Barbie

There are no bad days in Barbieland. Barbie wakes up in her dream house, floats down from the top floor straight to her car, and spends her time in a world where every Barbie is successful, confident, and—of course—important. Ken is there, too—especially when Barbie looks his way.

Barbie begins as a deliberately artificial fantasy made of plastic, pastel colors, and perfect choreography. Margot Robbie’s stereotypical Barbie lives exactly the life she was created for. She doesn’t have to be president, a doctor, a writer, or a Nobel Prize winner. Other Barbies have long since taken on those roles. Her own function is, essentially, to be Barbie. Until, right in the middle of a party, the thought of death suddenly comes up.

It’s a wonderfully incongruous statement in a world where the biggest problem is usually figuring out what to wear for the next event. But this throws Barbie’s world off balance. Changes to her body set in, certainties vanish, and Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon)—who has clearly been through a lot—sends her out into the real world to search for the cause. Ken (Ryan Gosling) accompanies her—at first mainly because, for him, everything becomes more interesting as soon as Barbie is around.

Barbie travels to a world where she assumes her very existence has made things a little better. In the same place, Ken discovers for the first time an environment where men hold a social significance that he lacks in Barbieland. Both see the same reality and take away completely different insights.

Margot Robbie has to play a character whose initial perfection is itself part of the joke. Her smile is spot-on, her movements fit into this flawless world, and her good mood needs no reason. Only minor irritations reveal that behind this surface there is actually someone capable of asking questions. Robbie shifts the character bit by bit, without suddenly turning Barbie into a completely different person. The naivety remains. Only her certainties no longer hold up.

Ryan Gosling gets to play a much louder role. At the beginning, his Ken defines himself almost entirely by whether Barbie notices him. His attempts to make an impression have the earnestness of a man who doesn’t realize how ridiculous he looks right now. Gosling plays this neediness with maximum commitment. It works because Ken himself lacks any sense of perspective. For him, everything is important. The beach. Clothes. Muscles. Horses. Above all, Barbie.

The real world brings Gloria (America Ferrera) and her daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) into the story, thereby shattering the notion that Barbie is simply a successful social liberation project in doll form. Sasha doesn’t greet her with gratitude, but with criticism for which Barbie is completely unprepared. The doll, which exists in Barbieland as a symbol of female potential, can be interpreted quite differently outside of it. Liberating for some, unrealistic for others—and a commercial product either way.

Barbieland’s demonstrative artificiality is part of the film’s humor. Houses don’t need real walls, water doesn’t have to be wet, and social roles are immediately visible through clothing and spaces. This world doesn’t follow reality, but rather the logic of a game.

As a result, Barbie constantly shifts between very different forms of humor. Some punchlines are pure silliness; others arise from language or overconfidence. Added to this are moments in which the film comments on its own terms. A perfect-looking Hollywood actress plays a doll whose relationship to female beauty ideals is up for debate.

A film produced by a major toy corporation pokes fun at corporate logic. These contradictions do not disappear simply because the film addresses them. But Gerwig leaves them visible rather than pretending they do not exist.

Barbie becomes more interesting, in any case, when it is no longer exclusively about images of women. Ken does not have his own Barbie doll around whose story he was built; his very name defines him as a complement. His identity crisis therefore mirrors Barbie’s search in a far more absurd way. While she must figure out what remains of her when perfection is no longer a sufficient form of existence, Ken must first figure out who he could be without another person’s gaze.

Thus, what starts as a highly commercial premise becomes a comedy about roles that seem to have long been assigned. Barbie is supposed to be perfect. Ken is supposed to be Ken. The film articulates some of its ideas very directly and doesn’t always trust that its imagery alone is enough. This directness, however, suits its artificial world better than psychological nuance.

Ken goes through the same conflict in his own, much sillier way. At the beginning, he exists primarily in relation to Barbie. Her attention determines how important he feels. The fact that he, of all people, suddenly gets a sense of what social significance might look like in the real world is one of the film’s best jokes—because Ken immediately treats this new role like a costume, too.

Barbie and Ken both try to break free from characters that seem to have been firmly defined long ago. This fits surprisingly well with a doll whose identity has, for decades, consisted of being able to be something different over and over again. Gerwig doesn’t need to turn Barbieland into a realistic world to achieve this. On the contrary: the more seriously her characters take themselves, the funnier it remains that people here are still discussing the beach, dream homes, outfits, and Ken’s social significance.

For decades, Barbie has been able to be anything. But simply being herself turns out to be much more complicated.