A Barbie movie review for sleeping MenfolkTM.

Spoilers included, cuz I know y'all don't wanna risk waking up.

Originally it was my plan to write a Barbie movie review for the people who might actually, ya know, want to watch it. I was writing to my people, the ones who love Barbie, even some of the folks who hate to love her, who would shell out the dough to go see this icon make her big screen debut in what was sure to be a subversive romp through every shade of pink known to man. Er, woman.

But, I really don’t need to do that. The people flocking to the theater are giddy to share their love for this new classic, and renewed love of the old one. Barbie opened to a whopping $162M, effectively clobbering Oppenheimer by eight figures, despite the clever campaign to make the two vastly different movies a double feature.

I chose to just see the happy sparkly pink girly movie, saving the heavier more historical foray into the world of nuclear weapons and war for another day.

I went with my Girl Squad, all millennials, two being new moms and one about to be married. After some decades on the planet, we have some idea of how the current cultural climate regards us as women. We’re not men haters; we’re all coupled to men and three of the four of us are Boy Moms.

But are we realistic to know how the patriarchy can suck when you’re under its foot from birth?

Yes. Yes, we are.

We knew from the trailer that there would be tongue-in-cheek humor about Barbie, girlhood and womanhood, and the worlds we find ourselves navigating. I expected something along the lines of The Lego Movie, which I ended up liking much more than I thought I would, even though I didn’t play with these toys as a child.

I hoped this would hold true for Barbie, as I was a Barbie girl from the time I was eight years old. The self-referential humor in the trailer itself made me laugh out loud, in that IYKYK kinda way. I got it. My husband was clueless. It kind of made me like it more. It’s fun to be in on the joke. It makes it special. It makes it mine. I knew that going into the movie, which was what made it an opening-weekend must with the girls, with theme outfits besides.

I’m happy to report for those of us shelling out $162M, Barbie delivers everything we expected and then some. Is it a perfect movie? Actually, it’s a glorious, beautiful, loveable, deeply layered mess of pure genius.

I identified hard with it.

Not only did it clobber the competition at the box office, it survived opening weekend certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with a score of 90% critics and 90% audience, and maintains in the mid-to-high 80s even WITH MenfolkTM downgrading it with one-star reviews when I know damn well some of them haven’t bothered to see the movie, even if they did, you know, watch it.

Has anyone checked on Ben Shapiro? Has he recovered yet? Poor little vulnerable dear. I heard he was so insensed he had to light a Barbie on fire.

The people who would like this movie do like this movie. It’s a love letter back to all the little kids who played with, and dreamed with, Barbie from childhood. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m one of the ones it even made cry.

But, as always, haters gonna hate. People have hated on Barbie since her inception, none of this is new. I have to chuckle when I see the dire warnings from the MenfolkTM who are suddenly very concerned that a product that they shunned for more than sixty years as being too girly is now suddenly going to bring this new wave of misandry, toxic femininity and wokeness.

Where have y’all been? Asleep, I guess.

Funny how not only weren’t they much concerned with how women were portrayed by all male filmmakers selling movies to men AS WELL AS TO WOMEN THEMSELVES, none of these fellas worried about these things until we pointed out the problems with misogyny and toxic masculinity. Now they want to throw a hat in the ring to “yes, but” us that they are equally mistreated.

Spoiler alert: they’re not.

And before anyone gets their manly shorts in a twist, I’m not saying women can’t suck and men can’t be hurt by the actions of women on interpersonal levels. Socially speaking, however, y’all are still in the driver’s seat, culturally, socially, politically and economically.

Hence why nobody even blinks if a man writes the majority of all content, even movies marketed for women.

Looking at you Nicholas Sparks.

But when we women produce content for ourselves, lawd almighty do y'all take it personal.

To wit:

A drama about an important man in history can come in a distant second to a frilly pink girly fest, and entertainment mags will twist themselves into a pretzel to spout the ways it beat all its expectations for opening weekend, when it still didn’t make back its budget. I’m sure it will, eventually, but a movie about a doll makes back its budget (and then some) on its opening weekend AND was directed by a girl, and a dude is literally burning dolls in protest.

It’s not enough that you have the lion’s share of the box office and all big summer releases usually created for young adult males, but y’all have to crap on the few big movies we do get when we finally get them. Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, the new Star Wars sequels - if it is fronted by a woman and expected to or actually does make big $$, suddenly MenfolkTM are worried about the state of things for the menz… as if they haven’t had the majority of EVERY single blockbuster from EVERY single year of EVERY single decade since the notion of a blockbuster began and never once - NOT ONCE - have wondered how that shapes the existance of women.

Ah, the irony.

To quote Taylor - the other female powerhouse currently raking in copious of money with her epic Eras tour - y’all need to calm down. Just because there was one Barbie movie doesn’t mean you won’t have Mission Impossible 12 or Fast and the Furious 27.

Yes, I’m being absurd to make a point, but that’s kind of the point of Barbie.

It does have a message, and no, it isn’t MeN sUcK. The more I think about it, the more genius the storytelling becomes, because not only does Greta Gerwig take aim at the patriarchy, but she also takes aim at how we view the patriarchy itself. While it does make timely, culturally significant points in its gleefully absurd satire, there are no sacred cows in this movie, Barbie included.

Therefore, I decided that the best use of a review would be for the detractors, with spoilers because y’all know they will never darken the theater with the Pink Posse out in full force.

I went to see it again the second weekend, the wave of pink worn by both men AND women was even more gratifying. MenfolkTM hoping it would have some massive drop-off might be surprised this movie looks to have legs, long, glorious, bendable legs, that look to top $1 Billion (with a B) by week 3. Turns out their hysterics are actually making people on the fence about going to see this movie buy more tickets, so on behalf of Greta, Margot, Ryan and The SisterhoodTM, thank you for that.

Keep yelling. It’s working.

Greta opens up the movie with a nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey, in a very tongue-in-cheek narrative about the origin of Barbie herself. And yes, I did get the reference. Unlike MenFolkTM, who can decide whether or not to watch a girly movie, guy movies are like I said, the default/standard, so we do watch them. (The Godfather included.)

This opening scene is hilariously ridiculous and doesn’t bother to take itself too seriously as she sets the rules for the world of Barbie we’re about to enter, in that Barbie came along to teach little girls they can be more than just one thing: mothers to children. Instead, they can be fully realized women who could have any career they want and the life they want, and be glam as hell doing it. In doing so, the Barbies in Barbieland believe that they have cured the Real World of all its ills and empowered women to create the lives of their dreams where they are treated equally, fairly and all problems of feminism are resolved.

Ha, ha. That’s the joke. Get it?

Barbieland is a pink paradise tailor-made for the icon. Everything in her world is meant to keep her having the best days ever. A Barbie is president (Issa Raye, sure to make even more of a certain type of man’s head explode *cough* Ben *cough*) and Barbies sit on their Supreme Court. There are Nobel-prize-winning Barbies, who accept the accolades with a big smile, in full acknowledgement of their greatness without a hint of any demure, self-effacing humility.

That’s another joke. Get it?

We get to meet the other residents of Barbieland, which is essentially a bunch of Barbies and Kens in every variety, as well as one pregnant Midge and one lonely Allan (played by Michael Cera.) These two dolls never caught traction in the Real World and thus, are equally maligned in Barbieland.

It’s meta humor. IYKYK it’s funny.

It is a Barbie world made of plastic, that really is quite fantastic. While the Kens don’t occupy any seat of government or any of the glamorous Dreamhouses, they’re pretty happy preening for Barbie, living to catch the eye of their favorite doll since that, of course, was why they were made.

That’s part of the joke, fellas. They are all portrayed as himbos because that was the actual purpose of the Ken doll. He was created after Barbie, for the sole purpose of looking handsome on her arm as she lives her extraordinary life. He serves as another fabulous accessory. There is no Ken Dreamhouse, Ken car, Ken occupational playset where he gets to teach, work, or accomplish anything. These things do not exist.

Maybe if you let your boys play with dolls, that would be different. But as long as girls run Barbie World, he’s there to prop our girl.

Again, that’s part of the joke about Barbie Culture, which is portrayed in Barbieland as if some invisible little girls are pulling the strings. All the action is driven like actual doll play. For boys that never played with dolls, this type of humor might be off-putting. But IYKYK, and it’s funny.

I have to say, Ryan Gosling chews the hell out of the scenery with his particular brand of Kenergy. Unlike Chris Hemsworth’s Ghostbusters himbo, Ryan’s Ken is a fascinating caricature through which Greta shines an interesting light regarding masculinity, even if all he can really offer are some six pack abs and the ability to Beach.

What drives him is what he really wants - Stereotypical Barbie’s attention, which she’d rather spend on Girl’s Night every night because everything in her life is perfect.

At first.

During the rousing Saturday Night Live inspired dance party (which included a glorious mosaic of diversity in the Barbies that was sadly lacking from my childhood options,) something weird happens to our bubbly, happy protagonist… she begins to think about death. An existential crisis is anything but Stereotypical, which brings the dance party to a screeching halt.

From then on, Stereotypical Barbie begins to malfunction. With this conflict introduced into the plot, we now have a movie… rather than one long, and expensive, Mattel commercial.

Because Stereotypical Barbie is no longer perfect, she is advised to go visit Weird Barbie, perfectly portrayed by Kate McKinnon, who brings to life the Barbie all little kids had hidden in their toy box. The reason ultimately given was that she was “played with too hard,” but I think it’s because the little girls and boys who owned her just wanted yet another avenue of self-expression that bucked tradition and defied the norm. We didn’t have a lot of options back then, remember? In our hands, Weird Barbie has become deliciously alternative. She’s sardonic, she’s blunt, and she’s decidedly, hilariously weird with zero apology.

Weird Barbie informs Stereotypical Barbie that Real World complications have infiltrated their world because a portal has been opened. Therefore to close it, she must go into the Real World, find the child having all these imperfect thoughts and fix it. Barbie doesn’t want to go, of course. She doesn’t want to change. She wants her perfect pink life. But, sadly, that’s no longer an option. If she doesn’t fix the issue with her RW child, not only will she keep her flat feet and cellulite, she’s on a fast track to becoming just like Weird Barbie.

Needless to say, Stereotypical Barbie changes her tune and heads to the Real World to secure the pink happy perfection of Barbieland lickety-split.

Ken decides that this is his moment to show her that he’s more than some superfluous prop and stows away in her pink car to aid her in her quest.

It is once they hit the Real World that really kicks the social commentary into gear, because Stereotypical Barbie AND Ken are about to be introduced to the PatriarchyTM, to varying results.

Both are stunned to learn that the men are in charge in the Real World, even over women things. (All the corporate officers of Mattel: men. That’s the joke. Get it?)

For Barbie, this is baffling. For Ken, this is revolutionary.

And this, Dear Reader, is where the message hits genius new depths that is only “woke” if you happen to have been asleep to the realities of gender politics in our society.

Ken became empowered by the Real World, because he finally felt seen. Heard. Valued. He gleans from the PatriarchyTM that this is by virtue of him being a man, to hilarious results. He walks into Corporate America asking to get a job, thinking he could walk right up to the top. He goes into a hospital, thinking he could get a white coat and clicky pen and perform an appendectomy. He even tries to Beach, but learns he actually has to swim and save folks to be a life guard, not just stand on the sand and look pretty.

Every way he attempts to establish power is hilariously thwarted, of course, because he has no actual skills to back him up. He’s a himbo, after all, with the naive lack of intelligence to match.

That’s the joke, ha ha, but, it also shows that the PatriarchyTM has limitations for men, too. You don’t get a free ride because you’re a guy. You can still feel powerless and unfulfilled if you’re a dude, even when the society around you is built to your benefit. In this plot twist, Ken basically begins his own hero’s journey… in the middle of Barbie’s movie.

That’s the joke. GET IT??

When Barbie gets picked up by the Mattel people, Ken heads back to Barbieland on his own to tell them all what he’s learned.

Barbie, however, is a bit delayed when the Mattel MenFolkTM figure the only way they can fix her is by putting her back into a box.

(Another joke… get it?)

She escapes and ends up saved by a mother/daughter duo who have wildly different viewpoints on Barbie, the doll. The tween daughter (i.e., the younger generation) has a very harsh critique of Stereotypical Barbie, accusing her of setting back the feminist movement by decades, unrealistic body images and fascism.

The mother, however, has a nostalgic affection for Barbie and all she represents, even if she has started to color her in with all the complexities of being a grown woman. (Cellulite Barbie was her creation.)

It is then they realize Barbie wasn’t there to save Sasha, the daughter, but Gloria, the ordinary mom who is dog-tired of a reality that has no place for her to just be, well, ordinary.

There’s an old saying that a woman has to work twice as hard to be considered half as a good as a man. The joke ends with “Fortunately, it’s not that hard.” The reality is that shit is exhausting.

So, Gloria and Sasha end up going back to Barbieland with Barbie to fix things, as it was kinda Gloria’s fault everything went sideways.

Unfortunately, Barbieland doesn’t look like it used to. Ken has enlightened everyone to the PatriarchyTM, and there has been a Ken uprising. They want the Dreamhouses, the cars, the jobs, the power. And they’ve somehow convinced the other Barbies to give it to them, even if it was to their detriment.

That’s the joke. Get it?

By now, Stereotypical Barbie has lost everything. She’s ready to give up because to her, it seems pointless to go forward. She’d rather wait around for one of the more ‘leadership’ oriented Barbies to snap out of it and fix things. She convinces Gloria and her daughter Sasha to return to the Real World without her, which they decide is all there is left to do. The much maligned Allan attempts to stow away with them, allowing Michael Cera to chew some scenery himself as a much more capable and accomplished male character than any of the Kens demonstrated.

Another joke. Get it??

The irony there, the man of substance gets overlooked for the picture-perfect himbos, which I do believe is a sentiment many actual guys can appreciate. Greta sees y’all too. Didn’t see that coming, did you?

Before Allan escapes to the Real World where he might stand a real chance, Sasha talks Gloria into returning to Barbieland to save Stereotypical Barbie. Allan is forced to come along for the next leg of the journey, which begins - of course - with Weird Barbie, who has come to the rescue of Stereotypical Barbie, now solidly in her Depression era.

Because of the humans in Barbieland, this impacts the Real World, where Kens now have Dreamhouses, er, Mojo Dojo Casa Houses, and new Depression Barbie is flying off the shelves. The Mattel MenfolkTM also infiltrate Barbieland to set it straight, in a very Keystone Cops kind of way.

Honestly, if I have one criticism of this movie, it is that the Mattel guys are typically unnecessary, and aside from a few well-placed quips, Will Farrell is fairly wasted. You could take them all out entirely and it wouldn’t affect anything, but it’s Mattel’s movie and guys (mostly) run it, so… we gotta put up with it.

Which… now that I think about it… might have been the joke.

Oooh, Greta. You are good.

Anyway…

Gloria, Sasha and Allan head to Weird Barbie’s house, where she and some other cancelled dolls try to reverse the new programming on Nobel Prize winning Barbie, reminding her she is more than just some prop for her Ken. Nothing breaks the new gaslighting they’re under… UNTIL Stereotypical Barbie tearfully confesses she doesn’t know who she is anymore if she’s not pretty/perfect. She’s not skilled. She’s not accomplished. She’s Margot Robbie pretty, and no longer feels pretty with the introduction of all her Real World imperfections.

**Important Message of Self-Worth Coming**

It is then that America Ferrera OWNS the movie as Gloria launches into a glorious diatribe about the impossibilities of being a woman. Along with all the Standards of WomanhoodTM are a litany of contradictions about being X but not TOO X. Women have all this power to do all this damage, apparently, but should make themselves small enough for a box made to contain an 11.5” doll.

I don’t expect MenfolkTM to get why this is so important. It’s not a message they receive on their wavelength, so it doesn’t usually register. But for women who are told from a young age we are not enough unless we’re doing something other than what they are doing, it hits pretty damn deep. It hits so deep, in fact, that it begins to deprogram the Barbies.

It is then that the Battle of the Genital-less Sexes really ramps up, as the converted Barbies begin to use their feminine wiles to outwit the clueless Kens who have just realized their persuasive power over their Barbies. Flattery, playing to the ego, playing the damsel in distress, all the tropes to manipulate the MenfolkTM come into play very effectively.

That’s the joke. Get it?

In the end they then turn the Kens on each other, who are not content to only have power over their Barbies, but then want to maintain their power against other men, which leads to a hilarious fight with absolutely no weapons because there are no weapons in Barbieland, even fire. (*cough* Ben *cough*)

This is another joke. You might not get it, though.

In the middle of this West Side Story dance-y, sing-y fight between all the Kens (which is where Ryan absolutely freaking SHINES - and I fell even more in love with that self-aware giddy smirk,) the Barbies vote to preserve their Constitution and regain all their power in delicious satire.

The only world where the PatriarchyTM is overturned is in a pink, plastic one, done by a bunch of dolls… and it only happens AFTER the Barbie-ocracy is first overturned by a Ken coup, one that turned the Barbie world upside down, where they lose their houses, their cars, their jobs and their status and exist only to serve their Kens.

(But guess which one pissed off/scared the MenfolkTM?)

ANYWAY…

Once order is restored, this still leaves a pretty big problem: Ken. He is back to being superfluous, only now he is self-aware. He takes one more stab at convincing Barbie they are meant to be, only she doesn’t feel the same way. He tells her he doesn’t know who he is without her, that it’s always been Barbie AND Ken. Our Stereotypical Barbie has grown enough to know that there is more to one’s identity than who you are to another person.

This is where Ken learns the lesson that women all over the Real World have learned; to find value in the self, rather than seeking validation from another person/relationship. In the end, he learns that he is Kenough… which is the only happy ending he needs.

A plastic boy doll took a flesh and blood woman’s journey. It was truly deeply layered and beautiful.

That still leaves Stereotypical Barbie bereft of her own Happy Ending. Enter Ruth Handler, Barbie’s creator and “Mother,” as portrayed by Rhea Perlman, who delivers the gut punch of the movie, in why she created Barbie and what she was supposed to represent, to Ruth’s daughter Barbara, and to girls everywhere. The realness of womanhood is found in the power of potential, limited only by a finite timeline.

In that moment, Barbie decides she wants to be real. Despite the complications, despite the PatriarchyTM, despite the complexities, despite the scary permanence of imperfection and change. Despite mortality, even. To do this, Ruth takes her hands in her own and tells her to “feel” what this choice really means.

What follows next still brings tears to my eyes, with a wonderful montage on the beauty and glory of womanhood and all that it encompasses, scored perfectly by Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?”

For a doll that we had always had such a one-sided love affair with, it was a moment of being seen. Being celebrated for everything we are, imperfections, complications and complexities and all. It was foreshadowed beautifully by a moment early on in the movie when Barbie sees that old woman at the bus stop.

“You’re so beautiful,” Barbie says, tearfully, seeing real women for the first time, really seeing us, in a way society forgets to.

We know.

Barbie had it all. Her dreamhouse. Her car. Her clothes. Her friends. Her validation. Her permanence of power in a female-dominated environment built solely for her happiness.

I cannot articulate how empowering it is when, in a culture where we are valued on impossible measures of perfection, an object of that impossible perfection would choose to be one of us.

So, you MenfolkTM out there who might worry about any misandry (which is defined as the dislike or contempt of men,) that wasn’t present in this movie, unless you take the satire in this movie seriously, which is just silly. Don’t be a snowflake, FFS. It was an absurd look at gender roles, often played for the joke, but it wasn’t in the least bit malicious. Tilting at the windmill of misogyny and the patriarchy isn’t the same thing as a contempt for men. Just like Ken tried to convey his powerlessness and frustration for being taken for granted, this female-driven narrative does likewise. We live in a culture dominated by men. They control the show politically, culturally and economically. The power structure is put in place to protect men while teaching women to fight each other against their own best interests.

Greta put a mirror against this bizarre imbalance using irony, satire and humor, often as if we were sitting on the floor playing with these dolls ourselves. The innocence of our childhood met the cynicism of our adulthood in a way that ultimately made us feel good.

It’s really kind of amazing.

Will it create a wave of “toxic femininity” and “wokeness”? Well, that depends on what you think toxic femininity is.

Is it toxic/WokeTM for women to decide what they like, how they think and how they live, independent of what others (including men) think they should?

Is it toxic/WokeTM for women to aspire to control their own existence and step into their power, full participants to their existence rather than just a pretty prop for someone else?

Is it toxic/WokeTM for them to acknowledge their greatness when they accomplish the amazing things that they do? Or simply live in the ordinary, without having to always impress the shit out of you to earn half the respect you get simply for existing?

Is it toxic/WokeTM for them to say no to a halfhearted relationship so that they can be happier and more fulfilled by the things they do and are, and not just the partner they date?

These are the messages of this movie. If you agree any of them are toxic or some derogatory brand of wokeness, replace “women” with “men” and ask yourself the questions again.

Ken learned all those same messages and ended up happier alone than a good-looking accessory for someone who was never going to love him.

This is the brilliance of this movie.

I’m almost sad so many of y’all are going to miss it.

But boy am I ever glad I didn’t. It was a love letter to people like me and about people like me, and it was beautiful. Millions of other people clearly feel the same. The only way it threatens your power is if your power depends on controlling what we can and can’t like/think or feel.

If anything outside of your narrow box could tear down your own Mojo Dojo Casa House, how powerful, really, can you - should you - be?

Put down the matches, Sid.

And learn to play nice.