"Barbie" a fun, dazzling party with substance

Barbie (2023) 

Satire, slapstick, and…existentialism make up Greta Gerwig’s feminist Barbie. Wait, come back! It’s delightfully, sublimely silly as both a fish-out-of-water farce and a battle-of-the-sexes comedy. It’s a celebration of Ruth Handler’s Mattel doll as an aspirational model for little girls but also a critique and deconstruction of it. What writer-director Gerwig and co-writing husband Noah Baumbach come up with is so witty, ambitious, and much more thoughtful than many will be expecting, too. It’s like hiding a piece of kale in the middle of someone’s giant dish of pink champagne sherbet; either way, it’s hard to resist going down. 

As Helen Mirren’s droll, meta narration explains in a "2001: A Space Odyssey"-inspired prologue, Barbie allowed little girls in the Real World to play as astronauts, presidents, or whatever they wanted to be to feel powerful. Over in Barbieland, Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) “lives” the same perfect day every day. Every woman is a Barbie, except for the pregnant Midge (she was discontinued), and every man is a hunky Ken, except for Allan (a perfectly awkward Michael Cera). The Barbies run the world and live in a pink Dream House, including Issa Rae’s Madam President Barbie, and the Kens just like to “beach.” Ken (Ryan Gosling) isn’t much without Barbie, but Barbie doesn’t need Ken. Then once Barbie starts questioning her existence and she gets flat feet, she seeks help from Weird Barbie (a hysterically funny and appropriately weird Kate McKinnon). Barbie must journey to the Real World and find the human girl who’s been playing with her, while Ken tags along, only to discover that California men rule the world. Both of their trips to the Real World will change their thinking. 

Nobody puts Barbie in a box. Gerwig and Baumbach make that the metaphor for their celebration of womanhood in this consistently amusing, sometimes really sharp package that’s bursting with colors, ideas, pop culture references, sight gags, and clever double entendres, to the point that it might feel a little unwieldy. From the word go, however, Barbie is a dazzling miracle on a technical level, from the pastel-infused costume design to the vibrant, lovingly detailed production design in the grandly artificial Barbieland. The level of exuberant energy from the bright performances is so infectious, and it all starts with Margot Robbie. Read the full review at GuyAtTheMovies.com.

Grade: B +

Warner Bros. released "Barbie" (114 min.) in theaters on July 21, 2023.