1 hr 54 mins, Amazon Prime, Now TV, others

⭐⭐⭐

Fabulous and fun take on feminism isn’t subtle – but why should it have to be?

In the battle of Oppenheimer vs Barbie (which Barbie decidedly won, at least according to the box office takings), I opted to see Christopher Nolan’s latest. Rather than being a self-hating woman (I hope?), I figured the nuclear-explosion-themed Oppenheimer would be more worth a big-screen spectacle. So it was a few more months before I got to see Barbie, on a recent flight (not an ideal experience, I’ll admit, but better than nothing). With a huge onslaught of candyfloss advertising preceding the film, but leaving me actually none the wiser as to its plot, I was eager to see what the fuss was about.

I was pleasantly surprised. The film very effectively toes the line between being unapologetic about its politics (patriarchy=bad, women=amazing) and not ever taking itself too seriously. As a result, it’s a funny, entertaining film that felt refreshing for this female reviewer.

What’s immediately obvious from the initial scenes is the strength of the costume and set design. (The list of creatives is, unsurprisingly, too long to include, so I’ll settle for shouting out supervising art directors Andrew Max Cahn and Dean Clegg, set decorator Katie Spencer, and costume designer Jacqueline Durran.) We are in Barbieland, and it’s as pink and sparkly as you’d expect, but with meticulous attention to detail paid to each and every prop and background character. This is the source of the movie’s first laughs, as Barbie ‘drinks’ from her empty plastic cup and Ken crashes out on a plastic wave.

Barbieland isn’t just aesthetically perfect either, we learn; this girl-power matriarchy has become a utopia under the leadership of a diverse range of intelligent boss ladies, including the all-women Supreme Court and President Barbie (played by Issa Rae). The Barbies are healthy, wealthy and wise, and endlessly happy in each other’s company. (They are also, to the filmmakers’ credit, more diverse than is perhaps typically associated with the brand, with the gamut of Barbies including not just women of colour but a plus-size Barbie and a Barbie in a wheelchair.) The Kens, it is quickly established, live in total adulation of the Barbies (and don’t have much else going on). 

Our protagonist is Margot Robbie’s ‘Stereotypical Barbie’; with her glossy blonde hair and enviable figure, Robbie is undoubtedly perfectly cast as every girl’s dream doll. Not all is as perfect as it seems though, as the kick-off point for the main story is when Barbie suddenly finds herself experiencing very human, un-Barbie-like sensations, like the fear of death (and cellulite). A consultation with ‘Weird Barbie’ (the Barbie who got “played with too much”, portrayed unsurprisingly well by Kate McKinnon) reveals that this is because Barbie’s owner in the real world is suffering. Thus Barbie must leave her plastic paradise and venture forth to the land of the living.

Doll-in-the-real-world presents a fairly obvious comedic premise, and the obvious jokes are indulged, such as what the Barbies and Kens have going on downstairs. But on the whole it’s played well. Margot Robbie has decent comedic chops, as does Ryan Gosling playing the primary Ken (as we knew from The Nice Guys). But the plot seems to splinter in two. On the one hand, we have Barbie helping her owner Gloria (America Ferrera) find her moxie (with her sceptical daughter Sasha in tow). Meanwhile, a side story develops in which Ken discovers the patriarchy and decides to ship it back to Barbieland.

For me, the latter was the much stronger story, and a much better vehicle for comedy. Thankfully, the filmmakers seemed to agree and the Barbies’ fight to reclaim power for the women becomes the dominant narrative in the latter part of the film. This is where the film’s politics are most evident, to the point where characters openly discuss their experiences and struggles of womanhood, and thus the film abandons pretty much any pretence of disguising the message in story-telling techniques. For some, this might feel too preachy. For me – and I suspect many of the female audience members – it was rather cathartic. After all, why shouldn’t a film be preachy? Often films that overtly deal with masculinity are praised as masterpieces (at the risk of angering the film bros, I’m thinking of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, or David Fincher’s Fight Club), so it’s refreshing to see a film so unapologetic in talking about femininity. I did also think it was rather clever of writers Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach to almost pre-empt the potential ‘preachy’ criticism by having the film explicitly address the difficult contradictions of femininity – the struggle of wanting to be a feminist but not too much, outspoken but not too much. In doing so the filmmakers call out the unfairness of criticising something simply because it’s overtly feminine. 

Of course, the question of how much a film can really claim to explore ethics and values at all when it’s being financed by a corporate juggernaut to ultimately sell a product is worthy of consideration. But the film ducks any serious criticism of its philosophy by never really taking itself completely seriously. We get two fully choreographed dance numbers, plenty of jokes, and a wry voiceover from Dame Helen Mirren herself to interject whenever things are looking too drab. I did laugh out loud at a few moments, especially the fantastic surprise end-line that’s a callback to an earlier gag. The film is also a tight 100 minutes (begging comparison to the three-hour endurance test that is Oppenheimer), meaning that even if there are some scenes that seem unnecessary (I wasn’t convinced Will Ferrell’s Mattel executive added much value), there’s enough zippiness to keep you entertained ‘til the end.

Overall, I thought this was a fun film that delivered genuine laughs while also being a cathartic reflection on femininity. It won’t resonate with everyone, but has enough entertainment value to be well worth an hour and 40 minutes of your time.