Ivan Radford | On 31, Dec 2023

Director: Greta Gerwig
Cast: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera
Certificate: 12

“It is literally impossible to be a woman,” declares Gloria (America Ferrera) partway through Barbie. “You are so beautiful and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough.” The fact that she’s talking to real life Barbie (Margot Robbie) only adds fire to the remarkable speech that follows.

It comes as a shock to Robbie’s blonde icon – “Stereotypical Barbie” – who enters the real world believing that she, and all the other Barbies, have solved sexism by showing women examples of how they can be anything, from an architect or astronaut to a Malibu Beach House owner or the President. But, as Gloria explains, in the real world women are expected to be everything and then get blamed for doing it all wrong. It’s enough to give any Barbie an existential crisis. Which, of course, is exactly what happens.

If your head is already spinning, Greta Gerwig’s just getting started. Her follow-up to Little Women begins with a picture-perfect replica of Barbieland – no running water, no edible food, perma-high-heeled feet and lots of pin. There we meet Barbie the president (Issa Rae), Barbie the author (Alexandra Shipp), Barbie the doctor (Hari Nef), Barbie the lawyer (Sharon Rooney) and Barbie the physicist (Emma Mackey). We also meet Ken (Ryan Gosling), whose job is beach. Not lifeguard or surfing. Just beach.

Tongue-in-cheek narration from Helen Mirren and meta-musical commentary from Lizzo make it clear that this is a toy land, but one that means real business. Sure enough, things start to go awry, with Stereotypical Barbie beginning to have irrepressible thoughts of death – and, worse, she gets flat feet. A quick trip to Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon, hilarious) and Barbie is sent off on a voyage of self-discovery. And the profound layers of meaning, emotion and self-awareness just keep piling on.

The ensuing caper is part screwball fun, part razor-sharp satire, as we see Barbie and Ken’s idealistic worldviews clashing with the complexities of modern society. Soon, Barbie is being called out for being an unrealistic role model and Ken is learning about the joys of the patriarchy – which, in an inspired burst of silliness, involves lots of slow-motion videos of horses.

When Mattel hear that Barbie’s on the loose, we’re introduced to the company’s all-male board, including Will Ferrell’s outrageous CEO and Jamie Demetriou’s wonderfully goofy underling. While there’s a kindness to the firm, positioning them as well-intentioned in initially creating Barbie as an empowering toy, there’s no shying away from the fact that it’s achieved the opposite – and Margot Robbie’s performance is key to capturing that. Her genuine alarm and upset spark a moving drive to determine what her existence is for, as she flawlessly swings between wide-eyed astonishment, picture-perfect smiles, physical slapstick, fierce determination and warm compassion – all of it rooted in the heartfelt nostalgia of playing with a doll as a child.

Ryan Gosling is every bit her equal as the petty, petulant, preening and deeply insecure Ken. The surprise, perhaps, is how much screen time he gets, almost threatening to steal the whole show with his prickly vulnerability, wounded anger and musical prowess. But the script – by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach – is a precisely conceived exploration of toxic masculinity as much as it is the challenges facing women in society – from Ken’s “mojo dojo casa house” dream to his misogynistic need to explain movies and sports to Barbie so that he feels superior.

Focusing on both characters is central to the movie’s demonstration that a heavily gendered society, full of its expectations, pressures and perceptions, is unhealthy for everyone. The shifting dynamics between Ken and Barbie are playful and funny, but also shot through with sincere pain, as the characters – in all their varying positions of power, and in all their wonderful diversity – learn that the world requires everyone, regardless of gender, to collaborate to fix it. Even the final scenes reinforce the importance of equity in striving for equality.

Woven through its feminist themes is an similarly sharp critique of commercialism, but that’s not because Barbie is trying to bite off more than it can chew – it’s because it understands that all these social constructs intersect to form the web of inequality that currently exists. Reminiscent of The Lego Movie, there’s a gently subversive streak to its dissection of capitalism as well as sexism, while it takes us towards an uplifting place of self-discovery, support and co-operation.

To do all this in a serious drama would be difficult enough. To do it while packing in countless laughs a minute is nothing short of phenomenal, and Gerwig’s masterful direction pulls it off like it’s no big deal. Nodding affectionately to Jacques Demy and Jacques Tati, she puts together a pastel-coloured production that’s visually gorgeous and infectiously fun, so that every emotional gut-punch lands with a breezy lightheartedness – and characters that charm as well as entertain amid the surreal, larger-than-life playground they inhabit. It’s a mesmerising tour de force of cinema that finds genuine empowerment in a Hollywood wrapper. By the end of the effervescent 114 minutes, you will believe that a Barbie can float down from the top floor of her house to the ground – and that, if everyone works together, women really can be whatever they want to be.

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