The new Barbie movie has nothing to do with the old cartoons produced by Mattel.
– Let’s get things straight: Barbie it is not a film for children. It is a film that can be seen together with one’s own daughters and sons (there is no violence, there is no vulgarity or blasphemy) but which was written to speak to an adult audience: it is a film which explicitly speaks of patriarchy, fascism, genitals, menstruation, gender roles, depression, death and other niceties. Your little girl or boy will not be shocked, but they will understand very little and will hardly ever laugh. Barbie it is a film that speaks to adolescents and adults, to those who have stopped playing with dolls for some time, and does so using the toy par excellence in a wholly convincing way;
– Don’t be fooled by the themes listed above, Barbie is a real super pop comedy. On the contrary, Barbie is the most successful pop comedy of recent years. If you’re not boring conservatives totally devoid of self-irony, you’ll burst out laughing for an hour and fifty-four minutes straight. The jokes all come in perfectly, the comedic timing is basically perfect and the sarcasm is sharp as it rarely is. The world of Barbieland – as well as that of Kendom Land and its Mojo Dojo Casa House – are so absurd, extreme, unreal and kitsch that they would make you laugh even without a script;
– Yes, those geniuses of Greta Gerwig (look at his Ladybird if you’ve never seen it) e Noah Baumbach (yes, when one is a genius he can write A Marriage Story e Barbie without missing a beat) wrote a big, funny, colorful and hallucinatory feminist preacher diametrically opposed to what many have in mind when they talk about feminism, woke cultureAnd so on, and so forth. Barbie it is precisely the preaching that was needed, a screenplay and a staging that slams the viewer in the face – in the most explicit and entertaining way possible – the issues of contemporary feminism in its infinite facets. Ah, if you didn’t know, men and horses are taken for a ride throughout the film, with no possibility of salvation. If you think this might irritate you, you are the ones who need to see most of all Barbie and learn to take yourself a little less seriously;
– However, Barbie it’s also a movie”corporate“, chock full of product placement and in any case to a certain extent dependent on the moods of Mattel (the manufacturer of Barbie). In the hands of someone less capable, this could have led to contradictions and ethical problems, it could have only been great pink washing, but this does not happen because Gerwig manages to turn it around in his favor, transforming with great irony what is normally awkwardly hidden into explicit and often hilarious scenes. There are ads everywhere, where false ads are inserted (I’m just saying: Depression Barbie) and Mattel is being widely mocked. A small ethical problem remainslinked to a character and to the penultimate scene: if you have already seen the film, tell me yours in the comments on this, because I still don’t have a well-defined opinion;
– There would still be so much to say, because (obviously) Gerwig and Baumbach have also written a profound, stratified film in which different levels of reading and interpretations coexist and ranging from militant feminism to a metaphor for the transition from childhood to adolescence citing nothing less than the theories of Piaget. Unfortunately, however, space is limited and spoilers are strictly prohibited, so let’s move on to the “technical” part: Robbie e Gosling they give us an extraordinary interpretation, a few kilometers over the top as is rarely seen in Hollywood cinema. The soundtrack is a bomb (sometimes it’s hard not to get up and dance in the hall) and it will remain a Spotify favorite for a long time. Sets and costumes are beautiful and kitsch on the verge of realitythe photograph is saturated and plasticosa at the right point. In short, run to the theater to see it, if nothing else it will certainly be a fun and unusual experience and for some even an educational one.
The article Scattered considerations on “Barbie” comes from Sportellate.