LIFE'S A DEATH...I MEAN, DANCE - My Review of Greta Gerwig's BARBIE (with spoilers...)

 Last summer, we were more or less dominated by Tom Cruise feeling the need for speed...and to be completely honest, that was a truly fantastic treat I didn't know I needed.

This summer, Tom Cruise is back and his new Mission Impossible installment has been very well received...and yet...

One week later: BARBENHEIMER enters the cinematic universe.

So much has been said for months about the showdown between Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer...and I have to say, I never really tired of it. 

Between 2020 to now, I feel like we have finally seen a major passionate resurgence of people wanting to go to the theater to see a film...and not just the film fanatics like me, but also your typical average moviegoer. 

Now sure, maybe Oppenheimer is more in line with your average epic awards-bait biopic, but the numbers it has been pulling in have been rather impressive...and I suppose a lot of that is the power of the feud and the power of Christopher Nolan.

But as of this EXACT moment, I haven't seen Oppenheimer (I plan to next weekend).

Having seen Barbie, I knew I wanted to get home and put my thoughts down here. Aside from the Anniversary Retrospectives I have been doing over the last few months, I haven't reviewed a new film since back in late winter/early spring. 

I am approaching 2023 with an open mind when it comes to film as I felt very jaded by the output that 2022 gave us, so does Barbie give me a push towards feeling hopeful?

Yes! ... but ... maybe not enthusiastically so.

Barbie was truly an enjoyable experience and one that managed succeed so strongly in giving us a gloriously ridiculous and yet poignant vision.

Although, I think the film's take on gender politics is...sigh, here we go...problematic at best.

Before I dig into that, let's discuss the plot outline for the film:

SYNOPSIS - 

Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) resides in Barbieland, a matriarchal society where all women are self-confident, self-sufficient, and successful...and yes, they all just so happen to be called Barbie. Unlike the Barbies, the Ken counterparts spend their days engaging in recreational activities at the beach. This leads us to Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling), who is only happy when he is with Barbie and seeks a closer relationship, but Barbie rebuffs him in favor of independence and female friendships.

During a dance party, Barbie is suddenly stricken with worries about mortality. The next day, she finds she can no longer complete her usual routine and discovers her feet have gone flat and she has cellulite. Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), a wise but disfigured outcast, tells her that to cure her affliction, she must travel into the real world and find the child playing with her. On her way to the real world, Barbie finds Ken stowed away in her convertible, and reluctantly allows him to join her.

Once they arrive in the LA Metro Area, the two cause multiple antics and are arrested, alarming the Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell), who orders their capture. Barbie tracks down her owner, a pre-teen girl named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), who criticizes her for encouraging unrealistic beauty standards. Distraught, Barbie discovers that Gloria (America Ferrera), a Mattel employee and Sasha's mother, is the catalyst of her crisis. Gloria began playing with Sasha's Barbie toys while experiencing her own identity crisis, inadvertently transferring her concerns to Barbie. Gloria and Sasha rescue Barbie from Mattel's CEO and his subordinates, and the three travel together to Barbieland.

Meanwhile, Ken learns about the patriarchal system, and feels respected and accepted for the first time. Returning to Barbieland, he persuades the other Kens to take over, and the Barbies are subjugated into submissive roles, such as maids, housewives, and agreeable girlfriends. Barbie arrives and tries to convince Ken and the Barbies to return to the way things were, only to be rebuffed. She becomes depressed, but Gloria gives her an inspirational speech about what it means to be a woman.

With the encouragement of Sasha, Gloria, Weird Barbie, and Allan (oh yes, I cannot forget Michael Cera as the awkward one man out), the Barbies free themselves from the Kens and manipulate them to fight amongst themselves, allowing the Barbies to regain their positions of power and prevent the Kens from altering the constitution to enshrine male superiority. The Barbies also realize the error of their previous societal system, and decide to make some changes in Barbieland, including better treatment for the Kens and all of the outcast dolls.

________________

This is the third film by Greta Gerwig, which she co-wrote with her partner Noah Baumbach. Her previous two efforts: Ladybird and an adaptation of Little Women were both among my favorite films of their respective years.

Ladybird felt so alive and fresh and contained such an interesting mother/daughter dynamic, while her take on Little Women gave it a lot more agency towards the plight of the March sisters...particularly how she manages to give the spiteful Amy March some meaning behind her rather hateful or opportunistic behavior. Just check out the monologue that Gerwig gave Florence Pugh as Amy to recite where she flat out says that marriage is an economic proposition for women though not for a man.

Still though, the political statement made by Amy (via Gerwig) in that film is not radical by any means. At best, it was radical for 1860s America.

The politics of Barbie are also not radical. If anything, you could say it is very basic corporate feminism...without any real complexity or layers. You could also lay it out as simply as "GIRLS RULE! BOYS DROOL!"

And yes, I get it. I am all for attacking men.

 I am one. I also hate a lot of men.

We are approaching the 2024 Presidential Election where we have Donald Trump rearing his ugly head and Ron DeSantis slithering out and about from his Florida swamp. They suck...and the system sucks! 

It sort of reminds me a line that Sally Field said when she won an Emmy for that now-forgotten show Brothers & Sisters that if mothers ran the world, "there wouldn't be any goddamn war!".

At the time, the network censored the line and it, of course, got a lot of vitriol from the far right once more people heard the full context of what she said. 

The idea of a "matriarchal utopia" was not overly pleasing to the Kens...just like a "patriarchal utopia" was not at all pleasing to the Barbies, but then again, they were stuck in a deep mechanical haze as if they were Stepford Wives during that time.

The way it is presented is in such a black & white manner as if, simply put, women would be the best at running everything. 

But for every Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, there is a Marjorie Taylor Greene.

For every Angela Merkel, there is a Margaret Thatcher.

I just would've liked to see the political angle be explored in more of a deeper complex manner, because it honestly made it feel just very banal. 

Having said all of that though, I am also not going to let that spoil the party in the same way that Margot Robbie interrupts a dance party to ask if anyone else thinks about their own mortality.

Sure, I might have concerns with how the gender politics/feminism/patriarchy/matriarchy is presented...but it isn't inherently wrong even if it is presented in such a whitewashed way.... although, I do think the unfortunate thing about it is that it gives an easier out for people like Ben Shapiro to attack the film.

And he already has. Relentlessly so.

It is the moments like Robbie's sudden extensional question breaking up the dance party that make the film...and the film sells the comedy very well!

It also manages to sell the moments of warmth too, even if I don't quite see the shift in what makes Sasha suddenly accept her mom and Barbie so quickly...or the schmaltzy nature of the climactic scene.

One key supporting character in the film is the creator of Barbie herself: Ruth Handler, played by Rhea Perlman. Barbie encounters her randomly at the Mattel office earlier in the film sitting in what looks like a kitchen amidst a vast dark room...and while the audience isn't told who she is in the moment aside from being named Ruth, you know full well that she will turn out to be the "mother".

When she shows up in the end to give Barbie the guidance to become a human (how very Pinocchio), it makes for a lovely and sweet moment even if I sort of did find it to slightly drag and to flirt with being a bit too heavy-handed in its schmaltzy tone.

Performance wise, the film delivers. 

Margot Robbie gives the role exactly what it needed while Ryan Gosling more or less understood the assignment. He managed to find a way to make the two-dimensional nature of Ken to be rather compelling when the role honestly could've been an absolute disaster.

And honestly, I think there isn't a bad performance in the film. I am not entirely sure I would be throwing an Oscar nomination at any of them, but they all basically understood the assignment.

The simple truth is that this film is about Barbie and Ken dolls all being alive in their own magical pink and violet land where they party and keep up the same routines day in and day out...and it is ridiculous.

It remains ridiculous when Barbie and Ken go out into the real world; it remains ridiculous when Gloria and Sasha return with Barbie to Barbieland and they have humans interacting with the other dolls.

It is also ridiculous when you have Will Ferrell onscreen because it is Will Ferrell, and he makes everything an absolute delight for the most part.

And in the end, I really liked that ridiculousness. 

I haven't been the happiest person as of late, so spending just under two hours in such a gloriously madcap world was something that was much needed...and the film did manage to succeed greatly on that front.

PLUS - it was cute towards the end of the film when Michael Cera's Allan was facing being an outcast yet again, which led to a young girl a couple of rows behind me to yell out "Justice for Allan!"

I certainly never condone talking in any theater: film or stage...but something about that made me happy. I liked knowing she was that engaged with the film.

This was a film with a very specific vision. I certainly feel the vision faltered on the political front, but Gerwig managed to create such a deliciously fun universe. The sets, the costumes, the tonal shifts...it all clicked rather well. 

A truly delirious and colorful effort by Gerwig...and the pluses do outweigh the minuses, enough so that I feel a little more generous.

RATING: ****/*****