Barbie

2023, PG-13, duration 1h 54m

⇒ continued from “Oppenheimer“:

Then I went to watch a Barbie day screening, choosing a quite empty theater earlier the week and luckily a seat in the back, as this show turned out to be sold out, too. Mainly kids and young females in the audience, the few males were the exception. Did I look suspicious as a middle-aged men when I was walking through in the front to reach my seat in the back? The outsider feeling dropped immediately when the movie started with a straight reference to Stanley Kubrick’s ”2001: Space Oddysey” from 1968, which the young audience surely has not seen before.

Barbie is, despite its superficial nature, quite atmospheric, multi-dimensionally structured and offers quite deep insights into society: Barbie Land, Barbie’s and Ken’s hometown, turns out to be a superficial and materialistid dystopia with Barbie and Ken’s doll characters as ultimately sexist caricatures. Surprisingly, Barbie does no longer notice what’s really going on.

This clear commercialism and the doll-related stereotypes come together a hilarious way and appear in surprising events, also in the real world, which creates a very deep, atmospheric, fun and ridiculous movie experience for the informed viewer. As a man, I particularly enjoyed the Ken doll (Ryan Gosling) on his exploration trip into the real world, resulting in the awakening of his identity during the adventure with Barbie (Margot Robbie). Even though Gosling has starred in quite a few different genres and also aged a bit, he really transforms into this doll. And nobody else would have been a better fit for Barbie than the doll-like, but attractive Margot Robbie.

Therefore this film is much better than I expected and whether young or older viewer, everybody will definitely get the most out of it. Yet one thing has to be noted, which is the K-7 marking (in Finland, otherwise PG-13), which really makes me wonder why. Because the film is timeless and it contains a really humanistic view, the human aspect of existentialism; it also points out gender roles and the themes of sexism. If you are not a fan of a movie that mixes comedy, singing, dancing, special effects and everything else possible, you should perhaps skip this one.

Summing up “Barbenheimer”:

If I had to choose which of those two movies of the day, Oppenheimer or Barbie, then Barbie will surely cause a bigger chain reaction.

Review: Jussi Raatikainen

Director – Greta Gerwig
Writers – Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach

Cast
Margot Robbie – Barbie
Issa Rae – Barbie
Kate McKinnon – Barbie
Ana Cruz Kayne – Barbie
Ritu Arya – Barbie
Dua Lipa – Barbie
Ryan Gosling – Ken
Simu Liu – Ken
Kingsley Ben-Adir – Ken
Ncuti Gatwa – Ken
John Cena – Ken
etc