BEFORE: OK, I'm not really looking forward to this one, it's just not my thing. But here's my reasoning for watching it - whatever my impressions are about it, it's STILL a film that was nominated for Best Picture, so it's culturally significant, perhaps, at least to somebody, just not me. There must be SOMETHING there, right? It can't just all be a big goof, right?
Also, like many other films this year, I did work at a guild screening for this film at the theater, back in January, I think. Maybe it was December. Let me check - ah yes, 12/14/23. Greta Gerwig was there to speak after the film, and before the Q&A started I was standing outside in the lobby ready to cue the panelists to enter, so I was right between Greta Gerwig and Kathryn Bigelow, which was not a bad place to be. I wasn't able to watch the film that night, so here I go playing catch-up again.
Also also, I recorded this on the DVR so I would really like to clear it off to make room for more movies that I will probably like more than this. You will also note that I placed about a month's worth of films between "Oppenheimer" and this one, because I think the whole "BarbieHeimer" phenomenon was just completely ridiculous. Many, many times two popular films have been released on the same day and we don't go creating cutesy couple-names for them, besides they appealed to completely different audiences and I didn't feel the need to watch either one right away. I watched "Asteroid City" that week, a film that I enjoyed, possibly more than "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" put together. So there you go, stick to what you know and what you think you might like, but don't shy away from watching a movie just because it's not your thing. I'm willing to play hurt if I have to.
For the linking, there were probably a dozen ways I could have linked to this film, as you'll see below. I could have arrived here from "Babylon", nah, too obvious, or from "American Fiction" but I was doing a whole "Black LIves Matter" thing that week, it wouldn't have worked. "You People", "Quiz Lady", even "Space Oddity" could have linked here, that's how big the "Barbie" cast is. Hell, I could have linked here from "Saltburn" or even "Jerry and Marge Go Large", from just a couple of days ago. But as with "Oppenheimer", I didn't want the linking to be a throwaway, I would prefer that this movie gets me out of a linking jam, that's the best thing to do with big movies with big casts.
So Helen Mirren carries over from "Teaching Mrs. Tingle", I really didn't have too many possible out-ros for that film, so let's assume I'm playing this right, and "Barbie" is absolutely vital here in connecting to Mother's Day in time. And coming out of this film, I probably have just as many possible paths, I could name 10 or 12 movies that could fill tomorrow's slot, but I think I've got the best path to May 12, here are the links: America Ferrera, Dane DeHaan, David Cross, James Belushi, Cybill Shepherd, Pam Grier, Jacki Weaver, Dermot Mulroney, Zachary Gordon and Ty Panitz. I may monkey with the order of films there at the end, because hopefully by then I'll also have the path to Father's Day, and I have to keep multiple options open right now.
THE PLOT: Barbie and Ken are having the time of their lives in the colorful and seemingly perfect world of Barbie Land. However, when they get a chance to go to the real world, they soon discover the joys and perils of living among humans.
AFTER: Yeah, I'm definitely not in the target market for this movie, it's just too dumb across the board. It's a silly story about dolls living in doll-land and then somehow visiting the "real world", so it's almost complete nonsense from start to finish - with one exception, I really dug the "2001" parody that kicked off the film, with little girls playing the cavemen and breaking their old-style toy dolls once they glimpsed the giant monolith that was Barbie-shaped. That was clever, and it proved the point about Barbie being a breakthrough product that was unlike the dolls that had gone before, but to me the movie was all downhill from there. I just dig the "2001" movie, maybe.
Is this a dumb movie that tries to make some smart points about feminism and gender equality, or is this really a smart movie that's acting like a dumb one so that people will watch it and be entertained and then maybe pick up on a couple salient issues that are being referenced? Honestly, I don't know, but I think there was more dumb here than smart, more nutritionally non-recommended cotton candy than preferred meat and vegetables. I mean, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, as they say, but too much sugar will just give you diabetes. This is like 99% sugar that they want you to eat, snort and rub your teeth with after.
Where the hell did this trend start, when every toy has to be a movie now? Was it "The Lego Movie", which begat "The Playmobil Movie"? Or was it the "G.I. Joe" franchise, or was it "Clue" before that? Coming soon, "Monopoly: The Movie" and by god, I wish I were kidding. It was "Toy Story", though, right? With all the classic characters like Mr. Potato Head and the Slinky Dog and the army men as walking, talking characters, that movie hit us all right in the nostalgia nads and I don't think we've all recovered yet. Unfortunately "Barbie" can't seem to decide if the doll itself is a good thing or a bad thing, because the screenwriters wanted to hit us with every piece of information or trivia about the dolls, good and bad. WTF? Sure, it's great that Barbie was created by a woman, who wanted to project the new reality of feminism, women getting jobs as doctors, lawyers, and eventually astronauts - and you have to DREAM all of those things before they can be manifested in the real world, so sure, it's great that little girls got to play with a doll that was something more than a wife and/or mother, so they could see all the possible things they could do as a career and prepare using imagination before they got there.
But there's a dark side to Barbie too, and the movie brings up some of the related issues, God knows why - if this is a giant commercial for the doll, why bring up the unrealistic body dimensions that may have caused women to have unhealthy body expectations for themselves? Why bring up the "misfit toy" versions of Barbie and Ken that missed the mark over the years, like the Barbie with a TV monitor in her back, or "Sugar Daddy Ken"? Why point out all the inconsistencies in Ken and Barbie's backstories, living arrangements, and the fact that Ken doesn't seem to have a job other than "beach"? Why present the measure of success in one's life as owning a Malibu Beach House and a sports car? That lifestyle may not be the best for everyone, after all, and then if those girls grow up and become women who live in a one-bedroom apartment and drive a used car, aren't they going to feel, deep-down, like they failed somehow?
Barbie's life in Barbie Land is close to perfect, every night is "girls night" and she has all her friends like Lawyer Barbie, Journalist Barbie, Writer Barbie, and there's President Barbie and nine Supreme Court Justice Barbies. (This is somehow exactly the world that conservatives think the liberals want, right?). But then suddenly Barbie starts worrying about mortalty, and somehow this gives her cellulite, bad breath and (worst of all?) FLAT FEET, where before her heels never touched the ground and that was perfect since she always wore high heels (Yeah, I'm gonna leave that one alone...). A visit to "Weird Barbie" reveals that someone in the real world must be playing with this Barbie (aka "Stereotypical Barbie") and affecting her in this way, so she must travel to the Real World and find that child, or else the portal won't close and her life is only going to get worse. Weird Barbie should know, because some little girl chopped off her hair, colored her face and made her do splits all the time, and now she's damaged goods. Yeah, the messaging here is really odd, I think.
Barbie tracks down the girl who she thinks is the cause of her troubles, but it's actually that girl's mother, who works for Mattel and has been tinkering with new doll ideas, particularly a Barbie that has insecurities and an existential crisis. These are dangerous concepts to introduce into Fantasy Barbie Land, but even worse comes along when Ken also gets a glimpse of the real Los Angeles, and draws the wrong conclusions about how the world is run by men (and horses) and therefore decides to bring the concept of the patriarchy back with him. By the time that Barbie gets back to Barbie Land, the Kens are in charge and they're about to vote for a new Constitution that would make the change permanent, and all the Beach Houses are now Mojo Dojos and unless the Barbies rally together and find a way to prevent the Kens from voting, their glorious matriarchy will be gone forever.
OK, there's another good germ of an idea here, because the importance of voting is a very good message for the film to have, especially with what's been going on in the U.S. with conservative men finding ways to outlaw abortion, and this was done by stacking the Supreme Court and also Congress, and sure, if this is an important issue then it can be addressed this November, provided enough people who think a certain way about things and how they should be show up at the polls and make their voices heard. But the film undercuts its own message by having the women turn the men against each other, they flirt with all of them and provoke a war between the Kens on the beach, and the men are so distracted they forget to vote that day. Ha ha, very funny, only not at all. The message would have been stronger if the Barbies just voted in greater numbers then the Kens, instead of being just as sneaky as they were and voting without them. It's kind of like how gerrymandering the voting districts to marginalize certain ethnic groups is a very very bad thing to do, unless you're in the party doing the redistricting - then it's perfectly fine, right? Wrong, if it's bad for one party to do it, it should be bad for the other, too.
There are Barbies of all colors, shapes and sizes here, which is also great - it's maybe a bit TOO P.C. though, like if the Barbie doll represents some kind of physical ideal then how do you explain the plus-size Barbies seen here, which I'm pretty sure do not exist in the Mattel line? Don't get me wrong, I don't think skinniness should be mandated or larger women should be made to feel ashamed, but the movie just can't have it both ways. And the one Barbie that we know is being played by a lesbian actress is "Weird Barbie"? That doesn't feel right, are you saying that lesbians are weird, have weird haircuts and wear weird make-up? You have to be careful with the stereotypes here, there's one Barbie played by a trans actress and I'm not really sure about the way she was portrayed either. Baby steps on acceptance, I guess? I wonder how the trans community feels about this, representation is great but it's also got to hit the right tone.
Look, I'm all for women taking over society, I'd welcome it. I'd love to have some pressure to accomplish more things taken off my plate, I'll shop for groceries and make dinner every night, I do all that anyway and work two jobs. My wife makes more money than I do, anyway and she's saving up for retirement while I haven't really cracked that code just yet. I say "Go ahead and take over" only women don't need my permission to do so - but again, I'll be OK with it happening. There's an almost certain chance they'll do a better collective job than the patriarchy has. I know, this isn't really the way society works, because men are not going to surrender power easily, but part of me thinks they should. The question then becomes, should we be working in this direction, or one where gender truly doesn't matter and isn't a concern? Until we have a female President I just don't know if we can get there without pushback from conservatives. The country never got around to making equality the law of the land by passing the Equal Rights Amendment, and it's been like 30 plus years. Why not just make it official instead of trying to figure out if we got there anyway by default?
I guess maybe if you're a teen you could just watch this movie for the story alone and maybe you don't have the mental software to find the logical faults in the arguments about feminism, but if you're adult with a adult brain I would HOPE that people would see the cracks in the story here. Or would adult women just be so nostalgic over seeing the dolls they played with as children coming to life that they wouldn't notice that the story is just a bunch of multi-dimensional nonsense? That's all it was to me - and I don't even have a dog in the gender fight.
But I don't think you can also fight sexism when you portray a battle between the sexes - I see how they flipped the script in a "Planet of the Apes" way, by depicting a world where the women are in charge by default, and then of course there's a conflict among gender lines when the patriarchy gets integrated into that world. Then by depicting all Kens as easily distracted and also prone to war at the drop of a hat, guess what? That constitutes sexism, sorry. And the argument can be made that the matriarchy seen in Barbie Land was JUST as bad as the patriarchy in the real world, just with a different gender in control - so how is that an improvement? This story is just misguided, all the way around.
In the end, Barbie meets the spirit of Ruth Handler, the creator of the doll and co-founder of Mattel, who has been haunting an office on the 10th floor of the Mattel headquarters for decades. Somehow this leads to Barbie and Ken going on a break and trying to figure out how they function as individuals and not as a couple. Sure, fine, but would it be too much trouble to ask the screenwriter to maybe connect a few dots here and there? How does THIS thing lead to THIS thing, and then how does THAT thing cause Barbie to become a real woman in the real world? It just feels like this movie throws a lot of story pieces at the audience, and there's no connective tissue, no through-line, just a bunch of random events that nobody seems to understand, least of all the people and dolls who are living them.
Gloria, that woman who works for Mattel and created the flat-feet and hygiene problems for Barbie in the first place has a daughter, Sasha, and so I'm going to hang on to just that part of the story, the connection between her, who played with Barbie dolls as a child, and her daughter, who's a more modern girl who did NOT play with dolls, or if she did, she's so over them now. That's maybe the difference between the two generations, one grew up in a world that didn't initally have positive female role models in their toys, movies, Saturday morning cartoons, and the younger generation was born into a world that already had these things, so they just got kind of used to them and they don't mean as much? Or something like that? That's the part of the film that has some relevance this month, in my lead-up to Mother's Day. The rest is just a bunch of gender-based combativeness, and much of that seems outdated. We should be PAST all of that by now.
Also starring Margot Robbie (last seen in "Babylon"), Issa Rae (last seen in "American Fiction"), Kate McKinnon (last seen in "The Bubble"), Alexandra Shipp (last seen in "Space Oddity"), Emma Mackey (last seen in "Death on the Nile"), Hari Nef (last seen in "Assassination Nation"), Sharon Rooney (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Ana Cruz Kayne (last seen in "Jerry and Marge Go Large"), Ritu Arya (last seen in "Last Christmas"), Dua Lipa, Nicola Coughlan, Ryan Gosling (last seen in "The Gray Man"), Simu Liu (last seen in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings"), Kingsley Ben-Adir (last seen in "One Night in Miami..."), Ncuti Gatwa, Scott Evans (last seen in "Before We Go"), John Cena (also last seen in "The Bubble"), America Ferrera (last seen in "Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It"), Ariana Greenblatt (last seen in "65"), Rhea Perlman (last seen in "You People), Will Ferrell (last seen in "Quiz Lady"), Michael Cera (last seen in "Saltburn"), Connor Swindells (last seen in "Emma."), Jamie Demetriou (last seen in "Pinocchio" (2022), Emerald Fennell (last seen in "Promising Young Woman"), Andrew Leung (last seen in "Cruella"), Will Merrick (last seen in "About Time"), Zheng Xi Yong, Asim Chaudhry (last heard in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), Ray Fearon (last seen in "Father Christmas Is Back"), Erica Ford, Hannah Khalique-Brown, Mette Narrative (last seen in "Cats"), Marisa Abela, Lucy Boynton (last seen in "The Pale Blue Eye"), Rob Brydon (last seen in "Blinded by the Light"), Tom Stourton (last seen in "The Spy Who Dumped Me"), Chris Taylor, David Mumeni (also last seen in "Last Christmas"), Ann Roth, Annie Mumolo (last seen in "Murder Mystery 2"), Elise Gallup, Lauren Holt, Sterling Jones, Ryan Piers Williams, Olivia Brody, Isla Ashworth, Eire Farrell, Daisy Duczmal, Genvieve Toussaint, Isabella Nightingale-Mercado, Adam Ray (last seen in "Second Act"), Carlos Jacott (last seen in "White Noise"), James Leon, Ptolemy Slocum, George Basil, Mac Brandt (last seen in "Venom"), Paul Jurewicz (last seen in "Lying and Stealing"), Oraldo Austin, Benjamin Arthur
with archive footage of Marlon Brando (last seen in "Val"), Colin Firth (last seen in "Empire of Light"), Sylvester Stallone (last seen in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"), John Travolta (last seen in "De Palma").
RATING: 3 out of 10 Mermaid Barbies
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