Barbie

Hilarious! I LOL’d so much. I almost could’t believe Mattel signed off on this!

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Big wigs at Mattel said they trusted that Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie would poke fun at all kinds of things, but that they wouldn’t make Barbie herself the butt of any jokes. Mattel did try to push back on some things (like the definition of this as a feminist film), but ultimately, they wanted to show that they don’t take themselves too seriously. It was that permissiveness that makes this movie a success.

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Mattel might not want to label this film as feminist but to me, it’s clearly, obviously, and hilariously feminist. After seeing it, I also understood why certain strata of society hated this film. It points out patriarchal assumptions, big and small. We see how absurd they are when those assumptions are turned against men. The story shows, ultimately, how a more balanced approach is best for everybody.

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The diverse casting is brilliant. It was great see so many fabulous actors in small parts: Issa Rae, Nicola Coughlan, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ncuti Gatwa, Will Ferrell, Rhea Perlman as Ruth Handler, the co-founder of Mattel, and Kate McKinnon as the hilarious Weird Barbie.

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The scenes when the Kens have grown too big for their cowboy britches (“I’ll play the guitar at you”) are SO funny.

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This movie is deeply subversive. In passing it touches on how people who are different are outcast, how unrealistic expectations for women send us down a path where we waste our lives caring about all the wrong things, how indoctrination of women can be counter-acted by women educating younger women, and how necessary it is for each person to have a purpose in life that isn’t about the approval and adoration of other people.

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It’s easy to see why this movie has won a large number of awards and is one of the highest grossing films ever. It’s really well done. It’s wonderfully styled, imaginatively created, cleverly directed, and is somehow nuanced yet is not nuanced at all.

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