The film revolves around, well, Barbie, played by the gorgeous and talented Margot Robbie, whose perfect world starts falling apart when thoughts of death and an identity crisis forces her to journey to the real world. Where she realizes that, unlike what the Barbie world felt they had done for humankind, the real world is still ruled by toxic masculinity and patriarchy, and that the whole ‘women-rule-the-world’ was just a clever ruse by men to continue to stay in power. Infected by the same, Ken (again a good performance by Ryan Gosling) brings patriarchy back to Barbie world, which crumbles easily and completely. This triggers the rest of the story where Barbie, helped by real-world mom Gloria (American Ferrera, of TV series Super Store fame) and her daughter Sasha (played by Ariana Greenblatt, seen in Netflix’s Awake) join hands with the other Barbies (led by weird Barbie, Kate McKinnon), and hatch a plan to use male ego and vain power-hunger against them, taking back control of the world, restoring ‘perfection’ once again.
The film felt a little bit like The Matrix, if given a choice of the red pill and the blue pill by Morpheus, Trinity would have stepped forward and chosen the hidden option of the pink pill, giving Neo no option but to tag along with her into a confusing and supposedly enlightening trip across wonderland. Like The Matrix, the film clearly argues against taking the blue pill and going back to living comfortably in our gender-imbalanced world, not acknowledging the troubled reality of our social and political structure. That, we wholeheartedly support and cheer for. BUT, unlike The Matrix, the film doesn’t promote taking the red pill either, which would have forced us to “feel” the grossly unequal and toxic world through an emotional ride into what we see around us, making us take a stand and putting up a fight to change the world for the better. INSTEAD, the film pushes the pink pill, which settles at a moral science textbook lesson for two hours, given by the various characters in the film. As a result, we walk out of the theatre, feeling lectured to, rather than being empathetically immersed in what could have been an emotional story of a genius idea - using arguably one of the most controversial-feminist icons to tell a feminist story.
Not to take away from the fact that there are some powerful moments in the film. The opening scene with little girls being saved by Barbie, from their house-house games sets a powerful ambition for the movie. The scenes with the brilliant Will Ferrel, as the CEO of Mattel, embodying the hypocrisy of a society that claims we are living in a more gender-equal world today. The moment when Barbie realizes that it was Gloria, the mother, who used to play with Barbie, not her daughter, who has become a too-smart-for-her-boots teenager. The scenes where Ken is confused but excited to see patriarchy ruling in the real world, wonderfully emoted by Gosling. The forgotten Mattel models in Allan and other Barbies. The many jokes on its own self as a movie made by Mattel’s marketing department. (“Thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism have been solved”). And many priceless and moving dialogues throughout the film, especially Gloria’s monologue on how it is literally impossible to be a woman. And others like “When I found out patriarchy wasn’t about horses, I lost interest anyway” (Ken), or “"We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back and see how far they have come” (Ruth, creator of Barbie). Through all these moments, we are cheering the heart and the intention and the purpose of this film. And we are shouting to Barbie “You go, girl” all through. And oh ya, the soundtrack is great too.
And, believe me, I totally understand the need to spell out F-E-M-I-N-I-S-M, letter by letter, word by word, lecture by lecture, issue by issue, because it’s such a big challenge in our society that people just don’t get it even after 50 years of the revolution. But, change comes when people act, and action comes from emotions. Unless we feel what Barbie is going through when her perfect world crumbles, and why Ken falls into the patriarchy trap, still ending up miserable, and how they together feel when they build a happy ending, we will never act, we will never change.
On the whole, a great act of activism for a cause that we all support and rally behind, and at best a brilliant marketing ploy by Mattel, but beyond that, I must say, it didn’t move my cheese.
But then, I’m just a Ken, what do I know!
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