Letterboxd
There is a lot to recommend this film. I had a few complaints. I felt it really pulled it together with the ending.
Things I liked:
- Loved the set pieces for Barbieland. Great design, cool aesthetic. I would love a VR world of Barbie (shouldn't be too hard as its mostly plastic and that is easier to render).
- Robbie & Gosling are very well cast here.
- Gosling is genuinely funny. The "himbo" is perhaps becoming a bit of a worn joke in film, but it still works.
- It was fun, well paced, and funny.
Things I was mixed on:
- I don't like the trope of saying something very fast to sound intelligent. It sounds like reciting from a book and I think is a lazy way of conveying a viewpoint without really letting the audience "learn" with you.
- For such a meta film, I felt it could have been a little more introspective. At one point Barbies says something along the lines of "I don't know where Ken sleeps". She then later on apologies to Ken for having "girls night" every night, but it would have been interesting if she had really seen some of the characteristics that she disliked in others in herself.
- All the Barbie dolls worked together, but I would have loved to watch them fight over their differences. I would have enjoyed seeing nuclear physics Barbie argue with President barbie about public policy.
I was solidly enjoying the film throughout, but I felt the ending was what actually brought it home for me. I am not 100% on this, but my personal reading was that perhaps Barbie chose to become human because she wanted to have children (the ultimate act of creation). I thought that was interesting as the film started off with little girls rejecting their baby dolls in favor of Barbie. Barbie being a sort of rejection of the maternal role, and our own Barbie perhaps interested in pursuing it? A bit of a full circle thing? I don't know. Maybe an admission that for most human beings, the act of creating more life is the most significant thing they do? That perhaps we should celebrate that in the same ways we celebrate wealth, success, power, and fame? I thought it was a great dismount for the film.