Barbie

As more and more corporate brands get turned into mainstream movies, I find myself struggling to quiet the internal voice of cynicism and just enjoy the piece of work in isolation from the commercialization of the products on display. I don't think anyone isn't aware that Barbie is a line of dolls for sale and that Mattel is willing to produce a big-budget Barbie movie because it's ultimately in their own best interests. The movie is aware of this as well, repeatedly poking fun at the fact in a playful manner. It goes even further than that, often cheekily zinging Barbie for the missteps and potential harm that Barbie products have caused over the course of Mattel's history. On some level, the movie can be seen as making these jokes because they want you to know that they know but also want you to just ignore all of that and have a good time.

But as you can see from the very high star rating attached to this review, I did have a good time. A great time, in fact. Like "The Lego Movie" (2014) before it, "Barbie" is an absolute laugh riot that transcends any profit-driven goals that inspired its creation by being a genuinely wonderful movie in itself.

Director Greta Gerwig (who also co-wrote the movie with her husband Noah Baumbach) skillfully takes all the things that we as a culture know about Barbie and turns it into a clever, cheerfully winking meta-commentary on the impact that the ubiquitous toys have had on our society, while also using it as an opportunity to approach feminist tenets to a mainstream audience that likely contains many young women. It's a lot to do in two hours, and Gerwig manages to do it all without being overbearing or losing any comedic steam.

Barbie (Margot Robbie) lives each day happily in the matriarchal society that is Barbieland, hanging out by the pool and having lavish parties with coordinated dance numbers. Barbieland is populated by other women who are all also named Barbie, many based on existing versions of the real-life Barbie toy line. The men are all named Ken (except for Allan of course), and the primary Ken that we are all most familiar with (played by Ryan Gosling) pines after Robbie's stereotypical Barbie, even as she doesn't seem to notice him at all. The logistics of a world like this are, of course, patently ridiculous, as characters (and even background music) gleefully remind us throughout. Barbie's world starts to fall apart as she suddenly starts thinking about her own mortality, and is confronted with the horrors of things like flat feet or cellulite. She and Ken have to travel to the real world to find the person who is playing with her (because they are toys after all) and figure out why they are so unhappy, which is therefore affecting Barbie in these uncomfortable ways.

It's a little bit "The Lego Movie", a little bit "Toy Story", but driven with a manic, slapstick energy that packs in so many jokes that it's impossible to catch them all after just one viewing. The giant supporting cast is a source of many of the laughs, including (just to name a few) Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie (aka the Barbie that got played with too much and is ragged and stuck in the splits position), Michael Cera as the delightfully deadpan Allan, Issa Rae as President Barbie, Will Farrell as the unhinged CEO of Mattel, and Helen Mirren as a sassy narrator.

Robbie is wonderful as Barbie, perfectly capturing the facial expressions of a model-perfect facade that starts to crumble under the weight of reality. Even when smiling, she manages to capture a hidden sadness and confusion that makes her relatable to the audience, even though she is playing a classic representation of "perfection". As good as Robbie is, it's Ryan Gosling that steals that show, developing a crazed toxic masculinity (and a love for horses) after he discovers that it's the men who dominate society in the real world. Gosling is given a comedic smorgasbord to work with after he returns to Barbieland and begins to pollute everything with his new viewpoints. Gosling has always been underrated as a comedy actor (see "The Nice Guys" (2016)) and he is clearly having a blast here.

The movie's themes are as timely as ever and provide some genuinely emotional moments, particularly as Robbie's Barbie struggles with the notion of "perfection" that is associated with the image of the toy line and the difficulty balancing everything that society expects women to be. There is a powerful monologue late in the movie that lays out the supremely frustrating and impossibly contradictory expectations of women in modern society, helping Barbie discover what it means to love yourself, imperfections and all. There's been a lot written about certain...audiences taking this movie as anti-men, but I would suspect that most of those people are either deliberately missing the point or are feeling insecure about their role in a very real patriarchy. There are just as many valuable lessons in "Barbie" for men, but unfortunately, the men who likely most need to hear those lessons aren't going to seek this movie out in the first place.

In the end, it's a movie that is not only better than it has any right to be as essentially a commercial for toys, but it's a genuinely touching, thoughtful, and incredibly funny movie in its own right. It's interesting to investigate the movie's use of self-awareness as a way to offset the viewer's cynicism and whether that is the way forward for more of these corporate-brands-as-movies, but Gerwig managed to find a perfect balance with "Barbie". I feel good about proclaiming this as one of the year's best and a movie that I'll be returning to for years to come.