[ad_1]
Barbie (PG, 114mins) Directed by Greta Gerwig ****½
There are times when I do become acutely aware how badly this newspaper and website empire needs some women reviewers.
And yet, being the only guy in a sea of pink frocks and sparkling wine, with a crowd going off like a Courtenay Place hen’s night and spontaneous applause breaking out – can be a brilliant way to see a film. Wednesday night was one of those nights.
Life seems perfect in Barbieland. The sun always shines, the beach is always nearby and the place runs as a benevolent matriarchy where all the important decisions and jobs are handled by women, while the men – the Kens – live a life of such uncomplicated banality that “beach” has become a job title.
With Barbie – especially “stereotypical Barbie”, as played here by Margot Robbie – now having been on this earth for 60 years or more, it is understandable that the occasional reflection on mortality should begin to take shape. But when Barbie blurts out on the dance floor, “Hey! Do You Ever Think About Dying?”, it is clear that some action needs to be taken. Barbie needs to either forget she ever had those thoughts, or she needs to track down their origins and confront them. And that might mean travelling to a near-mythical place called “the real world”, where very few Barbies have ever ventured, and from where some have never returned.
Supplied
Margot Robbie joins forces with Ryan Gosling for Barbie.
Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach wrote the outline and screenplay for Barbie during America’s long months of Covid lockdown. Which might go some way to explaining just how introspective and metaphysical this film gets.
This Barbie delights in taking on the big philosophical quandaries and also asking some tough questions of modern society – and especially the roles that men and women are still expected to play in it. That all this is in the service of a film which will be judged by how many plastic toys it sells is just one the ironies Gerwig doesn’t mind pointing out.
Gerwig makes clear nods at Toy Story, The Lego Movie and The Matrix as inspirations for the shape of the story. Kate McKinnon (yay!) shows up early as “weird Barbie” – hair melted, face made up with felt pen. Weird Barbie’s place in the film is to explain to Barbie, like The Matrix’s Morpheus, that her world is not the only one and to offer her a choice between the high-heel of illusion and the Birkenstock sandal of reality. Barbie opts for the heel, before McKinnon rips it away and tells her to take the damn Birkenstock and to go and heal the rift in space and time that she has somehow caused.
Supplied
Barbie looks and sounds fabulous – of course – and the film is a pile of fun. But the script is also crammed full of sublimated rage and political insight.
Barbie is mostly a blast. It teeters right on the edge of being too self-conscious and getting bogged down with explaining itself. But it also contains a speech – delivered by Lawyer Barbie – that is so well-written and on-point that it earned a spontaneous round of applause from the audience tonight.
Robbie is perfect in the lead, as is everyone around her. And Ryan Gosling is truly great as Ken. It is Ken’s insecurity and rebellion at only existing to be noticed by Barbie that eventually drives the entire film. Gosling makes Ken’s lack of personality and identity into the exact things that define him – and then somehow shapes a sympathetic villain out of that. Gosling has always had terrific comic chops, but he is on another level here.
Kate McKinnon threatens to steal the show as “weird Barbie”.
Barbie looks and sounds fabulous – of course – and the film is a pile of fun. But Gerwig and Baumbach have also crammed wit, sublimated rage and political insight into the script. And then found the perfect team and cast to make it all work as well as it does.
I clapped at the end, laughed out loud and muttered “hell yes!” at least a couple of times. Barbie is pop-art done perfectly.
Barbie is now screening in cinemas nationwide.
[ad_2]