Barbie

Barbie Review:  With Spoilers! 

The first half of this movie was an absolute delight!

It begins with the audience being introduced to Barbieland, a world inhabited by living Barbie dolls.  We get to see Barbie’s dreamhouses fully realized,complete with all the glamorous and quirky features you’d expect, assuming you’d seen or played with one at some point. 

However, there’s one peculiar thing about Barbieland that’s making the rounds on social media – it has no water!

As we watch Barbie go through her daily routine, we discover that showers don’t have water, brushing your teeth with a comically oversized toothbrush requires no water, and juice is merely an illusion.  There’s no liquid anywhere.  The pool just outside of her dreamhouse is solid, allowing her to skip delightfully across the surface, but it also leads to Ken’s injury later. 

So far, so good. 

The narration by the wonderfully talented Helen Mirren adds a whimsical touch to the movie.  She explains to the audience that kids, when playing with their Barbie dolls, simply pick the doll up and place them where they want them to be, which is why Barbie can float gracefully from her home down to her car. 

We all float down here … oh wait, wrong movie.  Anyway, back to Barbieland.

The beach scene is an absolute riot.  All of the barbies exchange enthusiastic greetings, including the mermaid Barbie who pop up from behind the giant, plastic wave.  Ken watches all of this, anticipating “his turn” to say hi.  Barbie, of course, says hello back, but Ken’s excitement is soon replaced with jealousy when another Ken says hello, and Barbie replies to him, too.  Allan also says hi.  Allan was a limited run doll, a long time ago, and marketed as “Ken’s friend”, the narrator explains that no one knows why there’s only one of him.

Wanting very much to get Barbie’s attention back on him, Ken decides to try and impress her by surfing the plastic wave.  This results in him bouncing off of the wave and injuring himself.  While they wait for the ambulance, the Ken’s get into it with each other, and “I will beach you off” becomes the insult of the moment.  The theater erupted with laughter. 

Oh, and that ambulance I mentioned?  It arrives and immediately unfolds, because of course it does!

If the entire movie had maintained this lighthearted tone, I’d be writing a very different post right now.

Apparently the dolls in Barbieland absorb traces of thoughts from those who play with them, leading to bizarre occurrences like Barbie getting cellulite, flat feet, and contemplating mortality. Strange, but okay, it explains what she’s going through. As a side note, I’m not sure why the Barbies were so shocked at flat feet, considering Barbie dolls have had both flat feed and ankle-joint options for more than ten years. Still, it was funny.

What wasn’t funny was that Barbie treats Ken like he’s an accessory, rather than a doll, or an equal, or even a friend. She also jokes about him being unnecessary behind his back, and immediately asks the person she's interacting with not to tell him what she said. It felt gross. I’d be really bothered if people I thought of as friends were laughing about how pointless I was behind my back.

It felt unsettling to see Barbie's attitude towards Ken, part of me hopes that it was just the influence of the person playing with her in the real world, and not her true nature. I’m still hopeful, though that is never a question that gets answered.

In Barbieland, every night is girls' night, and the Kens are expected to vanish until it's time for beach hangouts or parties, where they're just there to dance with Barbie and highlight how cool she and the other Barbies are, before fading into obscurity again.

When asked where the Kens live, Barbie looks bewildered, not having any idea.  I think Will Ferrell’s character summed up the attitude nicely, “We’re not worried about Ken”

As someone who experienced bullying during childhood and teenage years, I could relate to how Barbie's treatment of Ken mirrored aspects of being othered and excluded. It seemed like Barbie was skirting the edge of being a bully, and I didn't appreciate it at all.

The story progresses with Barbie trying to get answers from a Weird Barbie. As she walks to her home, she makes the statement that she’d never wear heels if her feet were “always shaped like this” (after they become more human and flat).  Nice!  Totally agree, Barbie. 

This Barbie who lives off by herself, with her hair cut, skin that’s covered in marker, and doing the splits oddly often, tells her how to get to our world from Barbieland. Though Barbie takes a bit of convincing. Still, she makes the decision to leave Barbieland.

Barbie and a stowawy Ken succeed in reaching our world, where things get even more bizarre. The FBI calls Mattel to report that another doll has escaped Barbieland, reminding them of an incident from years ago when a Skipper escaped and tried to take a toddler surfing.  Will there be a spinoff short?  I hope so!

Barbie is appalled to discover the existence of sexism, and she punches a guy who smacks her butt.  Hands to yourself, perv.  She gets arrested, by the way, for that and, later, for shoplifting, because she doesn’t understand that she has to pay for the clothes she put on. The whirlwind journey leads her to the shocking realization that Barbie has, in fact, not solved all of the problems of feminism in the modern world, as the citizens of Barbieland naively believe.

In search of the human playing with her, and putting those thoughts of death into her head, she and Ken wander off in different directions, each on their own little adventures. Ken discovers the patriarchy and he seems confused about it involving horses, but thinks it’s the answer. He escapes back to Barbieland with some stolen books, and from here on out, the movie got far less interesting.

Yes, there were still a lot of funny scenes, Ken’s “Mojo Dojo Casa House” is hillarious, and the beach battle and subsequent dance number with all of the Ken’s is wonderful. But it also became a manipulation and battle of the sexes game, which felt forced and unnatural.

Barbie suceeds in finding the human who was playing with her, Gloria (played by America Ferrera), a mother who was trying to relive the days of playing with dolls with her daughter, while also thinking about death and struggling with things that people often struggle with. Like knowing we’re all going to die. This lured Barbie to our world, and Barbie, in turn, brought her back to Barbieland.

Unfortunately, Ken’s patriarchy had changed the place, and not for the better. As a result, Barbie and her new friends escape to Weird Barbie for answers. They meet some of the discontinued and rejected dolls there, while trying to figure out what to do.

Gloria goes on an epic rant about the unrealistic expectations and pressures that society places on women. While many women can relate to some of the rant's sentiments, it felt out of place in Barbieland, where Barbie seemingly has everything under control and is the epitome of empowerment.

No, Barbie cannot relate to being called a “prude” if not putting out on a date, or a “slut” if she does. She didn’t even know sexism still existed until she went to our world. So why do the Barbies relate to this? Because they experienced 48 hours of Ken being the worst version of a man that our world has?

Did the Ken dolls mess up when the pendulum swung, and try to be in a patriarchy, imposing stupid, out-dated, sexist stereotypes on the Barbies? Yes, for about two days they were trying to force the Barbies to be bimbos giving foot rubs and bringing “their Kens” beer.

This bothered me, too. All of the male dolls, except for Allan - became the worst version of toxic men in our world. Every single one? Come on. The Barbies had different personalities, so why didn’t the Kens? Why did they all become these mouth-breathing, pathetic little versions of the internet trolls actively one-bombing the movie they didn’t even watch, as I type?

After the Barbies play a game of manipulation, which shows the Kens what patriarchy and toxic masculinity’s downsides are (I guess, somehow?), the Barbies are able to take over again. And Barbieland just sort of…reverts to where it was.

There’s also several scenes with Ruth, the woman who is credited with creating Barbie. I personally credit it to her partially, but the doll was originally a risqué Bild-Lilli doll that was handed out at stag parties in Germany (that’s another post).

Barbie has a heart-to-heart with Ken, they talk about who he is without her, and he figures out that it’s okay to just be himself. He’s enough. Or Kenough. For the record, he was a highlight in this movie. Ryan Gosling delivered.

But it wasn’t enough, or Kenough, for me.

I had hoped the movie would portray a world where Barbie and Ken share equal power, after overcoming their differences, with equal opportunities, demonstrating how it should be instead of using the Kens as a proxy to punish sexist individuals in our world. And yet, that’s exactly what happened. The narrator stated that, until women have power in our world that’s equal, the Ken’s will suffer as second-class citizens.

Nothing idealistic about that.

I will say I love that it’s enraging the fragile men of the world, though.  Ben Shapiro burning Barbies is probably one of the dumbest, most triggered, fragile little manbaby things I’ve ever seen in my life.  If all men behaved like that?  Oh, I’d absolutely vote them off the island. Thankfully, for all our sakes, they don’t. It’s just a loud, whiny minority on the internet. 

In the end, I found myself torn. The first half of the movie was fantastic, filled with humor, creativity, and joy. However, the second half veered into a missed opportunity, losing the charm and becoming muddled in social commentary.

But remember, this is just my opinion, and you might have a different perspective.