https://blackgirlnerds.com/review-in-barbie-everything-is-beautiful-and-everything-hurts/

Barbie’s journey is one from a beautiful, pink-palace existence to one that’s deeper, more meaningful, and more painful. Riding along with her, we have many opportunities to see ourselves reflected in her convertible’s rearview mirror.

Mattel’s Barbie is a burgeoning IP universe kicked off by what the toymaker hopes will be a summer blockbuster. Prior to the SAG-AFTRA strike, the film has enjoyed a marketing junket that included stunning red carpet premiere appearances, and headshots of featured players like Issa Rae (this Barbie is President), Dua Lipa (this Barbie is a mermaid), and America Ferrera (she’s a human).

The point of Barbie (the doll) is that she’s a tool of the imagination for anybody who wants to play with her. The point of Barbie (the movie) is that this blank-blonde canvas of our imaginations cannot be sure who she is or what it all means without our projections onto her.

Faced with cellulite and her high-heel shaped feet falling flat, Barbie discovers that even a doll can have an existential crisis. Ken, perennial passenger in Barbie’s behind-the-wheel existence, discovers the same. The hero’s journey is hers, but the backseat boyfriend is along for the ride. What follows is a fascinating and surprisingly weird exploration of identity within the framework of corporate ownership.

Like the doll who forms the film’s basis, Barbie has to wrestle with three separate political and aesthetic waves of feminism, dealing directly (sometimes right on screen) with the acceptance and rejection of her impossible image by the girls and women whose dreaming and storytelling tool she is meant to be. Throughout the film, doll who comes to the real world is confronted with worship, expectant awe, derision, and even dismissal by the girls she expects to receive her with love.

In the film, Barbie is not a singular individual, but an array of beautiful women fractured into different jobs and identities. This scatter of echoes notably includes Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie, the one whose hair has been chopped, face tattooed, and whose legs are always in the splits position, and transgender actress Hari Nef (this Barbie is a doctor) who both allow for direct and indirect conversations about gender in the context of what it means to be Barbie. It is Weird Barbie who gives main character Barbie the choice that kicks off the path of the film. Barbie must choose which path to follow which path to follow: pink satin heels or rose-gold-buckled Birkenstocks. Because a shoe is never just a shoe. Barbie has to choose whether it’s better to seek what is real or live forever in what is fake, plastic, and beautiful.

Who among us wouldn’t struggle with that choice?

Barbie’s struggles take her to the Real World, leading to confrontations with the law and the misogyny of our world. This allows Ken to recontextualize himself in a context where he comes first, and to decide what that means for him. Gosling’s performance in all this deepens him from happy-go-lucky hopeful to something more, echoing Robbie’s ability to go so deep into bimbo drag that she can make any role take on pathos and warmth. They both move from silly icons to lived-in characters who have changed over the course of the film.

President Barbie Issa Rae, in an appearance on the Jennifer Hudson Show, opened up about how it felt to play the iconic character and what informed her performance. “I played with Barbies, but I never imagined I would play Barbie, much less be in a Barbie movie.”

Actor and producer Rae described the process of creating President Barbie’s character, encouraged by Gerwig in early meetings. “My mom said, ‘Listen, you’re going to have Black Barbies in the house. You need to have that balance.’ Mind you — I was not allowed to watch PG-13 movies and all those kinds of things until I was the right age. If something was adult on TV, I couldn’t watch it. I couldn’t watch 90210, but she got me the 90210 Barbies. I made up the characters myself, and I tapped into that when making my character for the film.” Rae’s character in the film shows this connectedness to the material; both remote and imemdiate, both her own and influenced by the aspirational nature of being Barbie to a whole new generation.

Actress Alexandra Shipp (this Barbie is a celebrated author) echoed Rae in a red-carpet interview: “Greta makes a safe set. To work with a director like that is just a dream come true.” Shipp’s dreaminess comes across in all her scenes, where she acts out an imaginative kid’s idea of what it might be like to be a writer, but also very beautiful and never burdened by the demands of publishing. Her performance in this film is a hidden gem, making more out of a small part.

The Barbie dream comes true thanks in large part to heroic work by the visual appearance of the film. Production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer capture the indelible mark of the iconic toy line, rendering the environment colorful in a way that is only ever created for children, opting for physical objects over special effects. In some scenes, flat stick-on decals form the ranks of prodcuts on shelves. In others, the viewer becomes aware that the water in Barbie’s shower is pretend, and the doll does not eat or drink. The cinematography gives us both the outside view of a person playing with dolls, but also the inside perspective of the dolls themselves. We are all Barbie; we are all Barbie’s dreamer.

The dream continues in the film’s soundtrack, teased in the trailers but rolling out as undeniable as summer itself in a series of needle-drops as well as one actual musical number by a man who needs to soulfully sing his side of things. This includes original work from Lizzo, Nicki Minaj, HAIM, and BIllie Eilish, to name a few, as well as a song from Barbie herself, Dua Lipa.

Like Barbie’s legacy, the film is not perfect but it is a lot of fun if you bring your imagination to it. Like Barbie, many viewers will find themselves flat-footed and confused, but they will still utterly in love with an idea who is fake and plastic and wonderful and can never die.

Barbie opens in theaters on July 21, 2023.