Barbie review: A brisk satire that mocks the men’s rights movement

As a child, I was raised in both a Barbie and a feminist family. Along with My Little Pony, Cherry Merry Muffin, and (prized above all) my extensive collection of She-Ra action figures, my mother gave me and my sister Barbie dolls for “imaginative play,” something Mom encouraged just as much as she encouraged us to play video games, for hand-eye coordination and for our potential careers in STEM, naturally. My mother also influenced our TV viewing habits with feminist values in mind. I watched and repeated many shows. She-Ra Princess of PowerOn VHS I barely recognized He-Man. I thought he was as insignificant as Ken. When I got older, and I met other children, I realized that I was living in Opposite Land. He-Man was better known than She Ra by everyone else. Barbie, She-Ra and My Little Pony were all farces. Ken’s world is the one that was created.

The press screening is about to begin BarbieMy toy collection brought me back to my childhood. I drove to the film thinking about my childhood love for Margot Robbie. Birds of PreyThe following are some examples of how to get started: I, Tonya, as well as my admiration for Greta Gerwig’s body of work, from Frances HaThe following are some of the ways to get in touch with us: Little Women. Even knowing this movie would have to wrestle with Mattel’s involvement and control over the massive Barbie brand, I knew director Greta Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach would find their own way to unpack and analyze modern standards of femininity and feminist thought. I figured it’d be a little funny, a little deep, maybe a little too basic, but hopefully smarter than The Lego Movie.

I did not expect this to be a movie about Ken — and more importantly, a movie Ryan Gosling steals with such glorious aplomb that I can’t even be that mad at him for it.

[Ed. note: Minor setup spoilers ahead for Barbie.]

Photo: Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros.

Don’t get me wrong. Margot Robbie is no slouch as what the movie calls “Stereotypical Barbie” — the blond bombshell kids in Mattel focus groups point to when presented with diverse Barbie dolls and asked, “Which one is Barbie?” Stereotypical Barbie starts the movie as a confident woman who knows exactly who she is, and doesn’t ever want anything to change. She lives in Barbieland, a fantasy realm conjured by Mattel that’s powered by the imaginations of kids who play with Barbie dolls. It’s a world ruled by Barbies, and unashamed of traditional feminine tropes. The president is a Barbie (played by Issa Rae, in a pink silk “President” sash). Supreme Court is made up of only Barbie. And every Nobel Prize winner in history is — you guessed it — a Barbie. Every pink-washed DreamHouse mansion in Barbieland is owned by a woman who makes her own money and spends her free time indulging in “girls’ nights” where everybody shares a glorious communal wardrobe.

Stereotypical Barbie does not have a reason to depart this feminine world. She’s forced to trek into the harsh world of Reality only because somewhere, someone is playing with her while experiencing such intense existential angst that their emotions are reaching Barbieland and drilling into Barbie’s psyche. Inadvertently, her real-world owner makes her think of death and develop cellulite in her thighs. She also causes her articulated ankles to experience pain every time she puts her heels on.

But even before the wall between Barbieland and Reality starts breaking down, it’s all too clear that this is Ken’s movie. At the film’s outset, Barbie has it all, and Margot Robbie sells Barbieland’s bland, uncomplicated happiness with a frozen-but-satisfied smile. For Ken, though, it’s never been that simple. Barbie is always happy, but Ken only feels happy when Barbie recognizes him. In a world where every night is girls’ night, Ken can never experience satisfaction.

Ken isn’t just frustrated about competing with all the many other Kens for Barbie’s affection — although that is an issue, with hot, comparatively youthful it boy Simu Liu playing a version of Ken who makes Ryan Gosling’s Ken sweat bullets. Ken is frustrated by the lack of purpose in Barbieland. He wants this to change. Without Barbie, he’s nothing — and most of the time, Ken is without Barbie. He’s an afterthought whose main role in life is holding her purse.

Photo: Atsushi Nishijima/Warner Bros.

Barbie starts off slow, doing the work of establishing the cutesy realm of Barbieland so there’s a clear, dark contrast when the film eventually enters Reality. But even in this opening act, Gosling swipes each scene from the sidelines, his face wracked by the near-constant heartbreak of Barbie’s lack of interest in him. While I was worried, I felt more attracted to Gosling’s arc as a spectator. Does it matter that Ken was the most memorable character in the Barbie film?

You can also read about it here Barbie stays one step ahead of that thought, because it’s all leading up to an expert commentary on how little girls will always realize, sooner or later, that the real world is run by men, and that its Kens have more power than its Barbies. And once Gosling’s Ken makes it to Reality, he realizes this too, and he goes full men’s rights activist, transitioning from Barbie’s placeholder boyfriend into one of the most fascinating antagonists in modern pop cinema.

The film’s comedic yet incisive commentary on toxic masculinity is its strongest throughline, as it infects Gosling’s Ken, and eventually all of the rest of Barbieland’s Kens and Barbies. Whenever the movie is joking about the patriarchy and the very idea of the men’s rights movement, it sings. The movie literally sings with in-jokes and background music, as well as a scene where the Kens bring out their acoustic instruments to play songs for their Barbie girlfriends. Buy Tickets Now! Instead of You can also find out more about the following: her. We all know what we don’t want in a man. Barbie, herself and her meaning, are far harder to explain. What will Barbie look like in 2023?

Margot Robbie’s Barbie asks that question in a lot of different ways, but the answer becomes no clearer once she visits Reality. It’s useful to capitalize Reality when describing BarbieBecause unlike SplashThe following are some examples of how to use EnchantedThe movie isn’t trying to show a version that we can recognize. As depicted by Barbie The reality is just as caricatured as Barbieland. Barbieland and reality are both cartoonish. That works perfectly to illustrate the extreme cartoonishness of men’s rights as interpreted by Ken, but it falls a bit short when it comes to illustrating the complexities of Barbie’s identity as a doll, a global brand, and a social phenomenon, much less a character attempting to understand contemporary American womanhood.

Warner Bros. Pictures

There’s a third rail that Gerwig and Baumbach It is a dangerous thing to even touch BarbieBody image. Barbie designers at Mattel have struggled in this arena, too, as Barbie’s nonstandard but idealized body proportions have remained controversial, even as the company has introduced several variations in recent years. (They include a “curvy” Barbie, a “petite” Barbie, a Barbie with articulated knees who can use a wheelchair, and so on.) Yes, Barbie can have every career imaginable — she can be president, even if real-life women can’t — but can she manage to rise above a size 6?

It is a good idea to get a hold of a local expert. Barbie She can. Margot Robbie definitely doesn’t have the proportions of the original “stereotypical Barbie,” although I’d say she’s close enough. (I don’t care to look up the numerical comparison, because it would only depress me.) But this movie’s full cast of Barbies would absolutely not be able to share their outfits, which the movie never explicitly addresses or resolves. Sharon Rooney of Hulu’s My Mad Fat DiaryBarbie can be any size without ever having to mention it. Hari Nef is the first transgender woman to be signed with IMG Models. She’s also a Barbie. She is a Barbie, just like all other Barbies.

Barbieland is a fantasy of perfect inclusion, yet it’s also a flattened one, because even in Reality, the issues facing non-Barbie-type women never fully surface. Gloria (America Ferrera), an overworked Reality mom working for Mattel who loves Barbie regardless of the baggage she brings, makes a point of addressing the issue. At one point, Gloria runs down the ever-expanding list of double standards modern American women face, such as the pressure to be “thin,” which women must claim is because they want to be “healthy” so they don’t look vain or shallow, even though they’ll really just be judged for not being thin. None of the non-thin Barbies react to this point, because they don’t quite work in a narrative that has to simplify all the social and gender issues it raises, at least if the credits are ever going to roll.

By the same token, the non-white Barbies and Kens argue about “the patriarchy” among themselves upon learning about it, but they don’t ever seem to learn about racial politics, even though Simu Liu’s Ken wouldn’t have existed 13 years ago. (The first-ever Asian Ken doll was, um, “Samurai Ken” in 2010.) And Kate McKinnon, playing a so-called “Weird Barbie” who experienced an extreme haircut and makeover at the hands of an experimental child, never actually answers the question anybody would have upon seeing her gay-ass haircut and knowing the actor’s sexuality. Yet even if no one says it, “Weird Barbie” is clearly “Gay Barbie.”

Warner Bros.

Skipping over all those conversations isn’t an oversight: It’s a series of intentional decisions designed to keep an already overstuffed, heady, and cerebral movie moving along at a sprightly pace. I don’t need the Barbie movie, brought to me with Mattel’s approval, to offer incisive political commentary on every issue of the day. It’s more than enough that it unravels so many of America’s masculine anxieties of the moment, and that it does its job backward and in high heels.

Barbie the doll has to be everything for everyone, and she’s never succeeded. Barbie the movie has been asked to perform the same impossible trick — and just like I still feel a sentimental attachment to Barbie, I feel an overwhelming fondness and admiration for the movie’s daring attempt to make it work. It was only recently that I remembered the Barbieland I experienced as a child. BarbieI remember. This alone would be enough to give the movie a surprising and refreshing spark.

Barbie Opening in theatres July 21,