Barbie is Super Okay

As one of the most anticipated movies of the year, Barbie is a fun ride, but painfully missed the mark for me.

Directed and co-written by Greta Gerwig (Ladybird, Little Women), the movie follows Barbie as she suffers a crisis that leads her to question her world and her existence.

The movie is being applauded as a “feminist epic” while depicting the men as fumbling villains. Barbieland is the exact opposite of the real world because the Kens in Barbieland are treated similarly to how women are treated in the real world. The movie boasts female empowerment, and I really appreciate what Gerwig is trying to do.

Before we dive into it, there is a lot I like about the movie – the “pink acid trip” cinematography, the choreographed musical numbers, the acting by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, the sets and set design, the costumes, and the extreme marketing.

On the topic of the marketing team for Barbie, they deserve a hefty raise. Between the memes, the femme retailers jumping on board, and the showdown of Barbenheimer, this movie was meant to soar above and beyond expectations, and it has. Unfortunately, I may have boarded the hype train too early only to be left disappointed.

As Time bluntly puts it, “Barbie is very pretty, but not very deep. It never lets us forget how clever it’s being, every exhausting minute.”

While it is both clever and insightful, I couldn’t help but cringe throughout the entirety of this movie. I want to preface this by saying I’m largely on board with everything this movie has to offer, and thrilled Barbenheimer could get people not only talking about movies, but getting people back into the theater. If Tom Cruise saved cinema last year with Top Gun: Maverick, both Barbie and Oppenheimer saved this summer.

As much as the movie succeeds with comedy and musical numbers, the attempts at feminist commentary and existentialism fell flat for me. Barbie’s message was so on-the-nose, spelled right out of audiences, that you’d have to be an idiot to miss the point (sorry, Republicans). I made the mistake of seeing the ever-so dense and intelligent Oppenheimer first, and I suffered because of that.

Some argue that Greta Gerwig is projecting her issues with Hollywood into Barbie. And that’s fair. I applaud the empowering message, but I hate to do it at the expense of all men. The notions of all men having fragile egos, riding horses, drinking brewskies, empowering the patriarchy got more tiresome than I ever would have imagined.

In the end, all the hype and marketing was more memorable than the actual movie itself. Is it worth seeing? Yes. It’s message and the message of Oppenheimer are both tremendously relevant, but only one will leave you truly speechless.