Pastel-Plastered ‘BARBIE’ A Hilarious and Incisive Indictment of Modernity, Gender Roles

When Mattel recently announced that they would be launching their own extended cinematic universe (the Mattel Cinematic Universe, or MCU2), the internet groaned in exhausted unison. After all, what could be more unappealing in our era of modern moviemaking than yet another corporate attempt to coalesce blatant brand synergy and Hollywood’s necrotic trend of interconnectiveness, all to satisfy a company’s stakeholders and their own bottom line? From my very anecdotal research, this is simply not a thing that the movie-going public is clambering for. No one is demanding a theatrical showcase where Hot Wheels, Sock ‘Em Robots, and Barbie team up in some kind of Avengers-style plot to take down the dastardly Hungry Hungry Hippos. And yet, Mattel is currently in some stage of development on a vast number of feature films based on just that with Hot Wheels, Magic 8 Ball, He-Man, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, Polly Pocket, View-Master, American Girl, and the card game Uno all in some form of gestational pre-production. Theirs is a gloomy future that presupposes that Hollywood hits come purely from brand recognition – a future that forecasts the further sidelining of anything truly original, championing nostalgia and brand dominance over the creation of the new.

The fact of the matter is Mattel does seem to have a hit on their hands with Barbie. The collaboration between Mattel and Warner Bros Discovery is already tracking for a massive $80-million domestic opening off of a $145-million budget, positioning it as 2023’s potential summer savior and a harbinger of hope for the too-often flailing industry. Which will only light a fire under the bean counters at Mattel to further exploit their existing IP for the cinema. And here’s the crazy wrinkle in all of this: Barbie is actually, legitimately great. It’s inventive and incisive, bold and colorful, filled with heart and humor, and fastened to a beatific ensemble of A-list talent. Working off a script from Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach and directed with vivacious panache by Gerwig, Barbie is everything that the promise of a Mattel Cinematic Universe is not: fresh and full of life and promise for the art of cinema. In so many ways, it’s the antithesis of corporate drudgery. And yet, one cannot ignore the fact that Barbie is a launching point of sorts for an entire universe of toy/movie adaptations, even if the movie itself is openly antagonistic to many of these selfsame ideas.

Barbie begins with Gerwig acknowledging her directorial forebears with a none-too-subtle tip of the hat to 2001: Space Odyssey. A booming, winking voice-over from Helen Mirren sets the tone for a world that is both whimsical and satirical, self-aware and referential, with a healthy dose of humor. The introduction of barbies in 1959 changed the landscape of playthings, ushering in a time where women could be both fashionable and freethinkers. They were doctors, lawyers, Pulitzer Prize writers, and politicians, garbed in haute couture. And so too were their counterparts on Planet Earth. Or so the resident of Barbieland believe. There, society is a matriarchal utopia where women have the upper hand in all facets of society, occupying positions from construction workers all the way up to the Presidency and Supreme Court, where every day ends in a Girl’s Night and the men are but secondary playthings.

Barbie (Margot Robbie) wakes each morning and waves to her neighboring Barbies (Issa Rae, Sharon Rooney, Ana Cruz Kayne, Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, Nicola Coughlan, Dua Lipa, Alexandra Shipp, and Ritu Arya) in their adjourning dream houses. She drinks imagery milk, floats out of her bedroom, and brushes her hair with a much-too large comb. Collectively, the Barbies make their way to the beach to flirt with their Kens (Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, John Cena, Scott Evans, and Ncuti Gatwa) before a night of dancing and fun. Only to do it all over again the next day. Existence is play, partying, perfection.

Life is turned upside down for Robbie’s Barbie when thoughts of death and cellulite start creeping into her otherwise dreamy existence. Her idyllic world shattered when she starts questioning mortality and body image, experiences foreign to her plastic reality. She’s prompted to portal hop to the Real World to confront and comfort her human owner to make everything right again. When she arrives in our reality, Barbie discovers that the feminist utopia she’s left behind stands in stark contract to the human world and the reality of gender roles in society. She feels the weight of pressing eyes, the inherent discomfort of the male gaze, and cannot find the empowered woman that populate Barbieland. Alongside her, Ken discovers the joys of the patriarchy and is beyond thrilled to find a world where men rule by virtue of their masculinity.

Despite some sagging pacing issues in the middle parts, Gerwig finds endless ways to play with these bigger ideas of contradictions within modern masculinity and femininity, making for a subversive existential meditation on the ideal of feminism within a “progressive society”. Individual scenes range from unhinged bombast to somber reflection to hysterical musical numbers, and though not all work equally well, they all come together to actually say something of substance. Gerwig’s Barbieworld waxes about what it means to be a woman and the unique hardships that a woman faces without being didactic or preening. Instead, her vision is poignant, deeply funny, sometimes moving, and eternally entertaining. What could have been subtle subtext in the hands of a less bold filmmaker is instead purely textual, making for a wholly singular vision that may rub some mommy-daughter combos in the audience the wrong way. But all substantive things pose exactly that threat and Barbie is a thing of actual substance.

Margot Robbie is reliably superb but a melancholic-turned-machomiso Ryan Gosling steals the show, eliciting frequency laughs. The production elements are inventive and endlessly fun with Rodrigo Prieto’s pastel-colored cinematography giving Barbie a wholly unique look, Jacquline Durran’s costumes providing the characters flair and personality while also calling back some of the toy’s more checkered choices, and Sarah Greenwood’s production design perfectly zaps Barbie’s toy world into something tangible that’s laced at all turns with underlying humor. There’s not a single overlooked element here, everything is intentional, thought-through, considered. Gerwig took what could have been a nihilistic exercise in corporate IP excavation and made art. Give her all the playthings.

CONCLUSION: Barbie is a one-of-a-kind hit that bombastically celebrates uniqueness and creativity, with writer-director Greta Gerwig once again proving herself as a top talent with endless stores of filmmaking ingenuity. It’s one of the year’s bests and Robbie and Gosling are simply perfect.