Barbie (2023)

Summary: Stereotypical Barbie, who lives in Barbieland with the other Barbies, who fulfil many professional roles, and with Ken who goes to the beach, finds that she is changing. She has a feeling about death, her feet suddenly go flat and she falls rather than floats down from her bedroom. She consults Weird Barbie who tells her that she must visit he real world to find the child who is playing with her, so off she goes with Ken, who has smuggled himself into her car. In the real world they suffer from a bit of sexual abuse and are arrested before they meet the middle aged woman who is the one who is Barbie’s owner. They glance off the senior management of Mattel and all of them end up back in Barbieland, where Ken, who has learnt a lot in the real world, assemble the Kens to make Kenworld. How can Barbie and her human owner redress the balance?

Content: When Barbie is whistled at by construction workers she protests that she does not have a vagina, and that neither she or Ken have genitalia. Initially there is narration and the introduction is a pastiche of the beginning of 2001. A Space Odyssey. Then we have scenes in Barbieworld which is very pink and features Barbie accessories. In the real world Barbie is naïve, but is smart enough not to get into the box when encouraged to do so by the Mattel CEO. Back in Barbieland we find that Ken has taken over, prompting a number of dance numbers and singing by the Kens. Curiously the narrator breaks the 4th wall once, I think suggesting that if they wanted to make Barbie less sexy they should not have chosen Margot Robbie for the role.

A View: We don’t know how much Barbie cost to make, but it seems likely that it covered its production costs on its first weekend, and it was reviewed on Rotten Tomatoes by 429 critics, the most of any film I have reviewed. My wife and I chose to see it rather than endure the three hours of Oppenheimer. In general it was a lot of fun, although I became a bit confused when the humans were able to enter Barbieworld, particularly the Mattel executives, and including Ruth Handler as a character was, in my view, an error. Those who see it as a big Mattel advert have a point, and those who criticise the speech in support of the difficulties women face it the real world, also have a point. Perhaps a little more discipline with the plot would have helped, but in general worth a view.

Margot Robbie has been in quite a few films that I have reviewed, the most entertaining possibly being Babylon, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and I, Tonya.