Review: Barbie

[jennaria]

BARBIE (2023, PG-13)
Official description: 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.

Character death: Nope! The filmmakers were absolutely aware that Impressionable Girls were going to be watching this. Hell, even the one big fight near the end turns into a dance-off.

Sex: Nope! See also the trailer ("Can I stay over tonight?" "...and do what?" "I have no idea.") Some cat-calling.

Violence: Cartoonish - Barbie's escape from Mattel and the big Ken Fight that, as previously mentioned, turns into a dance-off. (Which last was a delight.)

Sexual Violence: Minimal to none - implications that it might be possible, but I didn't see any implications that it occurred.

Second-hand embarrassment: Surprisingly minimal, given the 'fish out of water' scenario!

Parent issues: Nope!

So let's get the obvious out of the way: this movie did not change my life or re-invent feminism for me. It absolutely is trying to be equitable, but from the point of view of a white woman. The core conflict is flattened to Men Vs. Women, with no sense that Greta Gerwig's experience isn't universal. Hell, it says something (and not a flattering something) that a Hispanic woman is so focused on a white blonde as her emotional and psychological proxy. It's easy to find bits where the screenwriters just didn't think.

That said...I still enjoyed the movie. Where it works, it very much works. Who are you, if you stop skimming over the surface of things? How do you re-center your life, when you've spent all of it focusing around someone else? Everything's very easily resolved, but this is also BarbieLand, where the whole point is that everything is what it looks like, and it's perfectly reasonable for someone to have a job of 'beach.' Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling stand solid in the emotional heart of things, and America Ferrera gets to be the kick-ass mom in contrast to her more cynical daughter. (Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie is my secret favorite, though.)

On the shallow side of things: so pretty! I mean, my biggest quibble is that I'm supposed to be believe that anyone would look twice as Ryan!Ken when Simu Liu!Ken is right there. It's a comfortable summer movie, so long as you don't think about it too hard.

Comments

[stranger]

This covers a lot of what I thought of the movie. Weird Barbie is the link between Barbieland and RealWorld, pivotal despite not much screen time. I'd say Gloria (America Ferrera) was the anchor in the real world, Barbie's opposite number who has had a real-world imperfect life to contrast with the dollworld picture of ideal-but-not-real.

Overall, the movie centered on real-vs-doll differences -- Barbie as personality vs. Barbie as Mattel's plastic product. Movie Barbie gets to become a Real Woman, but she's now in the imperfect real world like all the rest of us.

[jennaria]

True - and with all the imperfection, Barbie still prefers to be able to make choices that matter. I enjoyed the movie enough that I might get the DVD when it comes out, but on a first viewing, it was mostly fluff.

[rebeccama]

It is amazing how often screenwriters seem to have left their brains at home at some point in a film. I am having flashblacks to Wonder Woman which I enjoyed, but it had zero impact on my life.

[jennaria]

It should be theoretically possible to write something that's fluff without the screenwriters leaving their brains behind, dammit. Oh well.