Barbie
Margot Robbie is just a Barbie girl until she discovers that cellulite could blight the thighs of her sisterhood unless she escapes to the real world to sort things out…
Toy Story with thought processes: Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie
To pull off a large-scale, feature-length movie about Barbie was always going to be a tricky balancing act. And it was a brave move for Mattel, Inc., to hand the creative reins to writer-director Greta Gerwig. Of course, in today’s world there was only one direction to go when immortalising a fascist embodiment of physical female perfection on screen – and that is to deconstruct the model. Even with co-producer Margot Robbie on board as the Stereotypical Barbie, herself the personification of the female ideal, the film spears its targets with comic precision. In fact, it’s so meta that at one point our narrator (Helen Mirren) suggests that maybe “Margot Robbie” was a problematic casting choice. What Barbie does achieve is a high quotient of fun while tapping into Robbie’s solar-powered dynamism (Harley Quinn dipped in icing sugar?). Such is the miracle of Barbie that it should appeal to diehard feminists, dedicated film buffs, the young of brain, popcorn-chomping fun lovers and even the shareholders of Mattel. Barbie dolls sell at the rate of three a second around the world, and the film’s success can but turbocharge that statistic.
Although Barbie is primarily known as an implausibly proportioned female doll, ‘she’ began life in 1952 as a cartoon character called Lilli in the German newspaper Bild. Then, three years later, she was launched as a polystyrene doll aimed largely at men (she was flirtatious and provocative). When Ruth Handler, co-founder of the toy company Mattel, remodelled Lilli for the American market, she was sued by Bild-Lilli and ended up buying the rights for $21,600. Before then, though, Lilli was preserved on celluloid in the German crime comedy Lilli – ein Mädchen aus der Großstadt (1958) and was played by the Danish actress Ann Smyrner. So, strictly speaking, this is not the first cinematic outing for the blonde. Some history is detailed at the outset of the new film – whilst paying homage to Kubrick’s ‘Dawn of Man’ sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey – and then, voilà!: Margot Robbie emerges in all her splendidness.
Cut to Barbieland where every day is the best ever, as is tomorrow, and where every female inhabitant is called Barbie and every guy is Ken, except for Allan (Michael Cera). Stereotypical Barbie (Robbie) wakes up with a smile on her pretty face, which remains there as she undertakes her morning ritual of cleaning her teeth, showering and having a cuppa, albeit without a visible sign of liquid. Liquid does not exist in Barbieland: not even the surf on the perpetually sunny beach, let alone anything as crass as a bodily fluid. Then, at a girls’ night at her place, Barbie commits a ruinous faux pas by addressing her mortality. It’s a fleeting notion, but it scratches a rift in the continuum and the next day Barbie wakes up with bad breath, is subjected to a cold shower and burns her toast. Worse still, she suddenly has flat feet and cellulite and must journey to the real world to help return Barbieland to its former glory…
Margot Robbie hits just the right tone as the airhead with a heart and when, in Los Angeles, she sees an old woman for the first time (Ann Roth), she produces her first bodily fluid: a tear drop. Staring at the pensioner in disbelief, she tells her, “you’re so beautiful!” It’s a genuinely moving moment. As Ken with the washboard stomach, Ryan Gosling goes from La La Land to Barbieland with consummate ease, sending up his image as the Stereotypical Ken in a series of jubilant musical numbers. And then for more comic mileage there is Will Ferrell as the CEO of Mattel (in the real world), whose defence of his worldview is far from convincing. “Some of my best friends are Jewish,” he splutters, before validating his feminist credentials with, “I am the son of a mother!” Have fun.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, Helen Mirren (voice only), Will Ferrell, Hari Nef, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Mackey, Sharon Rooney, Ana Cruz Kayne, Dua Lipa, Nicola Coughlan, Ritu Arya, Maris Abela, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, Scott Evans, Ncuti Gatwa, Rob Brydon, John Cena, Jamie Demetriou, Connor Swindells, Emerald Fennell, Ann Roth, Lucy Boynton.
Dir Greta Gerwig, Pro David Heyman, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley and Robbie Brenner, Screenplay Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Ph Rodrigo Prieto, Pro Des Sarah Greenwood, Ed Nick Houy, Music Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, Costumes Jacqueline Durran, Sound Tobias Poppe, Dan Kenyon and Ai-Ling Lee, Dialect coaches Sarah Shepherd, Helen Ashton and Courtney Young.
Heyday Films/LuckyChap Entertainment/NB/GG Pictures/Mattel Films-Warner Bros.
113 mins. USA/UK. 2023. UK and US Rel: 21 July 2023. Cert. 12A.
