More than Kenough
A very quick review of Barbie
(This Barbie is talking to Ann Roth — not the real Barbara Handler.)
Barbenheimer discourse has gone beyond saturation point. The double bill felt like some kind of ethical breach — not in the Warner Bros. Japan formulation, but simply as a strange event that diminishes the value of each film independently.
Hence only a very short, single review for Barbie. Because one film is Kenough.
Hype for Gerwig’s fourth feature film has been less of a snowball and more of a planet-shaking meteor since the first still of Ryan Gosling landed on Twitter in 2022. Suffice to say the film itself was not a disappointment. Yes, Ryan Gosling is great — his excellent comic timing should come as no surprise to those who have caught 2016’s gem The Nice Guys — but that’s not to say the entire ensemble cast doesn’t give it their all with a sparky and inventive script from Baumbach and Gerwig. The over-focus on Gosling in online discourse almost comes across as an unfortunate co-option of the story’s, well, feminist drive.
The majority of the humour felt fresh and genuinely well-observed — the pitch-perfect exposés on film-bro culture, male comfort fantasies, and surprising philosophical touches left this reviewer (ironically?) cackling. Proust Barbie was an unexpected highlight. The soundtrack itself felt like something from an alternate-reality jukebox — but Tame Impala, Charli XCX, and Lizzo in the same film is nothing to complain about.
In the end, Barbie is a big-budget Mattel-produced film, and as such can only go so far in its political commentary. By the close of the film, a lot of its political force is slightly neutered. Ariana Greenblatt’s spiky Gen Z character begins by destroying Barbie’s naiveté in a deliberately over-the-top fashion, but ends up falling into the background, transforming into a smiley, pink version of herself faster than some America’s Got Talent clothes-changing one-trick ponies. And Rhea Perlman’s Ruth Handler, while giving an emotional punch to the end of the film, also has a strange line about how humans ‘make up things like the patriarchy and Barbie to make ourselves feel better’ — as if they’re similar things.
At the time of writing, it feels a little less like a fully-fledged film and more of an extremely funny extended Instagram short. Perhaps that impression is the result of the unmatched torrent of marketing and promotion. Even my laptop background is solid pink (though that predated the monochromatic Barbiecore craze sweeping both fashion and home décor.)
Despite the shortcomings, Barbie stuck the landing as a silly adventure story with a heart, full to the brim with smart humour and dedication to the bit all round.