“If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you,” promises the trailer for director Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.
Gerwig loads plenty of food for thought in a hot-pink-pop fantasia, poking fun at patriarchy and corporate parent Mattel in her treatment of the iconic “girls can do anything” doll. Barbie introduces us to Barbieland, a triumph of set design, an inherently hilarious alternate reality modelled on the dream that Mattel has been selling American girls since the doll was introduced in 1959.
Gerwig and her co-writer Noah Baumbach have penned a beamingly affectionate fantasy-comedy-adventure starring Margot Robbie, whose own superhuman blond beauty makes her the best possible casting choice as Barbie.
Ryan Gosling is a good sport to play the slightly predatory, sartorially helpless pretty boy, flexing both his muscles and a range of facial expressions lacking from his recent work. If Robbie’s Barbie sets an impossibly high bar for young women, then Gosling’s Ken reps an equally formidable male model, with his chiselled abs and cheekbones.
Barbie is living her best life in her perfect Barbie world, partying with all the Barbies and a chorus of beach-bunny Ken clones (including John Cena and Simu Liu) and Ken’s gloomy beta-male mate Allan (Michael Cera), when she is confronted with the terrible thought of dying. Weird Barbie tells her she must journey to the real world outside to sort this out, so she and Ken travel to scuzzy Santa Monica for answers. The result is a good-natured and self-conscious movie, with comedy rooted in that very self-consciousness, often funny and occasionally very funny perspective.
The movie was clearly made by people who understand how kids’ imaginations work when playing with Barbies.
Barbie, rated PG, plays at the Patricia Theatre from September 1 to 7 at 7 pm, with a matinee on Sunday, September 3, at 1:30 pm. Running time is one hour and 54minutes.
Gary Shilling is executive director of qathet Film Society.
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