Hi, Barbie!
My review of the Barbie movie
***This post may contain spoilers so stop reading if you haven’t seen the Barbie movie yet.***
I’m rather late to the Barbie party but I finally got a chance to watch it and… I loved it! I loved it so much I bought it. It is definitely a flick for those of us who were in the Barbie cult growing up. The movie is epic- exactly how I would hope a Barbie movie would be.
Sixty seconds in, grinning ear to ear at the pink explosion on the screen, I couldn’t stop yelling in excitement at all the details… the car! The slide! The swing! The milk! The hairbrush! Seeing the Barbie outfits on a real life Barbie was like a dream come true. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are perfectly cast and I will be shocked if they aren’t nominated for Best Actress/Supporting Actor.
Okay, okay, so I get that not everyone has liked it as much as I have. I’ve heard people complain the dialogue is simple and boring. It is. But there’s a reason. Hearing the exaggerated round of “Hi, Barbie!” and “Hi, Ken!” instantly transported me back to the 1980s… there I am as a young girl leaning over the dolls in my hands as my circle of friends and I (or with my dad, who was my main Barbie-playing friend) try to think of a storyline for our role playing session. Fixing Barbie’s hair into a perfect pony, what else can one think of than the effort-less, light-hearted greeting to buy some time as our imaginations wake up?
Some people don’t get the song and dance sequence. It may seem out of place but as the sequins shimmied on the screen, I laughed loudly, recalling the many times my Barbies had a random talent competition like what I had seen on Star Search. And like in the movie, every night was Girls Night.
Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, seems to get a lot of people riled up. There have been posts on social media about how the movie emasculates men. That it makes men look shallow or like jerks. And why does Ken worship Barbie? Why is that what he lives for?
I only owned two Ken dolls (because what do you do with Ken?) but can say without a doubt I played with them the exact way they were depicted in the film. It is the ultimate supporting role- to support Barbie. What a concept! Ken was in love with her rather than himself (until he goes to the Real World, anyway) and Ken was around if she needed him; maybe the Kens would get in a jealous feud, but mostly, he was there to honour his Queen.
I can understand some people just don’t ‘get’ the film. Sure, a lot of kids threw around their Barbies like they were ‘just another stupid doll’ but for me, playing Barbies was a way to escape into a world of make-believe. It was a way to play out an episode of One Life to Live or Golden Girls. A way to process everyday things, and a way for me to pretend that I could, for a few hours a day, create the world I wanted to live in. Barbieland was for Barbie. There was nothing that needed to interfere with or control that; no competition, no judgment. It was a place to just be.
I was a very lonely child. I often had my Barbies live together as a family of sisters who relied on each other when times were tough and also had fun going out together. It was a way for me to comfort myself when no one else could. I always wanted a big family, so in Barbieland I had one. Sometimes my Barbie was the CEO of a company and other times she was the owner of a hair salon. Sometimes she was a mum and sometimes she was an author. Most of the time, she was just there. Existing.
Around the age of 12, real life filtered into the make-believe life and Barbie didn’t quite fulfil the much deeper yearnings for connection and meaning like she used to. It was time to put the Barbies away. None of my friends were playing with them anymore. Instead of fantasising about Michael J Fox, I was now noticing boys in my own class. My emotions were all over the place as hormones fluctuated and writing became my creative outlet for all the feels. That was it- it was time to grow up and be part of the real world.
The Barbie movie showed that transition so perfectly… the conflict of going from a child to pre-teen and how hard it is to know what’s next. There is a scene toward the end between Barbie and Ruth Handler (Barbie inventor) that pulled on my heartstrings as (spoiler) Barbie decides she’s done with Barbieland and is ready for more. Ruth explains to her, what comes next is about finding purpose.
That very human developmental change in life is often overlooked. It’s just “part of life” moving from childhood to adulthood. But having to move from the safety and security of our imaginations to the uncertainty and instability of real life is absolutely terrifying and is in itself, a loss. The Barbie movie depicts this beautifully, even touching on the physical changes (“ideas stay forever but our bodies not so much”) and the reality that our bodies, like the rubber legs on Barbie, also develop cellulite and cracks as it ages and bends, eventually becoming useless. But the spirit lives on.
It’s not necessarily a new concept to see that in a Blockbuster hit, but what is new and what makes this movie so great is that it’s a good reminder to cherish the ideas from make-believe to reality, to sit with the process of uncertainty, to never forget how to play, and to remember what a gift it is to hold onto that sweet, authentic innocence of youth through the hard, confronting changes of adulthood that we lived but perhaps never really felt.
5/5 stars from me, Barbie!