Movie Review: BARBIE

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: July 21st, 2023 / 01:30 AM

BARBIE movie poster | ©2023 Warner Bros.

Rating: PG-13
Stars: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Ariana Greenblatt, America Ferrara, Kate McKinnon, Simu Liu, Michael Cera, Issa Rae, Will Ferrell, Helen Mirren (voice)
Writers: Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach
Director: Greta Gerwig
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Release Date: July 21, 2023

BARBIE is weird, in a mostly good way. It is pleasingly clever, wonderfully acted, and has perfect production design (by Sarah Greenwood) and even more remarkable costume design (by Jacqueline Durran).

BARBIE’s script, by director Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach, is also loaded with ideas that turn over and over and over. There’s comedy, there’s parody, there’s self-satire, there’s overt meta commentary (at one point, the narration mentions a cast member by name), there’s tart observation of the real world, there’s illustration of the sometimes-vast gap between what a creator imagines and how the creation actually lands with others.

In other words, by the time the film is over, we’re not quite sure if the film is really saying what it seems to be saying, or if we’ve gotten stuck one step back in comprehending it. It’s not a flaw, per se, but the ambiguity does leech a bit of fun from the ultimate effect.

A brief prologue humorously lays out the history of dolls before Barbie, and then how Barbie revolutionized doll-play for little girls.

In Barbie Land, Barbie can be, and is, everything. There’s Dr. Barbie, Lawyer Barbie, Construction Worker Barbie, President Barbie, each with her own look and her own Barbie Dream House.

Margot Robbie plays Stereotypical Barbie. She is great friends with all the other Barbies (played by a multitude of women who are similar in age but differ in race and body type). Stereotypical Barbie is absently nice to her Ken (Ryan Gosling), but oblivious to the fact that he pines after her to the exclusion of doing anything else.

Stereotypical Barbie revels in every day as the Best Day Ever. Until one day, she starts experiencing unusual thoughts, followed by some other unprecedented phenomena.

Therefore, Barbie must go to the Real World in order to solve a certain problem there if she is ever to return to her previously joyful existence.

This is the set-up. The plot rolls out from here in ways that will be broadly familiar to anybody who has seen or read a quest story before. The glory is in the details, with songs, some original and some inspired classic hits, dances, and jokes both verbal and visual.

Director Gerwig and her design team have accomplished the glorious feat of giving Barbie Land the look of something entirely made by Mattel, so that things we’ve seen, like Barbie Dream Houses and those pink cars, fit seamlessly with their cityscape and landscape.

Robbie splendidly convinces us of her Barbie’s guileless innocence and radiant goodwill, and then of the gnawing self-doubt when she starts intersection with the real world. Gosling exquisitely channels his (or at least some boy’s) inner thirteen-year-old, with all the undisguisable yearning, jealousy, and posturing that can be seen at that age. America Ferrara plays the voice-of-reason character with heart and charm. Kate McKinnon, Simu Liu, and Issa Rae play several of Barbie Land’s prominent residents with high energy and full commitment to BARBIE’s idiosyncratic tone. Helen Mirren is the expertly dry narrator.

BARBIE is mostly brisk, eye-catching, and entertaining, made with imagination and affection. Spirited discussions of what the ultimate messages are shall doubtless keep the Interwebs lit up for the near future.

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