Barbie (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2023) — Review

Barbie, as we all know by now, has grossed a billion. Good news for the 1% of the movie industry, less equivocally good news for everyone else. At risk of joining luminaries like Ben Shapiro and Bill Maher on the thin-lipped, anti-woke hate train, I must add a pessimistic mumble to the torrent of sparkly, pink, fast-fashion rapture that has borne it to box office triumph. If Barbie and its $150 million marketing budget (compared to $145 million production budget) represent the future of movie-making, it also represents a mass-chugging of the pink Kool Aid.

In case you recently emerged from a coma, and consequently missed the deluge of Barbie propaganda over the last few months, the movie is billed as an edgy, empowering, spunky, generally hashtag #Girlboss take on the chunk of blonde-haired plastic that launched a thousand eating disorders. Women’s darling Gerwig and partner Noah Baumbach write and direct; blonde bombshell Margot Robbie stars and produces. An A-list cast features Ryan Gosling’s much-hyped Kenergy, Will Ferrell as the evil Mattel CEO, and everyone from Issa Rae to Dua Lipa as Barbies who fill out the ranks for a pseudo-crusade against corporate patriarchy.

On the surface, Barbie and its commercial success represent a victory for women in the media today; hiring a female producer and director at disproportionate salaries to everyone else replaces male figureheads with women. All Barbie can bring to the table is talk of cellulite, flat feet and middle-class moaning — and did you say a $150 million WB marketing budget? All in the midst of the long-running Writers Guild of America strike which on May 2nd saw 11,500 screenwriters step away from keyboards and join the picket line, soon followed by the SAG/AFTRA actors strike that pulled big name Oppenheimer stars like Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt off the red carpet.

Most film moments that really bring tears of laughter contain an element of surprise or the subversion of authority, stereotypes or idolatry. Barbie, instead, seems to offer women a big slice of perfectly molded, calorie-free plastic cake assuming them to be either too thick or frivolous to recognise the difference. Superficial references to previous movies and film genres can’t compensate for the lack of substance in the film — but maybe $150 million dollars can. The act of consumption — picking up Doctor Barbie, Scientist Barbie etc. — won’t actually get girls into STEM or higher office. It just sells more product for Mattel.

Buy Barbie, buy often.

The bloated two-hour pastiche mixes every cliché in the cinematic plot book, from fish-out of-water, to changing places, road trip movie, Legally Blonde to Goopy Kardashian girlboss, loss of innocence and more; though any attempt to pose 34-year-old Margot Robbie as the young ingénue, naive and inexperienced, is contradicted by all the Barbie boobie jiggling in low cut bustiers. The laughable pseudo-allegory of Barbie’s all too sudden shift from girlhood and adolescence to womanhood falls flat in the lack of character development necessitated by the concept of the film. Barbie is here to take your money and a percentage of the profits.

Ironically, in a movie supposedly about female empowerment, far and away the best part of Barbie is Ken. Purportedly sending up the men’s rights movement — as Ryan Gosling’s useless yet well-meaning accessory imports the patriarchy to Barbie Land — the film ends up amplifying the issue it seeks to address. Gosling is already a poster boy for incels thanks to roles like Drive and Blade Runner: 2049, where he figures as a sensitive loner pining over some foxy yet morally reprehensible broad. His Ken makes countless visual callbacks to his stature as the Ur-Hunk, with tender shots of his baby-blue eyes melting under a shock of bleached-blond hair. Desperate for Barbie to look at him, well-intentioned but oppressed by his lack of purpose other than a job of '“beach”, he emerges as the most endearing, well-developed character in the film.

Stereotypical Barbie is rendered exactly as her name suggests: tall, blond, thin, (presumably) straight, and embodied by Margot Robbie (i.e. the first actor that likely comes to mind when anyone thinks of Barbie). The point is hardly subversive. Nor is Mattel’s expanded range of the doll's shapes, shades, and facial features which only increase its global market share. (In the 1920s and ‘30s, music companies produced “Race Records” jazz, rhythm and blues records, marketed to African American audiences.) Meanwhile, the movie admits that the symbol of Barbie still looming largest is the white, supermodel archetype Margot Robbie. Stereotypical Barbie takes a feeble swipe at superficial white female progressivism, and in particular the #Girlboss era, but ultimately reiterates it. Any viewer who looks at Barbie as a vehicle for meaningful female commentary has probably already drunk too much of the Kool-Aid; even the silliest and less overtly self-referential gags flatter Mattel. And disgraced ex-minister Matt Hancock wants in on the Kenergy.

Forget the wildfires, buy Barbie!