Is Barbie Kenough to Save Barbie?

Spoiler alert: I’m going to share my thoughts on “Barbie,” the recent movie. If you haven’t seen it, you may want to move along, citizen. I’m writing with an expectation that the reader has seen the movie. Perhaps “spoiler” is not really the right term here, since it’s not a thriller with unexpected plot twists, and so much of the pleasure of this movie comes from its appearance and pacing so that even if I spill some plot twists for you, I hardly think it’s possible to spoil the movie—so maybe it’s OK to keep reading anyway.

It’s up to you. You have always had the power to become fully human if you want to. But you’ve been alerted that I watched it and am writing freely about it, so let me write at you the way that Ken plays a guitar at Barbie.

“Barbie,” the 2023 movie by Greta Gerwig, is one of those films that is aesthetically for kids, but in reality, is very much for grownups. It’s a sort of reverse “Toy Story,” only it’s the real world that isn’t understood by the toys, not the toy world that is hidden from our reality.

The film was rated PG-13, and anybody who took a young girl to the movie without pausing to wonder why may have had some explaining to do—but I appreciated the movie on many levels.

Like Gerwig’s “Little Women,” it takes a classic and uses it to launch a feminist critique of modern society. In this case, the classic is not a 19th-century novel, but a beloved and behated classic plastic toy.

The movie also reminded me a bit of “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” in that it’s set in a reality that clearly isn’t fully real. Of course, Babie Land is entirely fantastic. It represents an alternative universe that is created by the dreams of girls playing with Barbie, a point indirectly explained by the excellent unseen narrator (Helen Mirren) who now and then provides wry commentary during the film.

It’s not a perfect film. I was mildly irritated with the pink ninja scenes where the Mattel mom and her daughter and Barbie were separating Barbies from their Kens, because it was using too many easy clichés about men. Then again, some of the writing here is as snappy and witty as the rest of the movie. Having Ken say “sublime” when Barbie agrees to be his girlfriend again was unexpected and worthy of chuckle. I liked that Ken said he would play guitar “at” Barbie, too. But I wish Madam President would allow the Kens one seat on the Supreme Court, maybe in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

And I don't even have time to write about the songs in the movie, beyond the witty aside at the end of this post and that I've never appreciated the Indigo Girls more. There. To be fair to the film, I spoiled this blog post as well as the movie.

But even if parts of it got a bit too campy even for me, so much of the movie was delightful. Margot Robbie made a perfect Barbie, and was believable when she suffered her existential crisis (even thought, as the narrator wryly points out, she was the wrong actor to worry about not being beautiful enough). She’s not the only great cast member.

At first, I didn’t care for Ryan Gosling’s Ken, because, to me, the look was wrong. If anything Michael Cera’s Alan looked a little more Ken like—despite having some plastic abs, Ken was a smooth, mild pretty boy doll, not a jacked macho man.

But Gosling won me over. He’s not an adult in the film, but a 7-year-old girl's idea of a boyfriend for Barbie, and Gosling does a great job—I particularly like his awakening to the patriarchy in fake Los Angeles (the real world, here, is a “Scott Pilgrim” like real world—set in LA, but more in the idea of LA). He loves a world run by men and horses. His looks back at Barbie as he leaves her sitting on a park bench were poignant and hilarious at the same time.

Warner Brothers publicity image, Ken and Barbie, Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie. Downloaded from a story on the BBC web site.

And Kate McKinnon? Weird Barbie as the wise and despised oracle of Barbie Land was a total hoot. And so much of the movie was adults looking back nostalgically at a childhood icon—as America Ferrera’s Gloria had a Weird Barbie, didn’t almost all Barbie players end up with many?

I didn’t get all of the references, but the movie did keep me on the hook with it’s many homages to other films. It begins with “2001: A Space Odyssey.” There is “The Matrix” when Barbie is given a choice between her pink heels or sandals (and it turns out the choice is fake, Weird Barbie insists on a do-over so she will choose to learn about reality).

America Ferrera is great as Gloria, and delivers one of the most famous monologues of the movie. That monologue is a highlight in a movie with many touching moments.

One of my favorites is when Barbie, discouraged with her first experience in LA, sits on a park bench and sends Ken away. She looks up and sees an old woman watching her. Barbie is startled and stares.

“You’re beautiful,” Barbie says.

“I know it,” the woman replies.

Beauty isn’t just pretty blondes who looks like dolls, but women and men who are comfortable in their own skins and know it. That’s a positive attitude that transcends age—the central message, to me, of the movie, beyond its critique of misogyny.

And that critique? Some have said the movie is anti-man. I didn’t see it that way. Ken himself recognizes that running the world himself can be exhausting and isn’t much fun. Men do have a responsibility to be responsible and fully human, and pointing out realities that have held back the majority of humans (women) doesn’t seem to me to be unfair or offensive.

It's a coming of age movie for Barbie. She realizes that the real world isn't the fantasy she imagined. She's not everyone's hero and all problems of misogyny and feminism have not been erased by her. But the human life is still worth living, and in the end, Barbie decides it is Kenough. She is willing to live as Barbara Handler, daughter of Ruth Handler. That's deep, man. And woman.

Finally, what was Mattel thinking? They so wisely stepped aside and let Gerwig have her way, including a rough caricature of the company. Years ago, Mattel missed the boat on the first “Toy Story,” film but wised up for movie two. Clearly, this movie that mocks Mattel is going to make a boat load of money for Mattel. And Mattel is clearly over a lot of water that's under the bridge. The movie ends with a remake of a song that caused a lawsuit when it came out, but now it is included here.

Life in plastic. It’s fantastic.