Well, Barbie is a banger.
I’ve been looking forward to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie for the better part of a year now, and good lord, it really didn’t let me down. After a season of questionable blockbusters, to have something like this come along and just land it’s tone and execution so correct almost feels like a relief – see, cinema still has room for big, silly movies without huge, trudging franchise branding, right?
The movie is almost comically packed with incredible performers, and truthfully, nobody puts in anything less than a perfect performance – Ryan Gosling’s insta-legendary Ken is a stand-out, of course, but Margot Robbie grounds the film and delivers plenty of space for her co-stars to play in the process. America Ferrera is probably my favourite turn here, warm and witty and fundamentally bearing the thematic weight of this story, but Alexandra Shipp, Will Ferrell, and Michael Cera are all standouts too.
Barbie is a joyfully witty film, from Helen Mirren’s meta-narration to the dance numbers to the endless Barbie variations – it never gets too self-aware as to take away from it’s warm earnestness, but Gerwig gives the comedy plenty of space to breathe alongside the more serious stuff. And the serious stuff does work for me; it’s captured in these smaller moments that are played with real sincerity, and it’s a credit to Margot Robbie’s immense skill as an actor that she’s able to breathe life into both sides of this character.
But, that said, I think my favourite thing about Barbie is how it looks. Production designer Sarah Greenwood helped create such a singular and instantly recognizable Barbie world that puts it leagues ahead of the grey drizzle of DC or the CGI’d overwhelm of Marvel; the cheap, cheerful plastic mass-produced Barbie products are elevated into gorgeous set design by way of immaculate attention to detail and a cohesive vision that carries through the entire movie, and I love it. It’s a love letter to Barbie that builds on a legend of pink plastic to create this totally unique and instantly iconic world that I know so many movies are going to be trying to rip off in the near future.
Ah, you may ask, but what of the politics? The feminism of the Barbie movie, which seems to have caused so much consternation across various corners of the internet, I have to admit, I expected it to go harder – as it stands, the movie has a blockbuster-appropriate level of simplicity and wit to it’s pro-woman message, but it’s hardly as though Margot Robbie and America Ferrera were up there reciting the SCUM manifesto in unison, you know?
While it’s politics aren’t hugely radical, I think what has caused so much pushback is how unapologetically from the female perspective Barbie is; from those in-jokes about men explaining movies to us to the discussions of the unwinnable game of womanhood, it is very much by women and for women in terms of it’s point of view, which I genuinely loved. So many movies seem to assume a majority male audience and so deliver a male point of view, and Barbie’s perspective is so refreshing as a result – and, I think, that uniqueness is what’s led people to view it’s politics as more radical than they are.
Barbie is a true delight of a movie, a blockbuster that balances wit, self-referential comedy, and a sincerely warm heart in this candy-coloured dreamhouse of cinema. And, yes, Ken’s song is going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the year, at least.
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via Glamour)
No But Listen 