Review: ‘Barbie’
Anchored by a charming Margot Robbie, an endearing America Ferrera and a phenomenal Ryan Gosling, Greta Gerwig’s hilarious, heartfelt and incredibly moving Barbie is a triumph that is destined to become a future classic.
Much has been made about the Barbie movie since the first iteration of it was announced all the way back in 2016, with Amy Schumer set to star as the titular character. Since then – and many iterations, including one written by Diablo Cody and another starring Anne Hathaway, later – it was announced that Greta Gerwig, who was mostly known for her soulful coming of age drama Lady Bird and was just finishing production on her adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel Little Women, was set to co-write the screenplay alongside Noah Baumbach.
With Mattel attached as producers on the film, people were apprehensive yet cautiously optimistic about what a Barbie movie could entail. Would it be a live action version of one of the many seminal animated Barbie movies? A fun, snappy rom-com a la Legally Blonde? Or something else, maybe even potentially more? It wasn’t until Little Women came out that it had become clearer that it would be the latter. A countless number of casting announcements, viral set pictures and irresistible trailers later, the movie had become nothing short of a phenomenon. And it had yet to even be released. And thus Barbie had impossible expectations to live up to, driven by endless chatter online and an unstoppable hype machine that was driven by one of the best marketing campaigns in recent memory. Thanks to impeccable direction and wonderful performances, however, Barbie is able to successfully meet almost every single one.
Barbie centers on Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), who leads a seemingly perfect life in Barbie Land alongside a number of other Barbies and their male counterparts, known as the Kens. Barbie is always clean, stylish and perfectly poised – she literally floats from her bedroom to her car, where she makes her way to the local beach to spend the day with her boyfriend Ken (Ryan Gosling). One day, however, Barbie finds herself experiencing what is essentially an existential crisis – thoughts of impending death plague her day, her breakfast gets burned and her feet are no longer perfectly arched. As a result, she is expelled from Barbie Land to the real world, where she is tasked with finding her owner, who is also seemingly experiencing an existential crisis and thus is the source of all her problems, in order to make things right.
Starring in the titular role, Margot Robbie turns in a warm, endearing performance as the American icon, turning what may have easily been a one-dimensional character (who is literally known as a stereotype) into a rich, compelling and fully-formed person that audiences will easily be able to connect to. By all intents and purposes, Barbie is essentially a coming of age film – it would not be a stretch to equate Barbie’s character arc in the film to a teenager going through puberty – and Robbie’s Barbie is the audience’s anchor as we navigate both Barbie Land and the real world right alongside her, cycling through feelings of alienation, isolation, heartbreak and betrayal for the very first time. Throughout her decade-long career, Robbie has demonstrated that she is more than capable of bringing some edge and grit to her roles, including Nellie LaRoy in Babylon, Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad and her Oscar-nominated turn as Tonya Harding in I, Tonya. In Barbie, however, she smartly restrains herself in order to deliver a saccharinely sweet, endlessly charming performance that is wholly befitting of the Barbie brand and persona, all while turning in a stunning performance as the titular doll.
Elsewhere, Issa Rae and Kate McKinnon manage to make an impression as different variations of Barbie (President Barbie and Weird Barbie respectively) despite their limited amount of screentime, while Hari Nef, playing Doctor Barbie, steals every scene she’s in with her impeccable delivery and witty one-liners. And then there was Ken. While Ryan Gosling‘s involvement in the film raised some eyebrows at first, he could not have been more perfectly cast as the goofy, dimwitted and childlike Ken. With his pitch-perfect delivery and endless charisma, Gosling practically lights up the screen whenever he appears, all while expertly capturing Ken’s rocky character arc throughout the film. Just as Barbie has been turned into a well-defined, fully-formed character, so has Ken; he’s all at once both charming and pathetic, villainous and naive, hilarious and heartbreaking, and Gosling is able to successfully cycle through all these feelings and emotions without alienating any potential audience members. It is a performance for the ages and one that, if there is any justice in the world, will firmly place him in the awards conversation later this year.
When it comes to the rest of the Kens, however, not many of them are given their moment (or screentime) to shine, sadly, while in the real world, Will Ferrell is one of the film’s sole misfires with a grating, off-putting performance that would feel right at home in an SNL sketch. As the CEO of Mattel who resides in the real world, Ferrell ironically never comes across as a real person, turning in a cartoonish performance that has more in common with the film’s Kens than it does with any actual human being. It’s hard to take him (or his lackies) seriously as a potential threat to Barbie and her friends when he never manages to make an impression throughout the film’s duration. Last but definitely not least is America Ferrera, who is the film’s beating heart and luminous soul, thanks to a genuinely moving performance and a showstopping monologue that had audiences applauding on their feet at the film’s UK premiere. If Barbie is experiencing a puberty of sorts, then Ferrera’s Gloria is making the painful transition to adulthood; the slow, horrifying realization that life may not turn out the way you oh so ambitiously dreamed of and meticulously planned for. The agonizing death of all your hopes and dreams in the face of reality. The gradual waning of optimism as the real world starts to kick in. It’s a subtle, empathetic and emotionally gratifying performance that slowly sneaks up on you as the film progresses, and a wonderful showcase for Ferrera’s incredibly underrated skills as an actress.
But it’s only thanks to Greta Gerwig’s impeccable writing and astonishing direction that her actors are able to shine as bright and as hard as they do. With a countless number of references and callbacks, Gerwig cycles through decades of Barbie history to carefully examine her place as an icon in American history and what her existence has done for women throughout the past few years. Just as she was effortlessly able to turn Louisa May Alcott‘s 1860s classic Little Women into an effervescently modern study of girlhood and the growing pains that come with it through her 2019 adaptation of the novel, Gerwig turns everything we know about Barbie on its head, delivering a searing study of womanhood and a biting critique of patriarchy without coming across as heavy-handed or preachy in the process. While Barbie is undoubtedly a feminist movie that carefully examines what it means to be a woman in this day and age, it also sincerely and empathetically scrutinizes how the patriarchy, and the expectations, restrictions and constrictions that come with it, can in turn also affect men. And thus, Barbie is a film about the human experience in general; the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful. It is a stunning film, towering in scale and poignant in nature.
Just as Lady Bird marked the arrival of a unique, refreshing voice in cinema, and Little Women signalled the birth of an auteur, Barbie capatults Gerwig into the upper echelon of filmmakers working today; a once-in-a-generation talent that is destined to become one of the greatest directors of all time.
Barbie debuts in theaters on July 21, 2023.