Barbie (Kate McKinnon), the Barbie who’s been “performed with too laborious,” as evidenced by the telltale scribbles on her face. Bizarre Barbie tells Robbie’s confused and forlorn Barbie that her Barbieland troubles are linked to one thing that’s happening on the market within the Actual World, a degree of stress that seems to contain a Barbie-loving mother, Gloria (America Ferrera), and her preteen daughter, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), who’re rising aside. Barbie makes the journey to the Actual World, reluctantly permitting Ken to accompany her. There, he’s wowed to be taught that males make all the cash and principally rule the land. Whereas Barbie turns into increasingly concerned within the complexity of human issues, Ken educates himself on the wonders of the patriarchy and brings his newfound concepts again to empower the Kens, who threaten to take over the previous utopia often known as Barbieland.

By this level, Barbie has begun to do much more telling and so much much less exhibiting; its themes are introduced like flat-lays of Barbie outfits, delivered in traces of dialogue which are speculated to be profound however come off as lifeless. There are nonetheless some humorous gags—a line concerning the Kens attempting to win over the Barbies by enjoying their guitars “at” them made me snort. However the good jokes are drowned out by the various self-aware ones, like the best way the Mattel executives, all males (the top boob is Will Ferrell), sit round a convention desk and strategize methods to earn more money off promoting their concept of “feminine company.”

The query we’re speculated to ask, as our jaws hold open, is “How did the Mattel pooh-bahs let these jokes by?” However these real-life execs, counting their doubloons upfront, know that exhibiting what good sports activities they’re will assist somewhat than hinder them. They’re on crew Barbie, in any case! They usually have already got an extended record of toy-and-movie tie-ins on the drafting board.

In the meantime, we’re left with Barbie the film, a mosaic of many shiny bits of cleverness with not that a lot to say. Within the pre-release interviews they’ve given, Gerwig and Robbie have insisted their film is wise about Barbie and what she means to ladies, whilst Mattel executives have mentioned they don’t see the movie as being significantly feminist. And all events have insisted that Barbie is for everybody.

Barbie most likely is a feminist film, however solely in probably the most scattershot method. The plot hinges on Barbie leaving her faux world behind and, like Pinocchio and the Velveteen Rabbit earlier than her, changing into “actual.” One way or the other that is an enchancment on her previous existence, however how can we make sure? The film’s capstone is a montage of vintagey-looking dwelling films (Gerwig culled this footage from Barbie’s solid and crew), a blur of joyful childhood moments and oldsters exhibiting heat and love. Is that this the soon-to-be-real Barbie’s future, or are these the doll-Barbie’s recollections? It’s unattainable to inform. By this level, we’re speculated to be suitably immersed within the tub of heat, girls-can-do-anything fuzzies the film is providing us. These daring, bored little women we noticed on the very starting of the movie, dashing their child dolls towards the rocks, are nowhere in sight. On this Barbieland, their unruly wishes at the moment are simply an inconvenience.