Like so many other people in the summer of 2023, I ventured out with my mother and sister to go see the Barbie movie. I knew I was going to see this movie even when I heard the whispers of Greta Gerwig directing it. and when I saw the trailer for the first time in a movie theater, it was like love at first sight.
And, clearly, it was the same deal for so many other people out in the world. We ended up seeing it in a sold out theater right after I stopped having COVID symptoms (don’t worry, I happily masked and we felt it was an appropriate amount of time after I stopped having symptoms), and I was able to redeem my birthday popcorn and soda for the event.
And oh man, this is a movie you have to go into with zero expectations. It’s fun, it’s kind of outlandish at times, and it’s an intro to feminism course.
Seeing the reactions to the film were hilarious because some people completely missed the point of it, although this isn’t a philosophical feminist film until you really start to think about it. Which most people won’t do, they’ll instead laugh about the film and tell their friends to see Barbie, recalling all their favorite moments.
Onwards with the review!
Barbie has to venture out to the real world with Ken, which has an interesting series of consequences.
I see no point in recalling the summary of this movie, which is something I do with my other blog posts, so let’s dive deeper into my personal analysis of the movie and how it uses humor to subtlety get its points across.
I kind of inherently knew that Gerwig was going to go off on a different route than her past movies, as this is too mainstream for her to get a Lady Bird moment across.
We get hints of that with the dynamic between the mother and daughter in the movie, but we lose that important thread. I think we could have an entirely different movie about them learning to love each other again and connect, but instead it’s lost in the noise of Barbie.
I think that’s one of the biggest shames of the movie. I think it’s great they reconnected because of a doll the daughter thought was stupid in the beginning, but I wanted to see more of them.
The writing also felt lazy at times when it came to Will Ferrell’s character because, while it seems like it’s very true and representative of how the upper circles of CEOs work, his character existed just to be humorous, but too real, connection to how out of touch these executives are.
When they appear at the end of the movie to essentially do nothing, it feels so pointless to me. Which, again, leads back to the notion that maybe there were too many threads for this short of a movie.
Those were my biggest critiques of the movie. I think it’s fine that it’s a superficial kind of feminism that doesn’t go too deep. It’s not a film that wants to go into the deep end of feminist theory because that would isolate a large part of the people wanting to go see this movie.
But, at the same time, the digs and jokes that come into play here are a critique of the world as a whole, which is why some people are getting butt hurt when it comes to how Ken jokingly discovers the patriarchy and turns it into a massive joke throughout the movie.
In my humble opinion, Margot Robbie and Michael Cera are the best parts of the movie. I wasn’t fond of the gag at the end of the movie when the narrator mentions how Margot Robbie shouldn’t have been cast in the role for a certain line of dialogue, as it felt like a cheap joke that wasn’t necessary.
Both times I saw the movie people died when they heard that joke. They thought it was the funniest thing ever. To each their own. Margot Robbie has to become more human throughout the movie, and she does just that through her acting.
When she sees an elderly woman for the first time in her life, and calls her beautiful, I got a little emotional. I became a huge Robbie fan when she was in Babylon; I think she was robbed of an Oscar nomination for that role.
But my sophom*ore year of college I saw Michael Cera in a Broadway play, The Waverly Gallery, and I’ve been such a huge fan since because although he’s usually used in character roles, he’s actually a good actor. I saw him in a serious role on Broadway.
The character of Alan draws sympathy because there’s only one of him and he wants out of this world. He seems aware, too, that there’s a way out of here and is willing to use his fists, something the other characters in Barbieland don’t do. I think this is a difficult role to pull off because he isn’t one dimensional like the other Barbies and Kens.
Alan also is a foil for Weird Barbie, as there’s only one of them in this universe and they’re kind of considered weird and left out by the other Barbies and Kens, although Alan kind of wants to fit in and hangs around wherever there’s action.
Overall Thoughts
It’s a solid movie. I like that it brings feminism directly into its conversation and that it’s popular, although many people might simply forget about these kinds of themes throughout the movie in favor of joking about the patriarchy.
As an academic minded person who studies women and gender, although in the Asian continent, there’s something I wonder about the consequences of satirizing it in this manner. People will see it as something to laugh about or generalize it as fiction, which can be dangerous in itself—this is always my worry when it comes to mainstream movies and feminism.
I don’t think I’ve quite sorted out my feelings on this, but I’ll continue to mull over it for a while. Think this film brings up important topics, but I wonder if people are just brushing it off as a joke when the patriarchy is still real.
It’s not just dudes obsessed with horses, which is a concern when media literacy is really bad right now (aka: people don’t know how to analyze/interpret media like films, news, etc.).
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