Barbie Review

Next time I think of Barbie, I won't think of a plastic doll with beach-blonde hair and an impossibly-proportioned body. Or the ridiculously high-priced box she comes in. Instead, I'll ponder - hold on, now - "the cognitive dissonance of being a modern woman". I'll think of systematic female oppression! I'll think of Margot Robbie's dainty feet and Ryan Gosling's etched abs. Greta Gerwig's movie has changed my idea of Barbie forever.

Greta animates Barbie Land into a female utopia populated by Mattel's Barbie incarnations - Doctor Barbie, Nobel Laureate Barbie, President Barbie, Mermaid Barbie, and, of course, Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), which is the Barbie "you think of when you think of Barbie".

There is Ken (Ryan Gosling), too - a tanned, perma-friendzoned male toy whose job is "beach". But Ken is just Ken, whereas Barbie rules this toy-verse. She is always and forever happy, living under the delusion that her doll has "solved feminism" for the kids out there in the real world.

Greta pulls off so many clever little tricks with Barbie Land, that a tour through this pink fever dream is worth the price of admission. Barbie doesn't walk to places; she just floats over. Her fridge is always stocked, her wardrobe is magically stocked with her day's outfit, and every night is girls' night.

My favorite resident of Barbie Land though is Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), the version of Barbie that gets abused, doodled on and stretched out (McKinnon is always doing the splits) by angry little girls. She is whom Stereotypical Barbie turns to when she begins having thoughts of death, burns her toast, and loses the perma-arch of her feet. Holding up a Birkenstock, the ultimate symbol of the drudgery in this high-heeled paradise, Weird Barbie pushes Stereotypical Barbie to go into the real world to find what's gone wrong with her.

As playful and weird as Barbie the movie is, it is also an incisive and exasperating commentary on life, gender, identity, and all those thorny issues you'd never think to look for in a movie about dolls. Just as many times as someone says "mojo dojo casa house", you hear the word "patriarchy".

And the metaphors just keep coming faster than you have time to feel smug about noticing them. Mattel, the maker of Barbie, is depicted as a pale, male, stale corporation, with a boardroom view that overlooks Warner Bros Disney's skyscraper. Its CEO (Will Ferrell) gets all his information through a chain of whispers - a parody of the stodginess and inefficiencies of Big Corp.

The writing drips with such caustic satire, it is hard to tell if it is being cheeky or jokey. When Barbie and Ken make it to the real world, it takes all of five minutes for Barbie to feel objectified and threatened by the male gaze. Ken, to his delight, discovers that the world is "run by men and horses". A long, exasperating monologue delivered by Gloria (America Ferrara), a Mattel employee, is the culmination of that cheekiness. Her message: it is literally impossible to be a woman.

But the movie is more than a paean to radical feminism. It is also a shrine to the Western ideals of individualism and determinism: "You can be whoever you want to be." Ken must find his own Ken-ness, not just be an accessory to Barbie. Heck, even dolls mustn't be dolls anymore but use their doll brains to snap out of their doll existential crisis and become empowered dolls that portal into the real world and find their real selves.

"You can be whoever you want to be" - that's the idea that Barbie the movie wants to see live on forever.

Margot Robbie shines as the Stereotypical Barbie, embodying both her playful and profound sides effortlessly. Ryan Gosling as Ken proves his versatility as an actor, delivering an uncommonly hilarious performance. Together, they bring a delightful mix of fun and emotional depth to the screen.

Greta Gerwig came up the hard way as an indie director with an uncanny knack for casting hot new talent, and has now come as close as any woman to being called an auteur. She has the rare résumé of having explored girlhood across eras - from a girl of uncommon ambition in the 1800s English countryside (Little Women) to a rebellious teenager from the Midwest (Lady Bird) to, now, an ageless fictional icon part of the lives of generations of girls. The movie sees Gerwig embrace the artistic freedom to delve into a semi-fictional Barbie universe, backed by a seemingly limitless budget to paint her ideas in the boldest of strokes, while Mattel gets a chance to sit at the big boys' table of corporate moviemakers, making the movie a win-win of the most twenty-first-century kind.