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Barbie promotional poster.
Greta Gerwig’s movie of the summer, Barbie, hit theaters this week in an explosion of pink, sparkles, and unexpected profundity.
I walked into Bow Tie Cinemas at 86 Temple St. at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, proudly sporting the only pink top I own, and I thought I was ready for anything. Turns out, I wasn’t ready for Barbie.
Margot Robbie stars as the eponymous Barbie, or “Stereotypical Barbie,” a blonde bombshell who quite literally walks on water. She lives in Barbieland, a Mattel dreamscape straight out of a Wes Anderson production if he had chosen to celebrate silicon toys instead of dollhouse storybooks. “Think of it as a town in Sweden,” says Will Farrell, playing a slickly bumbling Mattel executive. But all utopias have their flaws and toys, however shiny, can tarnish without care. Barbie’s flaxen hair might always lie without a strand out of place, but she still proves susceptible to a very human existential crisis. To re-perfect her perceived imperfections, she must travel to the real world, with sorta-boyfriend-slash-sidekick Ken (the masterfully brainless Ryan Gosling) riding shotgun. As a figure of speech, that is; Barbie doesn’t let him get quite that close.
Their entrance to the real world resembles Dorothy’s descent into the Land of Oz played in reverse: all that candy-colored scenery fading to a sea of grays and browns. Amidst the muck and misogyny of modern-day Los Angeles, Barbie meets and befriends the mother-daughter duo Gloria and Sasha (America Ferrera and Ariana Greenblatt). Gloria is an overworked and underappreciated mother and employee of Mattel, and her sullen daughter Sasha displays the firm disillusionment of so-called “screenagers” with poise and wit. Gerwig treats Sasha with neither disdain nor condescension, giving voice to her tirades on sexism and inequality because the thing is, she’s not wrong. As Barbie is about to discover, the real world is far from a fuschia paradise.
Gerwig and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto blend homages to famous cinema — the film opens with a clever tribute to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and midway through, Ken launches into a musical interlude that resembles a Gene Kelly movie remixed as an 80s pop ballad — with decidedly relevant material. The film combines the resources and production values of a big budget franchise with the heart of indie cinema. At times hilariously funny, with slapstick chase sequences and loaded innuendo that would go right over a child viewer’s head, Barbie also possesses the breadth and tragedy of a Shakespearian drama. Robbie’s wax-faced Miranda finds herself confronted with a brave new world that isn’t as idyllic as it seems. Rather than being enraptured by men, she quickly learns to fear them.
When I was a little girl, I was forbidden from owning Barbie dolls. My parents saw them, not incorrectly, as patriarchal instruments designed to promote an unattainable standard. The ban, of course, proved ineffective, and I spent many long afternoons at my best friend’s house, dressing her Barbies, building them homes from blocks and scraps of fabric, and acting out their dramas. Then something changed: we began to grow up. Suddenly, the doll that seemed to resemble the perfect woman began to feel like a direct attack against our own imperfections. She was everything, and we weren’t. We retaliated against the model of femininity, defacing our dolls with purple markers and kitchen scissors. Once, after many hours of toil, we managed to rip the legs off one of the dolls. Our idols, it seemed, had feet of plastic.
Barbie doesn’t gloss over the issues with the toy. Rather, these flaws — and what they mean for our society — are at the center of this bubblegum adventure. Kate McKinnon is hilarious as “Weird Barbie,” a toy that has been maligned and mutilated by children with the same horrors my friend and I had inflicted on our dolls. For the first time, I felt seen while looking at a Barbie. This was girlhood as I remembered it: wide-eyed and messy, full of self-doubt and immeasurable aspirations.
Messy reality turns out to be a trap-laden labyrinth for the movie to navigate. Barbie is everything, as the marketing campaign for the movie has made sure to remind us. She’s a doctor, a teacher, an ice-skater, and a president, and she looks good while doing it. Nowadays, little girls are told that they can be whatever they want. That’s a good thing, but it also fosters the damaging notion that girls should have to do it all, slide into all the empty holes that need to be filled, no matter how much they must contort themselves to fit. Barbie approaches this conundrum head on. “We have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong,” says Gloria, in a heart-wrenching monologue saved from pat cliche by the delicacy and raw emotion of Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach’s script. Maybe little girls don’t have to be everything. Maybe they just have to be.
However, as much as Barbie seeks to confront capitalism — an eye-pleasingly symmetrical scene at Mattel’s headquarters comments disparagingly on the all-male executive board — it feels impossible to watch the movie without noting that it is a blockbuster set-up manufactured to sell more toys. Mattel’s share values have soared in anticipation of the film; there’s no doubt that the corporation will benefit from having Barbie’s saga told on the big screen. The thought lends sour aftertaste to the salt and butter of the Barbie-branded movie popcorn. This is a story that deserves to be told, yes, but were dolls the only way to tell it?
Still, it’s hard not to be enraptured by the sugary buffet that Gerwig has served up. Every part of the production proves as polished as the silicon skin of a Barbie doll. From the immaculate costumes (designed by Jaccqueline Durran) to the pumping soundtrack (featuring artists like Charlie XCX and Billie Eilish), every aspect of the movie is gloriously and thoughtfully designed and crafted. Robbie shines as Barbie, displaying a lack of subtlety on the surface that gives way to tsunamis of human complexities. “You’re gonna get sad and mushy and complicated,” warns Weird Barbie at the start of the film. What she means is, you’re gonna get human. Rhea Perlman is stellar as Ruth, an older woman who offers Barbie some sage advice — if nothing else, this is a movie that believes in respecting your elders. Gosling’s Ken alternates between a nuisance and a catastrophe, complete with a pathetic sympathy that draws tears to the eyes even as you’re laughing at his antics.
Barbie provides a lesson in self-acceptance wrapped in the glitz and glam of a blockbuster vehicle, and tied with a big pink bow. As I walked out of the theater, I saw a crowd of newcomers in their Barbie-themed attire, lining up to catch the next screening. They might be paying for a corporate craze, but at least it’s one with heart and soul and a genuine smile behind those glossy red lips. Nothing is ever simply one thing, and the Barbie movie is proof of that. “The real world isn’t what I thought it was,” says Barbie, and the audience murmured with agreement. “It never is,” answers Ruth, a twinkle in her eye as bright as the sprawling pink logo. “And isn’t that marvelous?”
