Barbie (2023)
Directed by Greta Gerwig
Barbie and Ken are having the time of their lives in the colorful and seemingly perfect world of Barbie Land. However, when they get a chance to go to the real world, they soon discover the joys and perils of living among humans.
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But because the marketing campaign has been so clever and so ubiquitous, you may discover that you’ve already seen a fair amount of the movie’s inspired moments, such as the “2001: A Space Odyssey” homage and Ken’s self-pitying ‘80s power ballad.
The film opens with a homage to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey .
It opens, of course , with an homage to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
That 2001: A Space Odyssey reference from the first teaser trailer is no less amusing in the film itself, when it introduces the viewer to a monolithic version of the toy, before thrusting us into the technicolor world of Barbieland.
With Helen Mirren providing the narration (including a fourth-wall-breaking aside midway through the film that kills), “Barbie” begins with a prologue proving there’s still some original humor to be mined from paying homage to “2001: A Space Odyssey” as we see little girls reacting with great, um, enthusiasm to the arrival of Barbie, who pretty much breaks the mold when it comes to dolls.
Barbie begins with a brilliant scene (also the film’s first teaser) that illustrates the arrival of the Barbie doll as akin to Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking science fiction epic, 2001: A Space Odyssey .
Barbie deliriously draws inspiration from a wide range of cinematic sources, with references to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg , Groundhog Day , The Matrix , Toy Story , and, most hilariously, The Godfather .
It’s here, too, that Gerwig and Baumbach have scripted some of the funniest, most incisive, laugh-out-loud jokes in film this year, referencing everything from Matchbox Twenty to The Godfather to The Snyder Cut .
Along the way, Gerwig and Baumbach find both humor and nuance in everything from mini-fridges to the Matchbox Twenty hit “Push,” the male urge to explain “The Godfather” to the Supreme Court, the limits of modern feminism to neon-bright Rollerblades.
Now favoring a faux fur coat that makes him look like a surfer pimp, he moves into Barbie's Dreamhouse and reduces the whole Barbie line to subservient, man-obliging nitwits who don’t mind pretending to enjoy a mansplained screening of The Godfather.
Sin lugar a dudas el último acto de la epopeya es el mejor porque ahí la directora afloja un poco con el sarcasmo permanente y hoy caduco de posicionamiento de marca a lo La Gran Aventura Lego ( The Lego Movie , 2014), de Phil Lord y Christopher Miller, y Super Mario Bros.: La Película ( The Super Mario Bros. Movie , 2023), opus de Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, Pierre Leduc y Fabien Polack, e impone un enfrentamiento bastante simpático entre hembras y machos que implica una semi revolución de Ken y los suyos -distintas caras pero todos llamados Ken- contra el contingente de Barbies en cuestión -asimismo con rostros diferentes pero respondiendo al mismo nombre- como si se tratase de una versión remozada y fantástica de la screwball comedy o comedia alocada de lucha de sexos de los años 30 y 40, aunque en esta oportunidad filtrándolo todo desde la efervescencia del cine picaresco de los 60, 70 y 80. Gerwig se esfuerza demasiado por presentarnos una especie de blockbuster intelectual o simplemente a…
Barbie deliriously draws inspiration from a wide range of cinematic sources, with references to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg , Groundhog Day , The Matrix , Toy Story , and, most hilariously, The Godfather .
Written by Gerwig and her partner Noah Baumbach, “Barbie” boasts a joyously wry self-awareness akin to the “Lego Movies,” taps into childhood innocence a la “Toy Story,” plus goes deep weaving in actual Barbie history.
Pulling from such inspirations as “The Truman Show” and “Toy Story,” Gerwig — who co-wrote the script with Noah Baumbach — plunges her heroine into an existential crisis brought on by a dimly perceived real world that is encroaching on her plastic, reassuringly monotonous idyll.
After Mattel, they find the culprit: America Ferrara, playing a frustrated feminist whose young daughter is giving away her toys a la “Toy Story.”
This is a clever take on growing up as seen through the point of view of the doll itself, like Toy Story and The Lego Movie.
This is never more apparent than when the toy, depicted as a human, despite still being an inanimate object being played with by a child (this “Toy Story”-like notion might have worked better if animated), repeats its idyllic life over and over, in which women hold all the positions of power – and their governance has surely led to equal rights and happiness for all.
Barbie deliriously draws inspiration from a wide range of cinematic sources, with references to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg , Groundhog Day , The Matrix , Toy Story , and, most hilariously, The Godfather .
The movie’s jokes and visual cues often borrow from cinematic classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Matrix; these are usually jokes, but the latter makes for an apt comparison, given its own meta-textual sequel a few years ago.
Such examples include Jumanji and Heat , The Matrix and 10 Things I Hate About You and The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia! It’s really only the latter example (complete with also featuring a Christopher Nolan movie) that comes vaguely close to capturing the sort of genre/color palette dichotomy that Barbie and Oppenheimer do.
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Through nods to a kaleidoscopic list of cinematic references (their screenplay is The Red Shoes -meets- The Truman Show , through a Barbie-fied lens) and Robbie’s truly versatile performance, Barbie ’s biting cultural commentary works in both small doses and big swings.
Pulling from such inspirations as “The Truman Show” and “Toy Story,” Gerwig — who co-wrote the script with Noah Baumbach — plunges her heroine into an existential crisis brought on by a dimly perceived real world that is encroaching on her plastic, reassuringly monotonous idyll.
Interestingly, The Truman Show plays a role in inspiring the film’s lighting when audiences are watching Barbie Land.
From there, we’re plunged into Barbieland, a self-contained, Day-Glo-colored world that is so cheerfully artificial it makes the town in “The Truman Show” seem downright gritty.
This bleeding of stark reality into an obsessively engineered fantasy calls to mind the revelations of “The Truman Show” and “The LEGO Movie,” but through a wry prism that’s specifically Gerwig’s.
With a screenplay as much of a misfire as we have here, no one could make it work, despite all the frantic attempts to enliven the action with elaborate musical numbers (including one that recalls classic-Hollywood-musical ballets à la Singin’ in the Rain ).
But there’s only one Greta Gerwig and if any director could convince a major studio to fork over a truckload of cash and disguise a movie based on the world’s most instantly recognizable doll as a thoughtful (and rollicking) meditation on gender norms, what it means to be a human, and fragile masculinity while also doubling as an homage to “An American in Paris” and “Singin’ in the Rain” (complete with dream ballets!) it would be her.
If one threw Playtime , The Umbrellas of Cherbourg , Singin’ in the Rain , Sabrina , Young Frankenstein , and Josie and the Pussycats into a blender and poured the contents into a glass, it’s likely that the pink-colored concoction would look a lot like Greta Gerwig’s Barbie .
Barbie is still very much a Gerwig movie — the ending in particular recalls what she did with Little Women — but in a way that suggests Gerwig and her co-writer and husband, Noah Baumbach, embarked on a writing exercise as a lark.
In some ways, Barbie builds on themes Gerwig explored in Lady Bird and Little Women .
Much like her 2019 version of “Little Women,” the filmmaker has taken a cultural touchstone of many young girls’ lives and created something entirely new and distinctly her own.
In a brilliant monologue, Gloria shares just how impossible it is to be a woman, and it’s here that the startling combination of melancholy and warmth that was so present in Lady Bird and Little Women in particular creeps back in.
On the whole, “Barbie” may look rather broad and superficial compared to Gerwig’s two previous works “Lady Bird” (2017) and “Little Women” (2019), but it has enough spirit and humor for our entertainment at least.
Arthouse director/co-writer Greta Gerwig (the superb “Lady Bird” and “Little Women”) and co-writer Noah Baumbach (“Marriage Story“) have churned out a smug tale that doesn’t boast a single sympathetic character.
Barbie deliriously draws inspiration from a wide range of cinematic sources, with references to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg , Groundhog Day , The Matrix , Toy Story , and, most hilariously, The Godfather .
If one threw Playtime , The Umbrellas of Cherbourg , Singin’ in the Rain , Sabrina , Young Frankenstein , and Josie and the Pussycats into a blender and poured the contents into a glass, it’s likely that the pink-colored concoction would look a lot like Greta Gerwig’s Barbie .
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Pop culture references and riffs help to incessantly poke fun at itself, generating a self-aware sense of humor that maintains an aloof strangeness; unlike in the similarly patterned “Enchanted,” the merger of fantasy and reality here provides uncomfortable revelations about toxic masculinity, consumerism, a warped sense of body image due to unachievable dimensions, self-esteem issues, objectification, and identity crises, among other serious subjects.
What follows next when these two doll figures arrive in LA is not so different from what Amy Adams’ fairy tale princess character experiences in “Enchanted” (2007).
This fish-out-of-water premise calls to mind Ferrell’s Elf , not to mention Enchanted .
Barbie deliriously draws inspiration from a wide range of cinematic sources, with references to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg , Groundhog Day , The Matrix , Toy Story , and, most hilariously, The Godfather .
But what might have been an interesting Groundhog Day setup about reliving the same day over and over is instead externalized, as the rough-handled Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) tells Robbie’s character that it’s actually a child who is playing with her in the real world who is having the issues.
The blissful repetition of the same wonderful day lived over and again, like a daydream version of Groundhog Day , is brutally interrupted when our primary Barbie (Robbie) is suddenly struck by thoughts of death.