Just a few minutes into “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig’s highly anticipated, product-based film, the titular star (Margot Robbie) walks on water. Not like that, at least, not directly. She’s just making her way out of her immaculate Dream House, and happens to step over the resin-coated surface of her “swimming pool,” which proves as devoid of physical sensation as her glass of “cow’s milk,” she pretends to drink in the morning, the toasted waffle she never actually consumes for breakfast, and the “boyfriend,” Ken (Ryan Gosling), whom she refuses to kiss, or even very much acknowledge (to make things easy, we shall refer to this Ken as “Ken Prime” going forward).
As we begin, her life is seemingly perfect, surrounded by friends, all of whom are also named “Barbie,” though in different guises and configurations, her outfits are plentiful and varied, and her days are spent idling around in a sort of bland utopia. She goes to the beach to see more of her “Barbie” friends, along with Ken Prime (whose sole occupation, to his consternation, is “beach”), and the various other Kens, including one Ken (Simu Liu), with whom Prime has a simmering jealous tension. She spends the day there, cavorting around, before packing off back to her Dream House for yet another giggly girls’ night, ditching poor Ken Prime in the process.
Such is the way for her, until, one night, in the middle of a dance party at her house, she suddenly wonders aloud about something a good deal less carefree (“You girls ever think about dying?”). Before long, she finds herself strangely dissonant with her previously frictionless life, and is forced to consult with “Weird Barbie” (Kate McKinnon), an outcast oracle of sorts, brutally abused by the kid playing with her, who lives alone up on a hill outside the official city limits of Barbie Land.
There, she discovers to her horror, the dire thoughts must be attributable to the girl who plays with her. In order to rectify things, and for this “Stereotypical Barbie” to be able to revert back to being physically perfect (as opposed to being “sad, mushy, and complicated”), she must travel — via car, plane, ship, spaceship, and rollerblade — over to the real world to meet with her apparently despondent owner.
With Ken Prime in tow as a stowaway, Barbie traverses the planes of existence to arrive, in day-glo spandex, at Venice Beach, in the Real World, where she attempts to meet the girl — now, actually, an embittered ’tween named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), whose forlorn mother, Gloria (America Ferrera), working as an executive assistant for the Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell), was actually the one bringing Barbie down with her sad drawings of depression — and put everything back to rights.
Alas, as Barbie meets the cutting Sasha, Ken is spending his time in the school library, finding out about the standard patriarchy in the real-world (while somehow conflating it with horses), and making plans for a new world order upon his return to his native land, one in which the Kens, like male porn stars, have historically taken a significant second-billing to the female leads (Barbie at one point refers to him as “superfluous”) — not to mention poor Allan (Michael Cera), the vaguely male friend of Barbie, who wears sockless loafers and who no one wants much to do with.
Eventually, with the Mattel CEO and his bevy of underling executives chasing after her, Barbie returns home, only to find her Dream House has been commandeered by Ken, who turns it into his “Mojo Dojo Casa House,” as the rest of the Kens have taken over her once pristine, female-led countryland and turned it into the bro-led dystopia “Kendom,” with Foosball tables, cheap “brewski beers,” and lots of Matchbox Twenty’s “Push” on repeat, as the dreary recurring soundtrack of the place. With no other recourse, Barbie is forced to go deep into herself in order to restore order, and healthy matriarchy, to her once fabled land.
Gerwig, who wrote the screenplay alongside paramour Noah Baumbach, has crafted a film that tries to make a viable narrative when the product placement isn’t just prevalent, it’s the literal raison d’etre of its existence. It’s a tricky needle to thread, as it were, having to present enough of a loving homage for fans of the doll and her bevy of products, and in the process, also satisfying the real Mattel executives behind the project, while also offering a knowing wink to entice Gerwig’s crucial sardonic intellectual market, even as the film works hard to blatantly showcase the clothes, vehicles, and assorted accessories of the brand.
Gerwig has taken several steps to assure her audience that it’s OK to be in on the joke, not the least of which, her unimpeachable casting. Robbie, who has proven over and over again to be one of the more versatile and exciting actresses of her generation, has already well established her bona fides; Gosling, having moved past his Dark Angst period, has also proved himself a skilled comic performer; Cera, as always, plays the underdog with aplomb; and various other Barbies and Kens (including Hari Nef, Emma Mackey, Dua Lipa and Issa Rae as President Barbie, for the former; and Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, and John Cena among the latter), help create an atmosphere of fun that never feels overly frivolous, or pandering.
Add to that impressive lineup, a newer-than-now soundtrack adorned with bouncy, self-referential tunes from Nicki Minaj, Charli XCX, Lizzo, HAIM, and a searching ballad from Billie Eilish, along with richly comic dialogue from the Gerwig/Baumbach Irony Factory (at one point near the end, Sasha refers to her as “White Savior Barbie”), all wrapped up with beguiling pink wrapping paper, and you have what will almost certainly be a summer hit.
Still, for all its positive PR (the film has unsurprisingly loaded up on the merch/swag sent out to critics and influencers), and clever co-opting of societal conventions, the film, despite everyone’s best efforts, still feels more like a corporate exercise in being “relatable” than it does anything terribly organic. Even the overt political machinations and sloganeering come across as little more than twee filler, the necessary bits so adults can feel erudite about what they’re watching, as their kids, likely bewildered by all the sociocultural dialogue, can focus in on the bright, colorful dance sequences, and goofy physical humor (Weird Barbie’s dog comes equipped with a rapid fire … ejection system).
You get the sense that Gerwig would have liked to hold corporate toyland more accountable for its grudging depictions of different races/creeds, along with the film’s eventual condemnation of Mattel, for presenting Barbie and her friends as a paradigm of female perfection no one can possibly attain, but given the enormous amount of money on the line, they’ll take what they can sneak in (one winning gag: The drab, gray cubicles at Mattel don’t have exit points).
After all, the point of this enterprise — movies, dolls, accessories, outfits — is to make money, not condemn Barbie as being a “fascist” (as she at one point is accused). Toward the end, as the Mattel CEO learns about Stereotypical Barbie’s descent into contemplative depression, he initially announces it won’t sell. Corrected instantly by one of his executives, eyeing exploding sales charts, who says the new, miserable Barbies are selling like hot cakes, the CEO quickly pivots to embrace this new version. As long as kids are buying them, Barbie’s fading mental health can become just another sales hook.