Barbie: Failed Dreamhouse Renovation

By Kim Hughes

Rating: B-

Let’s cut to the chase: Barbie is the greatest advertisement of all time. As a thrilling, escapist summertime movie? Yeah, no. “Wassup?!” and "Where's the beef" have officially been destroyed. Though it’s hardly the final word on Barbie.

Many years hence, marketing students will cite it as the precise moment when cinematic product placement was transformed from a blink-and-you-miss-it proposition to a deeply considered, ornately costumed pitch shamelessly capitalizing on people’s emotions while selling them a bill of goods on their own dime and with their consent.

It’s a strategy backed by a major movie studio, led by a likeable director with cred, and so brazen in its approach that it fancies itself as progressive and culturally attuned while gamely taking shots to the chin. To put this arch egregiousness in some perspective, think of it this way, as I did throughout its two-hour running time:

Barbie, the movie, posits that patriarchy sucks. And it’s brought to you by Mattel.

Barbie, the movie, posits that corporate America is sinister and tone-deaf. And it’s brought to you by Mattel.

Barbie, the movie, posits that women can do anything! And it’s brought to you by Mattel.

Lest for a moment you forget that this is brought to you by Mattel, you will be reminded from the opening credits to the closing credits in this kooky, screamingly pink ride. In perhaps the film’s most emotionally manipulative move, Barbie’s inventor Ruth Handler appears twice (via Rhea Perlman) as a wisecracking grandmotherly spectre who helps Barbie… uh… I dunno, better understand herself?

And lest you remain unmoved, Ms. Handler references her double mastectomy while spouting platitudes. Take that, cold-hearted cynics.

What makes the whole thing even more troubling is that Barbie, the movie brought to you by Mattel —which of course has lookalike dolls of the Barbie movie cast on its website for sale right now — is visually stunning, superbly acted, and clearly a passion project for writer-director Greta Gerwig and star-producer Margot Robbie. The sets, helpfully explained and promoted by Robbie in Architectural Digest no less, are like imagination explosions coated in cotton candy and twirling on acid trips.

But the hard sell kills the film.

There is a story, by the way. Happy Barbie is suddenly having bad thoughts. An outcast seer Barbie (Kate McKinnon) tells her these thoughts are connected to the person that possesses her in the Real World. Barbie must leave Barbieland and enter the Real World to solve this existential crisis. Fish-out-of-water–style hijinks ensue.

A smitten but consistently sidelined Ken (Ryan Gosling, deadpan and excellent to the point of almost stealing the movie from its titular lead) comes along for the ride and discovers that the roles of men and women there are the opposite of Barbieland, where women rule everything, and men are merely accessories, albeit uncommonly buff ones.

Gosling’s Ken brings this chauvinistic ideology back to roost with the other Kens, who swiftly infect Barbieland with male privilege and seduce-slash-brainwash the women into being subversive dolts.

But of course, the beautiful Barbies outsmart them and turn everything around because ha ha Barbies can do anything. Including giving rousing speeches about how hard it is to be female (courtesy America Ferrera). Barbie, the doll, may be the repository for a constellation of viewpoints about women’s femininity and their roles in society, but at the end of the day, Barbie, the movie, just wants everyone to get along.

At the screening I attended, enthusiastic women and girls turned up dressed to the nines in pink dresses with ribbons and sparky shoes to pose for selfies and goofy group shots in front of the branded displays set up in the theatre lobby for just that purpose.

Everyone seemed pumped to be part of this cultural reckoning and woohoo! Finally, our moment. We are in on the gag, ready to celebrate, eager to comically upend the weirdness of a doll with crazy boobs in high heels. And doesn’t Mattel look all sorts of smart for doing this?

Maybe. Or maybe, as The Guardian notes, hip directors are being seriously coopted by commerce. The news org points out that Moonlight director Barry Jenkins has just wrapped up The Lion King sequel for Disney, while Sarah Polley is in talks to helm a live-action reboot of Bambi. And Gerwig, of course, has done Barbie.

Maybe Mattel is ahead of the curve here. But I felt like a hoodwinked chump. And the dwindling applause from the crowd at the end suggests I wasn’t alone.

We were once again sold something we already bought ages ago, only packaged differently. Maybe not the best ad ever, after all.

Barbie. Written by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. Directed by Greta Gerwig. Starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Will Ferrell, Michael Cera, Simu Liu, and Kate McKinnon. In theatres July 21.