Barbie review: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling's film is smart, funny and very woke

Trust Greta Gerwig reverses an age-old narrative over its head and makes a clever commentary on it. In Barbie, Greta and her husband Noah Baumbach, who serves as the co-writer of the film, take the iconic doll and its manufacturer Mattel in a satire that not just questions patriarchy but misogyny, societal stereotypes, and more. The end result is woke - sometimes too woke for good - a story that packs in humour, and fun in a Barbie world. 

Margot Robbie plays the stereotypical Barbie living the perfect life in Barbie land. Life in this land is pink, perfect and very plastic. The land has Barbie as president (Issa Rae), all the 12 seats in Supreme Court are taken up by Barbie, Barbies win Nobel Prize and basically run the show. The Kens on the other hand just exist. 

Trouble starts when Barbie (Robbie) has an existential crisis one night and the next morning things begin to malfunction. Her feet are no longer arched, she has a patch of cellulite visible and she is thinking of death. On the behest of other Barbies, she visits the Weird Barbie (Kate McKninon) who tells her that she needs to visit the real world and meet the person who is playing with her in order to get things back to how they were. 

Barbie embarks on a journey to the real world and Ken (Ryan Gosling) comes along. When the two reach the real world, they are of course in for a shock. While Barbie finally understands the term male gaze and is uncomfortable at being constantly gazed at, Ken discovers patriarchy and horses. He also realises that his abs grab eyeballs more in the real world than it ever got in Barbie land. 

Ken heads back almost immediately to Barbie land to mirror it in accordance with the real world. Barbie on the other hand meets Gloria (America Ferrera) in the real world and discovers that it is because of her that she has been experiencing all the doubts in her head.

Gloria is a working mother who works with Mattel, as a clerk. Mattel, the original manufacturer of the iconic doll has all men heading the place with Will Ferrel leading the organisation. Trouble ensues when Will and his men chase Barbie in order to put her back in a box and fix things like they were. Meanwhile, Barbie takes Gloria and her teenage daughter to Barbie land to show how perfect the land is but is for a shock to discover that Ken has replicated the real world there with Barbies playing domesticated side aids to Kens.

 
Entirely satirical, the film then becomes a battle of sexes where first Barbie has the upper hand and Ken suffers from an identity crisis and then the tables turn until a human (in this case Gloria) jolts Barbie out of her doom and urges her to take control of the Barbie land. 

With several references to pop culture, Barbie is truly Meta. Here the head of Mattel talks of dolls and business and little girls in between getting tickles from his colleagues - all dressed in corporate suits. The story has dolls being perceived as humans on several occasions and humans themselves transporting to doll land in order to fix things or maybe delve deeper into inner conflicts. It's the thin line that Greta very skillfully treads on with the film's narrative. Where everything is plastic and fake and yet very real. 

The jokes land more in the first half of the film and Gosling and Simu Liu (also just a Ken) share a crackling chemistry as competitors of Barbie's attention. In fact, Gosling gets a meaty role to play. Not just beefed up, but Gosling is so self-assured in his version of the self-obsessed, brawny Ken that it's a delight to watch him on screen. His is a tougher role than Robbie's and it could have been totally over the top but Gosling plays it with absolute ease- making Ken tragic and comical. Robbie as stereotypical Barbie is just as good but her character arc is far less than Gosling's and hence the scope to show her talent is also limited. 

Greta and Baumbach though constantly remind the viewer that it's a satire and by the second half, some of the jokes don't quite land the way they should. It becomes too woke by the end of it and pink and the plastic then gets on to you. 

The sets are praiseworthy and the makers also bring in nostalgia by showing some of the discontinued dolls in the Barbie land. There is Midge, a pregnant Barbie, there is growing up Skipper, whose bosom increased every time someone lifted her arms and Sugardaddy Ken. Some of the Barbie sets and dreamhouses also are incorporated in the film - giving it the authentic Barbie look. 

I would still say that the film very smartly shows how society is and humanises the iconic doll. For decades Barbie has been one of the most popular toys for young girls, setting unrealistic standards of beauty. Sure, Mattel has reinvented the doll and made every girl believe that they can be whatever they want to be - just like their favourite doll, but the narrative of everything being overtly perfect has also done damage to several. Greta, in that sense, spins the narrative and adds a layer of cynicism to Barbie land to show how things are in real. Flawed, depressed, and definitely not perfect- even though the plastic remains constant. 

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