Summertime Saturdays with no particular agenda in mind can be at the best of times a blessing from on High - household chores are completed on time, clerical tasks caught up, and every workout session has been thoroughly smashed, leaving one to do nothing but enjoy the spoils of their free time. Though, at the worst of times, they can be exactly what every ten year old child and their parents dread - a prolonged period of swelter and unrest, where the thought of peeling yourself off the couch to undertake ANY task at all - no matter how interesting or entertaining - is an unbearable, sisyphean effort..
So it was that we found ourselves last weekend, toiling about our home - all of us plodding through our own projects, each with a lingering notion that we needed just a little bit more out of a dwindling Saturday afternoon. It’s no secret that I was itching to see Barbie, so I was relieved when my wife suggested that I should take the kiddo to see it. After all, we hadn’t had a proper Daddy-Daughter Day (celebratory days with just my child and me, of which I’m infinitely and profoundly fond) in a handful of weeks, and it would do us good to get out of the house.
“Yes,” my wife says. “Ya’ll have a Daddy-Daughter Day at the movies while I get some writing done.”
The kiddo and I put on our brightest pink attire - a neon tee for me, and a bubble-gum neck bandana for her, and we’re ready to head out the door! I gave myself the last official patdown for my keys and wallet, and my wife adds: “...and maybe your next article can be about Barbie.”
Fuck!
All of the sudden I was in a panic, and all thoughts of creative writing were in the red. “No, my love, my next piece is supposed to be about Secret Invasion, the latest addition to Marvel’s just- a-little-more-than-tangentially-related-to-the-MCU-continuity television show on Disney Plus! How could I…?”
There were so many reasons why I wanted to see Barbie, my desire enflamed to atomic levels when Barbenheimer became a thing (respectfully, a five hour stint at the cinema with a ten year old is an incredible ask no matter how cool she is); however, there was precious little in me that held any want to actually write about Barbie this Summer. After all - the film doesn’t fit into the Marvel Comics/MCU/Star Wars theme I’d created for myself, and what could I - a man - have to add about a movie that for all intents and purposes doesn’t include me in its demographic? Something about that thought niggled at the back of my mind, though, so I was quick to suppress it with a new idea, one which my daughter seemed to share, also. “Well,” she said, as we loaded into the car, “at the very least I expect to be entertained.”
…and entertained we were! Director Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is a flick that is nothing like I thought it would be, and delivered more than I had hoped it could. As a film, the story is simple but sincere: Our main character Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) awakens one day to find that all is not right with her perfectly pastel and plastic matriarchal world, as she experiences intrusive thoughts of death that lead to cold showers, flat feet (the horror!), expired milk and burnt toast. After a templated meeting with the reclusive and wizened Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon, legendary SNL alum and stellar comedian) our MC Barbie is offered a choice straight out of the The Matrix: blue pill pumps that would allow her to stay in her own reality and live as nothing was amiss, or red pill Birkenstocks that would grant her passage into the real world to pursue the source of her existential misery.
With some coercion, MC Barbie chooses the sandal and heads into our reality, but not without Ken (Ryan Gosling), whose relegation to living a life of only Beach without Barbie inspires him to stowaway on MC Barbie’s journey of self discovery. Smoothly plotted between nostalgia riffing and stranger in a strange land chuckles, the movie follows MC Barbie as she’s tasked with finding her human analog to right the wrongs developing in Barbieland, all while Ken finds a newfound respect for earthly patriarchy and attempts to subjugate Barbieland with what he perceives to be validating ideals.
Gerwig’s film is absolutely as entertaining as my daughter and I hoped it would be, but layered betwixt the gloss and the gut laughs are affecting levels of real talk. By contrasting MC Barbie’s realization that the utopian society of Barbieland is not mirrored in the real world - and that being a woman is essentially an exercise in futility - alongside Ken’s patriarchal coup, the film does well to demonstrate how the plastic rigidity of our institutions holds in place the organic notion of personal freedom and self-worth, as well as the importance of mutual respect for those things in one another. Case in point: When Ken finds out that the patriarchy isn’t actually about horses, he genuinely doesn’t have any interest in supporting it. And MC Barbie, who’s so desperate to find an ending for her own story, comes to see despite the final curtain call that all humans will experience, the meaning of our lives is often the subject of our own creation. The plot was linear and conveyed by number,but it did absolutely nothing to diminish the effectiveness of the story-telling. In fact, it enhanced the piquancy of measured nostalgia and good faith efforts to demonstrate the perils of inequality, and was both pleasurable and satiating - which is a tough sell, considering the saccharine nature of the subject matter.
Barbie held a sorcerous sway over my attention, and I was affected to realize the emotional impact it was making. After all, with a tagline like “If you love Barbie, this film is for you - if you hate Barbie, this film is for you,” I wondered if I would exit the cinema feeling anything more than placated; however, it’s the savvy storyteller that will coax the investment out of us - the concern for the characters and their trials - and Greta Gerwig’s skill in this is subtle but immense. No scene in Barbie impacted me than a shared moment on a park bench between a displaced but no less enchanted MC Barbie and an aged Angelino woman (very intentionally portrayed by Oscar-winning costume designer Ann Roth) in which Barbie, taking in the breeze and balm of the Venice Beach park, looks over to Roth, whose silver hair is swept back from her face, her laugh lines and age spots apparent to the world. You can see Barbie drinking her in, as both part of the sublime natural order and wholly independent of it. “You’re beautiful,” Barbie says to her. “I know it,” the woman replies, her affirmation cushioned by a breath of laughter.
In what was the first of similar scenes throughout the picture, I cried. I wept to have beheld such a tender moment, full of wisdom and truth, and it seemed to me that the whole of that scene encapsulated my understanding of our time here on this planet, and the preciousness of our finite existence.
Now - having been properly fileted, emotionally - some of my apprehension towards writing anything for Barbie started to become clear to me. There was no concern whatsoever that I wouldn’t have anything to say about the picture - I clearly do. No, it was more the fragile insecurity that nobody could be interested in what I, a (mostly) straight (pretty much) caucasian male would have to offer towards what’s been built up to be a proverbial spanner in the works of this nation’s ever persistent and shambling corpse of a patriarchy. I was fearful to write a review for a film so steeped in feminist ideals because of the idea that people would think poorly of me if there were points that I misunderstood, and that I’d be judged for it. I felt like I would fail even if my intentions were altruistic, and coming from a place that seeks improvement.
After seeing Barbie, I feel like I’ve been empowered to share my feelings, as well as the things about the film that resonated with me as TRUE. I’m glad that I was able to identify with Barbie and Ken, and I think it’s a testament to Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach that they were able to create characters that were as real and relatable. What’s more, the fact that the filmmakers were able to demonstrate how inequality - no matter which side of the fence you’re on - is always equivalent in its ability to distort our perception of how the lines separating us are made up and invisible. Barbie is keen to illustrate that by discovering who we are and what we truly want - and how helping one another to recognize those things in ourselves - we can at last begin to cultivate true equality on this planet upon which all of our time is limited.
I enjoyed my experience watching Barbie, and for me it was just the right amount of member-berries, camp, and good old fashioned fun, with a banging soundtrack to boot. Visually, it was more than adequate - the over-saturated, plastic pastels of Barbieland were a snappy visual choice juxtaposed against the earthy, real world hues of LA. The degree of physical acting in Barbie was impressive as well, as the cast would at times throw themselves wholly into conveying the limitations of semi-rigid limbs and hips that don’t fully flex or extend. Every member of the film’s production team is on point and on their apparent A-game, and I will be absolutely shocked if Barbie isn’t shopped about for a cart-full of awards and accolades next year.
While Barbie does leave us with a sense of finality to MC Barbie’s story, there is still plenty of room left to explore the adventures of Barbieland and all the Barbies and Kens that reside within, and - should that happen - I will be in attendance with pink, glittering bells on.