Barbie lives in Barbieland, an idyllic town where every woman is called Barbie, and every man is called Ken. One day Barbie experiences untypical thoughts about death, flat feet and receives cellulite, prompting Weird Barbie to deduct that a girl playing with her doll avatar in the real world is depressed. Barbie and Ken, who feels underappreciated, thus go through several portals to the real world, specifically Los Angeles, but get a culture shock at how complicated the world is. Barbie meets the woman playing with her Barbie doll: Gloria, a mother of a teenage girl, Sasha. Upon discovering that men dominate in the real world, Ken returns to Barbieland and persuades all Kens to rule over other Barbies. When Barbie returns, she helps Barbies return their rule back. Barbie meets the ghost of Ruth Handler, co-founder of Barbie dolls, and decides to become human and live in the real world.
How to make a movie about Barbie? The only thing known about the famous doll and her partner Ken is that they are pretty and like fashion, yet a plot that would hold a feature length film about them together would have to be its own interpretation. Around 40 computer-animated films were made about Barbie, until the first live-action film by director Greta Gerwig and her partner Noah Baumbach, who both wrote the script. Even they didn't quite figure it out. Gerwig opts for a satire on Barbie, and through her a satire on the relationship between idealism and harsh reality, with an excess of metafilm and self-referential ideas reminiscent of Jonze's "Adaptation", leaving a rather confused film which feels as if it hates itself at times. "Barbie" follows the same old tactic of movies that use an 'ideological human shield': while its themes of feminism, patriarchy-matriarchy rights, search for meaning and self-actualization are commendable, they are here presented banally. Remove the ideological filters, and what is left? Nothing. Throughout the film, only some 4-5 good jokes ignite, while all others just backfire and feel cringeworthy. One good joke is after an employee finds out about Barbie escaping from Barbieland, so he goes to the main office of the Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell) holding a meeting with twenty other managers, and in order to be discreet the employee offers to inform the CEO via a whisper—but then just whispers the bad news to a manager next to him, who whispers it to a manager next to him, and he then whispers it to a manager next to him, until in the end everyone in the office room finds out about it, anyway.
A clever joke appears after Barbie's encounter with the real world, after which she starts feeling "down" for the first time, and thus a toy commercial appears on the screen, presenting "Depressed Barbie", with the speaker saying: "Anxiety and OCDs sold separately". Another is when Barbie says: "I'm not pretty anymore!", but the Narrator slyly adds: "Note to filmmakers: Margot Robbie is not the actress to get this point across." These breaking-the-fourth-wall moments work, yet the movie never really lifts-off. The jokes are corny and silly, and just when the viewers expect them to improve when Barbie and Ken enter the real world, they just continue with its lame intensity. It is indicative that Will Ferrell actually comically overshadows Barbie, who never really tells a single good joke. The only good joke she is involved in is when she sits and drops down to the ground like a mannequin. The movie forgets its own plot points it set up: what was Gloria's problem and depression, anyway? When was that resolved? The idealistic Barbieland reminds of the excellent "Pleasantville", where a brother and a sister from the real world enter the idealistic world of a black-and-white TV series from the 50s, and bring complexity and change with them. Every character that changed in that film earned it, and it was immediately clear what their motivation was, whereas even their world changed. The main character arc here doesn't work—what does Barbie achieve in the end? After all she went through, her acomplishment is that she goes to a gynecologist? They didn't do it right. Why not insert scenes where Barbie pretends she only cares about looks, but, let's say, secretly writes something at her home, or secretly draws on paper? That would hint at her creative, suppressed side (which would tie in nicely with Barbie's co-creator, Ruth, saying near the finale: "Humans have only one ending. Ideas live forever."). And in the end, Barbie could have become a writer or an art designer in the real world, and that would have been a true transformation. In this edition, Barbie doesn't actually grow at all. "Barbie" is composed out of 90% ideological activism, and only 10% out of writing, creativity, humor or ingenuity. Sloganeering isn't filmmaking.
Grade:+
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