Barbie and Oppenheimer was the double feature that will change you. All the me
mes made us think that watching Barbie will be the fun one and Oppie will be the gloomy one. Surprise surprise, they are just a different sides of the same coin. Both movie will make you think, hard.
To me, Barbie is certainly not for the patriach-headed. It’s a really, really harsh and loud criticism to patriarchy in a form of solidly-stylized feminism and toxic masculinity. This movie took it so far to the edge of it, and will definitely challenge and offend some people. This is how you execute an empowerment story correctly.
But why not? We’re living in the world where soft-patriarchy is hidden everywhere. So for once (and maybe more), it is necessary for a movie like Barbie to exist and remind you how unfair life is for women. I know, every people has their own difficulties and it’s not restricted to gender only. But it’s already a fact that women struggled in some paths that men isn’t.
As a movie, Barbie is definitely not a children movie even though it’s a movie based on kids toys. I felt like Greta was just borrowing Barbie’s intellectual property as a perfect medium to convey her ideas. It’s more about Barbie as an icon rather than an object. I was also baffled on how this movie even disregard Mattel and paint them dirty with all the commodification and dumb leadership.
The production design of this movie is insane. It’s not shy to hyper-stylize everything down to the details and they seriously need to do that. Barbieland looks surreal as a literal plastic world, character designs are great, no half baked stuffs added. Oscar noms for costume and production design is definitely coming to them.
Margot Robbie as the “stereotypical” barbie is perfect. I literally can’t see any actress that is more suitable to play barbie better than her (sorry not sorry). Her character build was complex enough to turn her from “stereotypical” to “existential crisis” barbie. It was a very good thread that weave all the subplots together.
Ryan Gosling’s Ken is an entirely unique character tho. His character was unpredictably good and brought something that I never expect from this movie. Ken is described as compulsory side character for Barbie to (maybe) show heterogeneity, until at some point he got a revelation called patriarchy.
There’s also this Allan character, who’s not a Ken and probably symbolizes neutrality in the seas of Barbies and Kens. He doesn’t entirely belong in any sides but he’s an honest and open character that can fit in both sides. It’s a bummer that his character doesn’t really get explored although it shows potential.
Watching Barbie was a mind-opening experience. To be fair, it’s still a movie and it was hella entertaining to watch. Watch the movie as an entertainment, but take the idea seriously. There’s a whole lot of problems in the world and Barbie want us to learn one. All in all, the most important thing that I will always learn for life is to be respectful and be a better person. Not perfect, just better.
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