Director: Greta Gerwig
Writer: Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach
Based on: Barbie by Mattel
Cast: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, Will Ferrell
Runtime: 114 minutes
Available in: Theatres
There is something so spectacularly shallow in Barbie, but first you would have to wade through how deceptively silly it is, to even scratch at this shallow shore. Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) in Barbieland is wracked by an existential crisis — her feet, which were once arched, inclined by her steep heels, are now flat on the floor; she has cellulite; she thinks of death; on waking up in the morning her breath tastes stale. Something, somewhere is deeply wrong.
What Happened to Barbie?
Her human in the Real World, Gloria (America Ferrera), is osmotically giving Stereotypical Barbie these issues, because she herself is going through them, creating a rip in the space-time continuum that allows ideas, people and dolls to slip between Barbieland and the Real World. According to the sequestered sensei of Barbieland, Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), Gloria needs to be met and inspired out of these ugly thoughts, and so Stereotypical Barbie, along with Ken (Ryan Gosling) — her boy friend, not boyfriend — chart an odyssey into the Real World. Rid her of these thoughts, sure, but what of the cellulite? How is Barbie going to help Gloria get rid of that, and thereby rid herself of that? The movie does not offer much by way of clarity, though it is tempting to note that the plus sized model Ashley Graham, while discussing her Barbie avatar, insisted on not just belly fat, round arms, and no thigh gap, but also cellulite — this last demand was rejected, because it might “look like a mistake”.
Once Stereotypical Barbie and Ken find themselves skating in Los Angeles, their lives — if life is what we want to call it — is spun on its head. Ken encounters patriarchy (and horses) in the real world and is intoxicated by all this attention his ab-baked body receives, something he was starved of in Barbieland. Barbie, on the other hand, recognizes the violence in the male gaze, what art critic John Berger described as the perpetual condition of “women watch[ing] themselves being looked at”. A strange awareness overcomes Stereotypical Barbie. For the first time, she weeps.