BARBIE (2023) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Greta Gerwig
Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Kate McKinnon,
America Ferrera, Ariana Greenblatt, Michael Cera,
Will Ferrell, Rhea Perlman, Simu Liu, Issa Rae
"Barbie" is the most garish, candy-colored product-placement movie ever, and the most subversive. It's a measure of Greta Gerwig's skill as a filmmaker that it manages to be both. It's about what happens when Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) cross over into the real world and find that it's nothing like Barbieland, and then go back to Barbieland and find that it's changing, too. Everything's staged the way it might be imagined by a little girl playing with dolls, the little girl being Gerwig, smart, devious, playful, and up to something more than just playing with dolls. The first woman-directed feature to make more than $1 billion at the box office. Even the Kens out there ought to have a good time.
