Mattel Watch: Barbie (2023)

I should start by saying:  I really liked Barbie (2023).  But I am not going to write about everything in this movie.  It's too big.

Our lives have been busy lately and so it was hard to find a minute to go see a movie at all, and right now there's a crazy amount of options, any of which I was equally excited to check out.  But Barbie was something I personally wanted to see heading into the summer, mostly because we live in a fascinating era of massive budgets and writer/directors with excellent credentials being handed the reigns to "franchise" pictures.  Giving Greta Gerwig access to the untouchable Barbie empire seemed bonkers.*

I can make neither heads nor tails of a Mission: Impossible film not meeting expectations at the box office.  I have no idea why people show up for a movie in a world where there's another @#$%ing Troll dolls movie about to hit - that will surely make the GDP of a small country.  But I guess we were ready for Barbie when the movie came, because it's currently at $580 million after a couple of weeks.  Go, Barb!

The movie stars the omnipresent Margot Robbie, and that's a good thing.  She's a talented actor, charismatic and fits the bill, physically, for what's needed here.  She's nailed complicated stuff since I first saw her in Wolf of Wall Street, and I generally think she's just really a star in the best sense.  She's paired with Ryan Gosling, who is just weirdly really good, always underplaying to amazing effect.  I can only imagine what Ken was like in other hands, but as Ken Prime, he's terrific.  But so is everyone.  Issa Rae is just a @#$%ing delight, America.  Oh, and America Ferrera!  Lovely.  Terrific!  

Make no mistake, this movie is going to help move a lot of Barbie merchandise, and, I'm happy for everyone involved.  Mattel did not make a Barbie movie because they took a turn for the philanthropic.  

Let me also back it up a little and say:  I've long thought the bad rap Barbie took for ruining lives was kind of dumb, somewhere on the level of "if you let your kids play with He-Man, they'll grow up to be satan worshippers."  Millions upon millions of kids play with Barbie without emotional scarring, and Mattel has been trying to be inclusive since I was a kid, at least.  As the movie states - Barbie does all the jobs, she has all the cars, she has a mansion...  I'm not saying society doesn't push certain ideas about body type on the world, I'm just not sure a 10" doll when you're 5 years old is any more responsible for folks' hang-ups than its true that video games lead to real-life violence.  Ie:  I kind of think singling out Barbie dolls makes as much sense as going after He-Man for giving kids unrealistic expectations of being swole.

So, I think the movie is wildly successful at stating what Barbie is there for and trying to do, absorbing the critiques of what people put on Barbie when they want to make shaky cultural critiques, and both owning and shrugging it off.  That's a compliment and something I appreciate.  But I also was pondering the "huh, Mattel has managed to make it not just okay to like Barbie, they've made it *cool* to like Barbie."  Which, of course, is the idea of having a Barbie movie at all.  And I don't think it's a nefarious co-option of current trends in cultural conversation so much as pretty logical extension of the chatter - I'm just shocked Mattel had the guts to do it.

The movie could have been a lot of things.  Barbie has no shortage of straight-to-video cartoons and whatnot.  I'm frankly shocked we got through the 1980's without a daily cartoon, but Mattel didn't do it even as Jem and the Holograms was muscling in.**  They contained Barbie to DVDs and whatnot as far as I know, and I don't think there's been much live action Barbie outside of a parade float or two.

Made 10 or 15 years ago, a Barbie film would have been some hand-wavy girl-power stuff about girls can do anything, and that, frankly, would have been fine.  Maybe saccharine, but also, you know, an evergreen topic to tell girls to go be an astronaut or vet or podiatrist.  That's more or less what audiences would have expected, and many would have felt invited to stay home.   And, I expect, it would have been exhausting to have a movie about a spunky blonde who is good at everything.  

Instead, Gerwig isn't just aware of all of the criticism leveled at Barbie dolls, she's keenly aware of how this would have gone and pulls in the polar opposite direction.  Her Barbie has thoughts of death and becomes unmoored in her own life.  She isn't even a specialist Barbie.  She's just Barbie.

But Gerwig is also aware of how play with Barbie works and all the things that fans would have cherished as well as all the common weird stuff about playing with the dolls.  She works in the history of Barbie, good, bad and weird, and tucks it right in there.  And, of course, some of the stuff that's just there that's kind of obvious when you think about it but maybe less discussed.  In fact, that makes up more or less the third act.  

The plot *is* important to Barbie.  

In our world of Barbie's, Stereotypical Barbie lives a great life within Barbieland alongside all the Barbies.  Pilot Barbie.  Doctor Barbie.  President Barbie.  Until she begins having odd thoughts about death, and spots a patch of... cellulite?  

Weird Barbie - a Barbie played with too hard - sends her to The Real World to meet the girl playing with her.  Apparently a connection has been made between our Barbie and the sad feelings of the girl and they need to be resolved.

A Ken (Gosling) tags along, and they skate their way right onto Venice Beach.  

Gerwig wisely only deals so much with the fish-out-of-water concept.  In another movie, this is the whole film.  Here, it opens a whole new set of problems as Barbie comes face-to-face with what she means to kids trying to distance themselves from toys, the fact that Barbie *didn't* solve misogyny, and Ken sees a world in which Kens aren't just brough to life when Barbies notice them.  And decides to try some patriarchy.

Barbie, meanwhile, is on the run from Mattel (played as loveable goof villains in this film, courtesy Will Ferrell), who wants to literally put her back in a box as she's becoming aware of the real world.  

SPOILERS

It turns out the "girl" playing with Barbie is a late-30's mom who may be a bit frustrated with her current place in life (America Ferrera in fine form).  Barbie returns to Barbieland with Ferrera and her tween daughter in tow.  Only to discover that Ken has learned about The Patriarchy whilst visiting LA, liked what he saw in a world where he wasn't just an accessory to Barbie, and has brought it back.  Having never heard of such a thing, its spread like a plague, with Ken claiming Barbie's Dreamhouse as his Mojo Dojo Casa House.  

Barbie is crushed that the real world and now Barbieland are awful.  She finally finds her pluck thanks to a truly inspired monologue courtesy Gerwig and Ferrera, and finds the pluck to work with her allies to restore Barbieland and the Barbies, who have become the brainless sex objects that Barbie is traditionally accused of modeling for young girls.  

I mean, it's pretty smart but accessible stuff.  Gerwig is ju-jitsuing her way through the usual, unexamined talking points, and by re-establishing Barbieland to its former glory, it's a direct response to the haters.  

The more complicated bit is the takeover by the Kens who finally find motivation beyond "boyfriend" and "beach", even if it's general young-male dumb-assery cranked up on Red Bull and vodka.  

Third acts are hard, especially in a message movie in which America Ferrera lays out the contradictions of being a woman in... society.  Of no particular time or place.  Just in general.  And it's moving, hard stuff.  All the credit where it's due.  This one is for literally everyone in the audience, be it young girls who will be women, or women to hear feelings they may share reflected back to them and validated, or to the dude who went to the movie with his girlfriend and may be having a moment of revelation.

This movie is still an entertainment.  It's not a treatise, it's not here to solve the world's problems, even if it pokes at them with a stick.  It's there to acknowledge them, and as much as Barbie can help a young kid to dream, in this movie, Barbie is helped by a woman who has steered through all of this and knows you can survive and will thrive.  It's a movie about when Barbie works, and maybe when we grow up and move on, just as Barbie realizes she has to do herself in the film's climax/ denouement.    

Barbie was never intended to tell grown women how to be, she's a facsimile and caricature, and the things put upon Barbie are, frankly, unfathomable.  At least unless Barbie has experience in that outside world that's meaningful.    

If I had any questions when the movie ended, it was that the Kens were seemingly sent back to their former state with maybe a boost of self-awareness.  But, also, please return to your former state that led to the recent coup.  I'm sure the argument is "this movie wasn't about Ken and his journey", but the last half of the movie absolutely depends on what is going on with Ken Prime - and maybe all Kens.    

In a movie very much about messaging, that pushes metaphors into concrete action, that examines what it means to grow and mature, the lack of closure felt like a bobble.  Barbie may not have needed to take Ken beyond the point she did in the movie, but the movie Barbie could have taken the Kens further.  

On the flip side, I was surprised by and very much appreciated that Barbara Millicent Roberts herself moves beyond Barbie-dom, that she's ready for her next phase.  And as as Stuart so wisely pointed out, that 2001 homage opening paid off with the ascendency of Barbie herself to - maybe not a starchild - but a next phase of her personal evolution and all that will entail.  We don't get enough movies where the hero's journey has led to real enlightenment and the knowledge that they can't return to what they were (LOTR took like 15 hours to get us there).  But this movie f-ing *earns* this for Barbie.  Which is not something I expected to be thinking about when I read "Margot Robbie will be in a Barbie movie."  And it sure as hell is a shocker as a freaking toy movie.  

But, yeah, overall, I very, very much liked the movie.  It's an amazing movie, it's a terrific film that bears discussion, and it's a gorgeous work of art worthy of study.  I've never really seen anything quite like it.  

There's so much I didn't discuss here, but this site is free and my time is limited.  That's all you get.  Debate in the comments.  

*and it was, in some ways

**my favorite band called "The Misfits" appears therein.  Eat it, Glenn.