The bloated two-hour pastiche mixes every cliché in the cinematic plot book, from fish-out of-water, to changing places, road trip movie, Legally Blonde to Goopy Kardashian girlboss, loss of innocence and more; though any attempt to pose 34-year-old Margot Robbie as the young ingénue, naive and inexperienced, is contradicted by all the Barbie boobie jiggling in low cut bustiers. The laughable pseudo-allegory of Barbie’s all too sudden shift from girlhood and adolescence to womanhood falls flat in the lack of character development necessitated by the concept of the film. Barbie is here to take your money and a percentage of the profits.
Ironically, in a movie supposedly about female empowerment, far and away the best part of Barbie is Ken. Purportedly sending up the men’s rights movement — as Ryan Gosling’s useless yet well-meaning accessory imports the patriarchy to Barbie Land — the film ends up amplifying the issue it seeks to address. Gosling is already a poster boy for incels thanks to roles like Drive and Blade Runner: 2049, where he figures as a sensitive loner pining over some foxy yet morally reprehensible broad. His Ken makes countless visual callbacks to his stature as the Ur-Hunk, with tender shots of his baby-blue eyes melting under a shock of bleached-blond hair. Desperate for Barbie to look at him, well-intentioned but oppressed by his lack of purpose other than a job of '“beach”, he emerges as the most endearing, well-developed character in the film.