Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 114 minutes
Release Date: July 21st, 2023 (USA)
Studio: Warner Bros.
Director(s): Greta Gerwig
Writer(s): Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach / Mattel (toy)

Humans have only one ending. Ideas live for ever.

It really is wild that a major Hollywood studio and multi-billion-dollar toy company allowed something like Barbie to be made. The self-awareness and self-parodying on display is of the sort that would normally be quashed via legal jargon in whatever contract director Greta Gerwig had to sign before starting to write the script with Noah Baumbach. If that doesn’t show you the power of sitting at the table, whether it comes to box office take or Oscar nominations, I don’t know what will. Gerwig took her clout and turned it into that rare product-placement tie-in that actually has something valuable to say.

Don’t call the result a message movie, though. It never stands on a soapbox or demeans one side in order to champion another (I’d honestly argue it could have done a lot more to skewer Mattel executives with purpose rather than merely jokes). It simply allows its characters to naturally evolve by way of providing necessary conflict. Because none of these dolls have ever faced that sort of existential crisis before. They’ve all maintained their pristine utopian forms in Barbieland as they were passed from child to child so their innocence could become a personality trait.

So, throwing a curveball like depression or fallibility proves to be a monumental adjustment. You’re going from zero (a record loop of routine complacency) to sixty (questioning the very fabric of your reality) in an instant. No wonder it throws Barbie (Margot Robbie) off enough that her body chemistry shifts. Give a perfect imaginary ideal a whiff of the cesspool that is human biology and everything falls apart. Because it also falls apart that fast for us. One setback can spiral into years of torment. That yo-yo-ing ruins lives because we crave normalcy. To start over? To realize we’ve never actually begun? That’s too daunting to even consider.

What’s ingenious about Gerwig and Baumbach’s story (say what you will about the whole, but you cannot deny the best part of Barbie outside its immaculate production design is its script) is that they kill two birds with one stone via their conceit. Not only is the idea of Barbieland being a literal manifestation of a child’s imagination allow them to dig into a Barbie’s potential to empower (connecting each doll to the many youngsters who have indelible memories of them), but it lets them comment on the ways in which the toy’s reductive nature in a patriarchal, capitalistic world is problematic for those gains too.

Barbie awakens to the fear and anxieties of being a woman in a man’s world just as Ken (Ryan Gosling) opens his eyes to the possibilities of having autonomy after a lifetime of always being relegated as the plus-one. We begin to see that neither end of the spectrum is perfect (although we should all be able to agree that Barbieland is much closer) and that the real lesson is realizing empathy and originality is key. And that it’s not always external forces that delude us into thinking conformity is better. Oftentimes our worst enemy in that regard is ourselves.

Can dolls made real who bring back what they learned to their fictional existence teach that lesson alone? No. They get halfway with some wonderfully witty humor capped off by memorable turns from Michael Cera as Allan and Kate McKinnon as “Weird” Barbie, but we need someone on the other side to complement and bolster that journey. Enter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) and her mother Gloria (America Ferrera)—two women fighting for their place in a world that treats them like second class citizens. Two women who can educate the Barbies about reality and reclaim a bit of magic by remembering what it means to dream.

The result is inspiring. It’s also heartbreaking (yes, Ferrera’s monologue is that good and hopefully turns her into a dark horse Oscar pick). For all the great things Robbie and Gosling are doing on a comedic level of committing to the bit, their brilliance lies in the ability to also bring pathos to a narrative that never shies away from the complicated nature of listening to, understanding, and ultimately accepting another’s lived experience and desires. Because we all deserve to exist as our own person outside the shadows of utility, ownership, or conditions. We all deserve the opportunity to love ourselves and have that be enough.

---

(L-r) RYAN GOSLING as Ken and MARGOT ROBBIE as Barbie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ BARBIE. © 2023 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.