Peter Viney's Blog

2023

Directed by Greta Gerwig
Screenplay by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach

CAST

• Margo Robbie – Barbie (aka ‘stereotypical Barbie’)
• Ryan Gosling – Ken (aka ‘Beach Ken’)
• Helen Mirren – narrator
• America Ferrara – Gloria
• Ariana Greenblat- Sasha
• Rhea Perlman – Ruth Handler
• Michael Cera – Allan
• Kate McKinnon – Weird Barbie
• Emma Mackay- Physicist Barbie
• Issae Rae- President Barbie
• Scott Evans – Stereotypical Ken
• Rob Brydon – Sugar Daddy Ken
• Ncuti Gatwa- Artist Ken
• Simu Liu – Rival Ken
• Connor Swindells – Aaron, a low grade Mattel employee
• Will Ferrell – Mattel CEO
• Ray Fearon – Dan of the FBI

I don’t think there were many or even any Barbies or Sindys in our house. We thought they were a touch dubious. That was reinforced in the early 80s. I was in Japan and wanted to buy a Japanese doll to take home for my daughter. I went to a department store with a Japanese colleague and found the toy department. My colleague asked for a Japanese doll, and they produced a classic blonde Barbie in a kimono. I said, ‘No, a Japanese doll.’ The two pretty dark haired assistants looked worried, ‘Yes. This is Japanese.’ So what did that blonde stereotype do to little girls all over the world? Well, I guess it sold a lot of hair dye.

When we started going to the USA regularly around 1987, we already knew Barbie was funny. We picked up a selection of Barbie comic postcards that we mounted in a frame and still have today. The cards used posed dolls with speech bubbles. They were assertively (aggressively?) girlie, and generally had Ken put-downs. There was much less pink than people remember.

Barbie was kitsch. Barbie and Ken were intrinsically funny. The cards emphasized that. I think back to my teenage youth club band. Our singer was named Ken and his girlfriend was Barbara. They got married. Did they suffer as I did from name combinations (my sister’s name is Wendy. Yes, Wendy and Peter.)

The film is an irony-fest. No, that’s an understatement. It’s more ironic than that. It looks gorgeous, the colour palette makes even Wes Anderson look dull. It’s blindingly bright.

It started development in 2014. Margo Robbie was cast in 2019. Much was filmed in the UK (hence the number of English actors), with exteriors at Venice Beach, LA.

It starts off with the film 2001 scene, to Also Sprach Zarathustra with little girls smashing other dolls, like the apes in 2001. Then Barbie appears in swimsuit: a goddess. The pitch has been set out.

We are in Barbie land, where the houses have no outside walls, where transport is a plastic pink Corvette with no engine (an old mid 50s Mark I Corvette too). There’s pink, rose pink, deep pink, pastel pink, shocking pink, and luminous pink. Barbieland is female run and they have prestige jobs … Physicist Barbie, Lawyer Barbie, Doctor Barbie.

The Kens spend their days at the beach (but as we see later pose as lifeguards, but can’t swim).

As Barbie declares, she has no vagina and Ken has no penis. Barbie pre-dates anatomically correct dolls. It’s fascinating that they cast three of the actors from Sex Education alongside Margo Robbie (Emma Mackey, Connor Swindells, Ncuti Gatwa). It’s also of note that the preceding Margo Robbie film was diametrically opposite: Babylon.

Barbie suddenly fears death, and becomes afflicted with the two worst things of all, halitosis and cellulite. Weird Barbie tells her she must find a doll in the real world playing with her toy Barbie to rid herself of fear and cellulite. Off she goes, but Beach Ken stows away in her car.

The “plot” sees Barbie and Ken  going off to human world, to find the girl, Sasha and her mom, Gloria, who works for Mattel. Aaron, the nerdy junior Mattel employee realises who she is. Connor Swindells is brilliant in the role.

Mattel, the toy makers are keen to recapture Barbie and put her back in a box with plastic twist holding ties. Yes, Mattel are lampooning themselves as baddies. And yes, they’ve sold a lot of plastic because of the movie.

Ken looks at the sexist, patriarchal males at Mattel and decides he wants some of this for himself and sets off back alone.

She is pursued back to Barbie land by the all-male board of directors. In her absence the Kens have taken over and transformed it to Ken land. No more slumber parties. The Barbies are forced into traditional submissive roles by the Kens.

Gloria and Sasha manage to restore the Barbies to their previous states while the Kens (in a superb dance sequence) fight among themselves. All is resolved.

Barbie meets the ghost of Ruth Handler, who created her for Mattel. She decides to return and become human. In human world, Gloria and Sasha escort her to her first gyneological appointment.

Adults love it. I really have my doubts about children. It is a 12. It is squarely beyond the pantomime area, laden with knowing ironic sections and jokes for the adults, but actually not enough for the under-12s. I think they aimed it fully at adults. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Some is too clever as when the Barbies (all the females are Barbies, all the males are Kens) protest that they shouldn’t have made Stereotypical Barbie so beautiful. Helen Mirren’s narrative voice over says, ‘So why did they cast Margo Robbie then?’

Take some quotes from the script:

Barbie’s not dead. She’s just having an existential crisis.

… the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman under the patriarchy …

Photoshop is too hard. I don’t understand how to use the Select tool, Skipper.

Still, an unmissable 2023 film. Tickets were close to £20 each at our local multiplex. We decided to wait. It’s now on DVD and blu ray. My daughter paid £15.99 to stream it. The blu-ray is £14.99. The DVD is £10.99. Why stream it?