Barbie reviews

[Mister Tee]

The first thing to be said about Barbie is, it's enormous fun. As enjoyable a summer movie as I can recall seeing.

The second thing is that Greta Gerwig is a really talented filmmaker, and that the film isn't "just" fun. There are all sorts of plot points and details that give heft to the project; make it a movie that feels fresh/original, and at least to some extent attuned to the zeitgeist.

With that as my baseline, I'm not entire out of sympathy with the things Sabin and dws have said.

The film has all these positive elements going for it, but my brain can't quite process it into a coherent, satisfying whole. I'm remembering its parts with pleasure, but not its totality, which is different from the way I usually react after the fact. Like Sabin, I have a sense I'd like watch the film again, and maybe get a better feel for its full gestalt.

Some of this flows from what dws gets at: that part of the film's framework is too summer-movie-ish -- the whole Will Ferrell and gang chasing after Barbie stuff -- and these segments seem both unnecessary and cheapening of the feast Gerwig has otherwise served up. I'd been led by online chatter to expect to hate Ferrell's stuff (I've never been a big fan, to begin with) but, surprisingly, I didn't find his performance itself off-putting. (In fact, I roared at his "in a less creepy way" line.) But his whole part of the plot just seemed the most routine -- did most to remind me that this could have, in lesser hands, been just another Super Mario Bros. As several have mentioned, it didn't seem to belong in the same movie with that lovely moment between Robbie and the older woman at the bus stop. Maybe that's my issue with the film overall: that, despite all the wonderful work done to disguise it, the conceptual framework of the film has a bit too much in common with Hollywood summer formula for it to fully gel as an original.

As to individual elements: I have to say the film's opening gag didn't strike me as very funny -- maybe a lifetime of 2001 parodies have numbed me to their humor. And I can't say the first day in Barbieland played that well for me; none of the jokes evoked a whole lot from me. But, from the time Robbie woke up on day two, I thought the movie hit its stride, and there were many times I laughed out loud -- from small things like the way Gosling moved his eyes while serenading Robbie, to the truly surprising and uproarious final line, with many inspired close-to-throwaway moments along the way.

I don't see how this film can miss a best picture nomination; if strictly box office films like the Avatar sequel can qualify, there's no way so well-reviewed a commercial phenomenon is going to be left off. It will give Gerwig a staggering 3-for-3 in best picture slots. A directing slot is more dubious -- the branch has always been more art-centered, moreso of late -- but we'll see about that. I think Gosling is very likely to nail that supporting slot, and Margot could very well make it into what seems, at the moment, a less crowded actress field than in recent years. (More important, it makes her a bona fide star, just when a few successive commercial fizzles had threatened her status.) Not sure about screenplay, either, but techs should be a laydown: sets and costumes beyond doubt, make-up & hair, song for maybe both the Billie Eilish song and the Ken number, possibly several more. This is a box office hit with critical endorsement and some claim to serious content; it's what people complain the Oscars need more of, and I don't see Oscar voters denying it.

Pressed, if you asked me, is this what I want to see Greta Gerwig spending her talent on?, I'd probably say no...or, at least, not all the time. I'd like her to move on now, to more fully adult creative work. But she's proven here that talent has a way of shining through, even in the most unlikely genres.

[Sabin]

Jeez. Barbie was tracking at another weekend total of $90m on Wednesday. Today, they're saying it'll be another $100m. Expect it to go higher.

I'll be honest. I have some issues with it but I've thought about Barbie every day since I saw it. I definitely want to see it again to see how it plays out on a second viewing. I can't be the only one. We might be looking at the highest grossing movie of the year.

I think the question of whether Barbie makes the cut for Best Picture is done. Now we're at how many nominations.

[Big Magilla]

Initially I wasn't expecting much of this but then the hype, and eventually the reviews, made it something to see. Having seen it, I'm back to my original thoughts about it.

I think Sabin is right in comparing it to Everything Everywhere All at Once, but that film of which I wasn't a fan either, did at least succeed in creating interesting characters.

There are a few interesting moments in Barbie but most of it is just plain silly.

Margot Robbie tries hard as the main Barbie, but the material just isn't there. Ryan Gosling, though, lives up to the hype as the main Ken and could well get the Oscar nomination everyone is predicting.

Aside from the two leads, only America Ferrara and Alexandra Greenblatt as the principal human mother her daughter stand out, though Rhea Perlman does her best with a tiny role.

I think it's a **1/2 - *** film but it will probably get Oscar nominations across the board, deserved or not.

[gunnar]

I went to see Barbie yesterday and enjoyed, though not as much as expected. Perhaps that was due to too high expectations based on the hype train and previews. Some of the humor felt a bit flat, but most of it landed.

[Sabin]

ONE LAST TIME...

I want to try my take on Barbie one more time. I know I look like a lunatic but I have years of experience of doing so on the board because I’m just not happy with my take. It doesn’t quite capture how I feel about the film.

My problem with Barbie overall is a larger trend I’m seeing in films that are getting on my nerves. It’s a trend of maximalism, a trend of favoring parts over wholes, such that the fact that the film doesn’t make sense and draws attention to it becomes part of its charm, I think for audiences. It’s sort of similar to Everything Everywhere All At Once, creating a chintzy Oz adventure for the protagonist where we’re constantly told what it’s about and how to feel. Along the way, it earns points by having its heart in the right place. I think both films are built on rather faulty construction. Not to re-litigate that film again but I like all the ideas that the Daniels’ Oscar-wiinning film has but I don’t think it compellingly dramatizes the A Story (of Evelyn’s acceptance of her life) as it merges with the B Story (Evelyn’s lack of acceptance of her daughter turns her into a multiverse-destroying monster). Barbie’s Oz journey almost has the opposite problem. Her Oz journey feels ill-defined. She and all the Barbies know about the outside world they just mistakenly think they’ve solved all the problem. I’ve already wasted paragraphs about Ken’s red-pill journey and how Barbieland is like a gender-flipped patriarchy all to arrive at this point: The world of this film makes no sense. No duh. That only annoys me when the film both wants me to turn my brain off but also wants me to think about the meaning of Barbie. That’s annoying.

But it covers up what I think is the most problematic part of Barbie. There’s no emotional catharsis for any of the characters. By the end of the film: Barbieland needs to change (but also it doesn’t), Ken needs to learn what he wants, Barbie wants to be human (I guess?), the corporation hasn’t learned anything (they’re still profit-minded), we don’t see or feel how/why mother and daughter are re-bonded, and probably a few more things that I’m forgetting. Characters in the film just need to get in touch with themselves and that’s it, and by presenting it like that Barbie is essentially just creating a party that exists to flatter its audience. What annoys me about this is that Greta Gerwig is such an emotional filmmaker. As Daniel points out, the moments of calm in the film are the film’s highlight. If they could be in service of an arc, I think the film would be more impactful. But as I’m thinking about it more and more, Greta Gerwig isn’t really a filmmaker who takes a dramaturgical approach to arcs. Neither Little Women or Lady Bird (the most remarkable high school film since Rushmore) are about arcs. In fact, both films thrive due to their avoidance of conventional arcs. The difference is that that approach to both of those films feels more earned. With Barbie, it just feels non-committal.

I had fun in Barbie but I was never in it. It was a movie that was playing at me.

If we have the Oscars next year, I think it’s going to be up for quite a few of them. It’s certainly going to end up with Golden Globe and PGA nominations. At this point, I’d short-list it for nominations for Picture, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Production Design, Costume Design, and maybe that Ken song.

[flipp525]

Michael Cera was also a stand-out. He was really funny every time “Allan” showed up on the screen.

[Sabin]

I want to encourage people not to see Barbienheimer over the weekend. Oppenharbie is absolutely the way to go. After (a brisk) three hours of Oppenheimer, the sheer color palette of Barbie was a joy.

It's fun in parts but I ultimately wasn't that taken by it. On the plus side, it has a sense of humor which often times feel like attempts by Baumbach or Gerwig to linguistically amuse the other. I found this very infectious. The weird emphasis of the title “The GodFATHER,” the specific phrasing of Ryan Gosling “singing AT Barbie for four minutes,” or Barbie to a bunch of sexist construction workers: “We don’t have any genitals.” Ken: “I have ALL the genitals.” On the minute side, it also has a narrative that's weirdly incel-justifying.

I can't claim this line but I agree. After the movie, my girlfriend said "I prefer Greta Gerwig to Meta Gerwig."

[flipp525]

LOVED IT!!! A really unexpected, earnest, emotional treat, with eye-popping art direction, a surprising and hilarious screenplay (the last line of the movie is hysterical), with an excellent and touching Margot Robbie performance at its heart.

But Ryan Gosling’s “Ken” absolutely steals the show. Omg I was laughing so hard every moment he was on the screen. Here for the Kenergy! Can’t get Kenough! Next stop, Oscar!

[dws1982]

It's a fun movie, but it's also like five different movies, five different tones all in one, jumping back and forth, and Gerwig is very good at some, like creating Barbieland and Barbie's experiences in the real world, and very very bad at others: anything dealing with corporate Mattel is awful and I think there are not two correct opinions about this. Some stuff works better in execution than it does at the script level, like the concept of Barbie essentially encountering God. All the talk about Gerwig wanting to be a studio director has been very dumb, but some of the best stuff in the film, like Barbie sitting on a park bench watching people (one of her first experiences in the real world), an encounter with an old lady, and one sequence at the end I won't really go into because of spoilers are the best things in the movie and they are great in large part because of things that made Gerwig's earlier two films great: that ability to find beauty in small, everyday things. When she's doing the big Hollywood things, like having corporate suits chase Barbie on foot and then in SUV's, we could be watching any movie from any director. I expect Ryan Gosling to be a big pet project for bloggers for awards recognition in Supporting Actor, and not that I get bent out of shape too much on category stuff, but he's not supporting. He has a clear point of view, drives a ton of the plot, you very much don't have a film without him. But he will be placed in support. But I agree with those saying that the more likely supporting winner, if I saw one last night, was in Oppenheimer.

[Big Magilla]

One of us can start a thread on the Legion of Decency at any time.

I'll do it if no one else does.

We're well into an Orwellian world now.

Sound of Freedom sounds like it was borne of the DeSantis/Elon Musk crapola of the last year or so but take a look at the IMDb. trivia page - this film as completed in 2018, five years ago, but every releasing company and streaming service including Netflix refused to show it.

The Barbie reviews look great. I imagine more will chime in once they've seen it.

Note to Flip: Gosling is in my latest predictions for Best Supporting Actor along with Robert Downey Jr. for Oppenheimer and Matt Bomer for Maestro. The latter is receiving some buzz but not a lot right now. I find it intriguing that he is fourth in the cast listing, but his character's name is being kept under wraps. All we know is that he is playing Bernstein's secret lover from the late 1940s. Arthur Laurents, anyone?

[Mister Tee]

I second the idea of a separate thread on the Legion of Decency, about which I have many memories (and opinions). My favorite thing about them concerned not a Condemned movie, but a Morally Objectionable in Part for All: Miracle on 34th Street -- because, you know, Maureen O'Hara played a DIVORCED WOMAN! Even at the age of about 12 (a rather Catholic 12), I thought that was bonkers.

Re that Sound of Freedom movie: there's significant evidence initial grosses were wildly inflated by bulk buying from churches and right-wing groups. Photos have circulated of empty theatres where the box-office reported sellouts. Right-wing groups have long done bulk buy-ups of books by their favored authors for the purpose of landing them on the NY Times best seller list. The Times had to invent a designation (a dagger after the book description) to indicate where this was the case. This is just taking that premise to another level. It's possible that later week grosses have been more legit -- right-wing audiences have shown they can be goaded into certain actions that they deem tribally demanded. But the initial hype that created that demand appears to have been artificially engineered.

Anyone have anything to say about Barbie, which appears it's going to be a third consecutive triumph for Gerwig, and a smashing comeback for Robbie (whose string of non-hits threatened to push her into box-office poison territory)?

[Reza]

Anti-wokers, though, seem to want to erase huge facets of human experience that don’t match with their worldview. This feels more dangerous.

Why is this purely a USA inbred phenomenon? What exactly happened for it go viral to such a huge extent?

[danfrank]

Thanks for your insights about this, Magilla. I remember my mom, who grew up Catholic, talking about The Outlaw, with a very bosomy Jane Russell on the poster, being condemned by the Legion. When you look at the list, there are several absolute classics on there.

Though it feels like we’re moving backward culturally toward something like the Legion, it feels like there’s something more insidious about the anti-woke brigade. While the Legion condemned films containing forbidden fruit, something that might inspire impure thoughts (a very Catholic notion), there seemed to be some implicit acknowledgment that sex could exist in the appropriate context (I know they condemned more than sex, e.g., Rosemary’s Baby was condemned for depicting Satanism. But sex was the biggest focus). Anti-wokers, though, seem to want to erase huge facets of human experience that don’t match with their worldview. This feels more dangerous.

[Big Magilla]

One more thing on the Legion of Decency.

Although it lasted through 1978, it had no teeth past 1969.

[Big Magilla]

It deserves a thread of its own, but the Legion of Decency which was in place from 1936 through 1978 was a pretty scary thing.

Growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the only thing more terrifying than the Legion to a Catholic kid was the perceived threat of the end of the world by an atomic bomb being dropped on the U.S. by the Soviets.

We Catholics had to take a pledge at mass once a year that we would uphold the Legion which had four ratings which were roughly A1 for all audiences, A2 for adults and teens, A3 for adults only, B for objectionable, and C for condemned. Kids were led to believe that if you went to see a condemned movie, God would strike you dead as you left the theatre.

In 2007, M. Owen Lee, a Catholic priest and educator, came out with a book called The Best films of Our Years in which he listed his top ten films of every year from 1935-2006 with essays on his all-time ten best films which included the condemned 8 1/2. His annual lists included such condemned films as L'Avventura and Rosemary's Baby. It seemed like the final nail in the coffin of the Legion.

Now, I don't know, the support for Sound of Freedom and condemnation by the Trumpers of anything "woke" puts us right back in the days of The Moon Is Blue and Baby Doll.

Here's a list of Legion of Decency condemned movies. It's funny now looking in a rear-view mirror, but it was anything but funny back then.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_f ... of_Decency