2023-07-19 17:52:00
(CNN) — “Barbie” has had tremendous momentum, with an inventiveness and energy that the movie may not inevitably be able to keep up with. Amid all the hype that has made its release an increasingly rare occasion to go to the movies, director Greta Gerwig’s film proves to be an admirably ambitious attempt to reflect on Barbie’s place in the 21st century. , less than it might be, but pretty close to what it should be.
Gerwig (who shares the script with his partner, Noah Baumbach) assembles all the right accessories, starting with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, in a film whose colorful Barbie Land is packed with details (most of them pink) that will likely require you to watch the movie a second time.
The closest relative, though, would probably be “The Lego Movie,” which similarly took a familiar toy and built something of an existential crisis around it. Although “Barbie” is a movie regarding live actionhas an intermittent cartoonish quality and some clunky elements (including Will Ferrell’s over-the-top portrayal as CEO of Mattel, a common thread between the two films) that weigh down, or at least dilute, the more inventive.
The slyer moments come at the beginning, with narration by Helen Mirren and a homage to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” But following introducing Barbie Land, occupied by various versions of Barbie and Ken, who live in anatomically emasculated bliss, the film opens when Robbie’s stereotypical Barbie (not to be confused with more specific variations) begins to have strange thoughts, almost they literally shake it to its foundations.
At the same time, Gosling’s Ken is torn between his relevance and being little more than an appendage to Barbie, someone who wouldn’t exist without a ampersand (&), the sign used in English meaning “and”.
Barbie’s awakening prompts a flight into the real world and different epiphanies for both her and Ken regarding their contrast to the idealized, female-centric realm in which they live.
The fewer details the better, but the search for answers leads Barbie to Mattel, where she meets a human employee (America Ferrera) and her teenage daughter (“65’s” Ariana Greenblatt), the latter of whom has outgrown her Barbie phase, which ties in with the film’s overtly feminist message and the desire to situate Barbie in a broader sociological context.
Simu Liu, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, in “Barbie.” Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
The juxtaposition of these more thoughtful elements with the vertigo elsewhere, alternating between the serious and the silly, the arty and the commercial, doesn’t always fit or come off as fresh as it might.
On the other hand, “Toy Story’s” spin on Barbie and Ken set the bar high when it came to satire of the popular doll, and credit to Gerwig (Oscar nominee for her debut, “Lady Bird”) credit for taking something that might easily have been two-dimensional and striving to make it mean something, beyond the musical numbers and social media comments regarding how Gosling got those abs.
The overall cast is also impressive, though relatively few of the Barbies and Kens get much to do, with Simu Liu (of Marvel’s “Shang-Chi”) being one of the more notable exceptions as something of a rival to Ken.
On the plus side, Gerwig and Baumbach pepper the script with clever pop culture references (including one regarding the “Justice League” and its fans), and the movie is briskly under two hours long, already a plus with the latter “Mission: Impossible” and “Oppenheimer”, which last 163 and 180 minutes, respectively.
The political undertone of “Barbie” will no doubt spark debates, in part, frankly, as another avenue for the media to take advantage of the abundant media heat that surrounds her. That being said, it is likely that a large part of the public would be inclined to support a film (and thus accentuate the positive) that many were eager to see.
The fact that the campaign marketing of “Barbie” organically taking on a life of its own is a sign of the times, where anything worthwhile often seems overblown. Still, beneath all that hype lurks an enjoyable movie, especially for those receptive to unwrapping the tightly packaged real-world themes while watching “Barbie” strut her stuff.
“Barbie” opens on July 21 in US theaters. It is rated PG-13. (The film is from Warner Bros., which, like CNN, is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.)
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