Oh Barbie. My fear is that, in trying to be something for everyone this film has become nothing for anyone. Because, to cut to the chase, this film isn’t ideal for kids and isn’t ideal for adults and that just leaves… teenagers? I guess to be fair, there were plenty of teenages in the screening I was at and they seemed to love it.
Quick (sorta) synopsis: Margot Robbie plays the main Barbie (perfect - she’s stunning) and whilst living in Barbieland, a world full of happy, successful and diverse* Barbies and Kens including main Ken played by Ryan Gosling (also perfect - also stunning), she has an existential crisis which sees her visit the real world. Honestly, the storyline of how she gets there, what she does there, and how it’s resolved is all just silly but hey, this isn’t claiming to be intellectual. But maybe it is with Greta Gerwig as director … my brain doesn’t know how to process this!
To expand re kids and adults, I think most of the storyline will just go completely over kids’ heads. It’s not a kids’ film in the way, say, Frozen is. Since I don’t have kids I wanted to test this thinking with people who do and my sample size of two - thanks H & M and L & W - confirmed that thinking. It’s not that it would be problematic for kids - there’s plenty of colour and great songs to entertain - but I just think they’ll potentially get bored and they’ll be disappointed if they go into it thinking it’ll be comparable to Frozen!
And re adults, well, we’re not a homogenous bunch I guess but for me, whilst I enjoyed the high-brow gags, the feminist themes and the camp performances (Ryan Gosling kills it) overall it was just a bit … dumb?!
So in summary, I didn’t love it but certainly didn’t hate it. And frankly no matter what the reviews said (they’re mixed) I would have seen this just to satisfy my curiosity and I suspect many readers will be the same! So go forth and see this and let me know what you think please, especially if you take kids!
Barbie is in cinemas now. It runs 114 minutes and is rated PG.
* three cheers for there being a fat woman (Barbie!) on the big screen and her being happy and not miserable! There are happy fat people you guys! (Massive tangent now but if you’ve seen The Whale and particularly if you liked it, read this please and thank you)