While it does have its moments, Greta Gerwig’s flashy attempt of bringing the Barbie brand to film is nothing more than a clumsy & unfinished satire that uses Barbie more than celebrates the iconic brand.

(SPOILERS BELOW)

Now before I continue, you’ve probably read the title and while you pull out your pitchforks and torches, please hear me out. It’s been only five days since Barbie came out and the movie’s done way better than anyone’s expected, earning $155 million during its opening box office, and gaining admiration from critics and fans. So yes, I believed the hype, especially hearing great things about director Greta Gerwig’s previous works like Lady Bird, and here we are. I went last night, bought a pink slushy at the concessions stand, sat down, and I didn’t like it, but not for the reason that a lot of people expect.

Audiences have been split on the film, with the film either being “a heartfelt story about self-discovery” while many call it “men-hating trash”, and after seeing the movie, I do see causality that an argument could be made for both claims, but i’m not brave enough for politics (high five if anyone gets the reference). Just analyzing it from a production & technical standpoint, this movie ends up as an enigma.

Barbie’s Identity Crisis

Yet it’s funny since lot of people will argue with me, using the age old classic argument of “oh, it wasn’t made for you” and they’re right. But then I ask you dear reader, who is this film made for? The marketing made the film feel like it was for young children & their families expecting a light and heartfelt comedy. Yet the jokes and overall story direction made this feel like it was written for older audiences. So would this movie be more suitable for older crowds, considering the PG-13 rating? Well then why bother to shoehorn in a teachable lesson & add in moments literally made for younger audiences (the whole 2 minute dance scene cliche that was EVERYWHERE in the 2000’s for example). Maybe those who’ve grown up with Barbie will finally get a chance to see their childhood toys on the big screens. Hell, I’d even say that Barbie even fails at that, considering that after the halfway point, the movie changed gears and legitimately had nothing to do with Barbie.

So what did I like about this film? Well, the first half of the film is honestly great. Up until a certain point in the film, the plot was as simple as it gets. Barbie’s feeling sad because her owner is emitting her feelings through her. If she can cheer up her owner, Barbie will be happy again. That’s your plot, and for a Barbie movie, that’s honestly all you got. Production wise, Barbie Land looks amazing, and you could see the dedication & time that went into crafting this pink paradise. The Barbies do act & feel like Barbies, with their movements mirroring the dolls, they don’t really eat & drink anything, almost like you were playing with the toys, and at least during the first half the jokes do click, especially with how insane the setups are.

However, this (in my opinion) is where the film falters. The writers were clearly setting up a sort of culture shock for Barbie (considering how she originally perceived the real world to mirror her own), yet once they find the owner & return to Barbie Land, the film takes a tonal shift that literally felt it was cut from some other project that fell through. I can’t even remember what reason the owner had for being so negative, but no joke, they give her two minutes of unfiltered ranting about society’s expectations on women, and that’s when I realized that the fun & innocent movie that we were watching before had shifted into something more realistic, but bitter, almost like the black and pink yin to balance the pink and white yang.

As an audience viewer, you expected some sort of societal split within the film. With the Kens portraying the patriarchal extreme, while the Barbies portraying the extreme of a matriarchal society, you’d expect them to find cause & flaws within each society, considering what’s been happening in the film so far. Instead, the Barbies start to take back Barbie Land using feminism (the movie’s words, not mine) to break the Barbies from their “hypnotism”. This third act kills the pacing, dragging on every scene for far too long, while constantly beating this super feminist message into the viewer’s mind. And yes, coming from a Greta Gerwig movie, I should’ve expected this, but considering what the movie’s been leading up to this point, pardon me for expecting something different. Even after the Barbies take back Barbie Land from the Kens, the movie still goes on, dropping in its faux-pas message of equality (more on that in a bit). The movie more than is two hours, yet it should’ve been an hour & a half at most, as it just had to say more and more, and it just dragged on.

All in all, the third act ends up clouding up what story Barbie wanted to tell. Is it a film about self discovery & how young girls need to find out who they want to become? Is it a story about how great women are compared to men? Or more importantly, according to the film, does it tell a story about how we should respect everyone, regardless of gender? Well, no it doesn’t.

Plastic Messaging

So what about this equality message that the Barbie movie is seemingly about? Well, the opening showed us Barbie Land, a child’s vision of what a world run by Barbie’s would look like. Barbie Land is set up as a utopia, with the citizens getting along, showing no conflict, and everything being picture perfect. However this is Barbie Land, so the focus is on the Barbies, so anyone else not named Barbie (i.e. the Kens, Weird Barbie, and poor Allen) is not perceived on the same level as the Barbies. I originally thought that would be a conflict that the movie would be setting up, with the Kens eventually overtaking the Barbies, only to realize that the proper solution lies in a united (and fair) society where Kens & Barbies are treated equally. There’s even a line at the end of the movie that supposedly proved my theory correct:

“We make up words like patriarchy to make ourselves more comfortable with how much life just sucks for everyone no matter who you are.”

However, during the credit roll, I looked back at this message and asked myself: “What did this message have to do with the movie?” What really ends up happening is that the Barbies take Barbie Land back from the Kens, with the status quo remaining, but act like the Kens were in the wrong the whole time. However, the main Barbie tells the other Barbies about her feeling about the situation, comparing how she felt to how the Kens were treated before. Everyone does realize that this treatment is wrong, with the President Barbie promising to treat the Kens equality, but only gives them a small role in Barbie World. Even after Barbie apologizes to the Ryan Gosling Ken, and telling him to “find himself”, we never see what happens to Ken & the other Barbies since thats the last time we see them and this “new” Barbie Land throughout the entire film.

Theming in any form of media is great when the audience picks up on it naturally, this is what I was taught in University. You can’t just write a script that openly mentions what ideas you want to pass on to your audience every five minutes, because at that point, it feels amateurish. In Barbie’s case, this felt like a first draft that Greta had written but didn’t have time to revise it due to time restraints, and it hurts the film as a whole. You can do a feminist movie, there’s no problem with that, but you can’t lazily meander through two hours of characters talking about the patriarchy & how Barbie Land is perfect because of it, since you end up feeling like the message blinded you from actually watching & enjoying the movie.

Decent Characters Sold Separately

Looking back on the main Barbie of this film, I felt that she was kinda generic. Her initial reason for finding her owner was so that she could return to her normal life, but during the film she starts to develop into her own character. However, when we get to the climax, she just gives up, wanting everyone else to do the work for her. I can’t even say she really learned anything proper, like yes she apologized to Ken for treating him like shit, but she ends up leaving Barbie Land afterwards to start her own path, which is left vaguely open.

This isn’t to say that it was an awful performance. If anything, the roles were played impeccably by the films leads in Margot Robbie, and especially Ryan Gosling. Robbie’s oblivious nature to what’s happening in the real world sells her “fish out of water” performance for the first half of the film, but I felt that the performance faltered a bit once we reached the whole “save Barbie Land” aspect of the film. But the MVP of this entire film, hands down, is Ryan Gosling. Gosling’s natural charisma is so damn likeable, rather it be portraying an oblivious goofball for the first half of the film, or an absolute douchebag in the second half. His reason for even accepting the “patriarchy” was that he was shown some respect (which was non existent in Barbie Land), and he takes it to a comical extreme, which helps the film as a whole. The theatre I was at was laughing non stop throughout the entire film whenever he did anything, and whoever’s decision it was to give him not one, but two musical numbers deserves a raise. Also the Kens fighting each other was downright hilarious.

However, this brings up a problem since the other characters are nowhere as developed as the lead Barbie and Ken. First up is the mother and daughter (I do not remember their names, and neither did the movie), a.k.a the worst characters of the film. The daughter is pure unlikable, saying that Barbie is the worst thing about society because she’s perfect & that she holds others to an impossible degree. Outside of this one rant in the middle of the movie, she does nothing more than hang around as background filler. Her mother isn’t any better, who is the reason for Barbie’s sadness, but we don’t get a proper reason why. Sure, she gets her two minute rant about society, but I don’t understand how half of what she talks about in the film applies to her, a married woman with a loving husband, and a daughter who treats her like shit. I understand that the message wants to show audiences the struggles of parenthood & raising a child but it felt so last minute & forced. Also I find it funny that the film tries to push a heartfelt message about mothers & daughters, yet the opening of the film shows little girls smashing a bunch of porcelain baby dolls to pieces like savage apes after seeing Barbie, and this is perceived as a good thing.

Next we have Michael Cera’s character of Allan, the most underutilized part of the film with Cera just being a non factor, being disregarded by both the Barbies & the Kens. At the beginning of the film, I thought that Allan would be the one to unite the two and resolve the issue, yet Allan ends up beating up some Kens, and falling into nothing more than another character who helps the Barbies take back Barbie Land and falls back into obscurity. Even the supposed antagonist of the film, the CEO of Mattel (which is funny as it is ironic) ends up feeling empty. Like yes he’s funny, but what does he contribute to this movie other than to fill the runtime and chase Barbie around LA?

Speaking of empty, I really didn’t get much out of Greta Gerwig’s directing. She’s built her craft & recognition these past years working on smaller independent films, so naturally I hoped that some of this would carry over into Barbie, but I just didn’t see it. What’s great about these performances is that you get these actors at their greatest, like Will Ferrell or Margot Robbie. However, it felt like I was watching just another Margot Robbie or Will Ferrell movie. Like what differentiates Will Ferrell’s performance in Barbie than in something like Zoolander or Step Brothers? Even from how Barbie was shot, out of the entire two hour runtime, I maybe could only relay about two minutes worth of interesting shots that surprised me, and they were all in Barbie Land. When the characters were in the real world, it felt like I was watching a bad straight to TV Disney movie.

On my way to the screening, I had a friend ask me about why I wanted to see this movie, even though I didn’t have a reason outside of “I already saw Oppenheimer”. Beyond my curiosity getting the better of me, I told him that I wanted to believe that this was a movie that was smarter than it appeared, that it was a satire & comedy first, while giving its audience a whole hearted message that would stand the test of time, but unfortunately I was wrong. There’s a lot in this movie that works really well, but there’s also plenty that was either bland or baffling. I didn’t like it, nor love it, but I also didn’t hate it because of that first half. Barbie is, simply put, a plastic imitation of a franchise solely based on turning plastic into pure imagination.

5/10

(It doesn’t matter if i’m not the target audience, it doesn’t excuse a film for being flawed.)