The Lizard Review of the BARBIE MOVIE!!! (Patreon)

I said this on the discord already, but!!!!!!!! To reiterate, this is actually a lizard blog OUTTAKE!! Initially I was planning on posting this review on the Lizard Review once it launched, but after writing it and sleeping on it, I've come to the conclusion that frankly, September is already jampacked as it is, by the time the blog launches this review will be overdue, and also, I am NOT meant to write about films like this....the lizard review is about the tunes, ESPECIALLY right at first so that it has a clear concept and a clear direction. I say this as if the very first post I've always known was going to be the first post is technically about a movie BUT not in the way you'd think and probably the last film you'd ever expect....well stay tuned....

All that said, consider this kinda like a preview of the kinds of things I'll be doing on la lizard blog!! This afternoon I'm actually going to be working on putting together my own intro music for my mini pod episodes I'll be doing on there which I'm kinda gagging over because I have no clue what to do or how to do it but GIRL I'M DOING IT!!!!! THIS Barbie has a blog...

Onto the review!!! Overall, I really fucking loved the Barbie movie. I actually started crying about 2.5 seconds into it – like, when the pink WB logo came up on screen a tear rolled down my cheek as though I was witnessing Christ rising again from the tomb – in part because I had waited so long to see it and was finally there to experience it and I’ll cry over anything anyway, but also in part because I knew I was seated for nearly two entire hours of celebrating womanhood. And I felt elated that there were so many people in the theater, even if more than one person brought in their wholeass newborn infant baby that inevitably started to squawk at an emotional point in the movie, even if I was seated just one seat away from a man who literally bathed himself in one of the worst smelling colognes I had ever smelled in my life. It felt really good to see so many people genuinely interested in not just a story about a woman, but a story for women, created by women, and all about one of the most famous and influential paragons of womanhood. 

In the film, Barbie describes her role as a “stereotypical Barbie” by saying that when you close you eyes, and you picture Barbie, she is the Barbie that you probably think of. She’s blonde, blue eyed, thin, and most importantly, she has no true job or role in Barbieland over than just to be BARBIE. Nearly all of the other Barbies we meet in Barbieland have titles like President Barbie, Writer Barbie, Doctor Barbie, and even Weird Barbie, and these titles give each individual Barbie their place in Barbie society by default. By contrast, stereotypical Barbie is just Barbie. She wakes up every morning and goes through Groundhog Day; a perfect night’s sleep, followed by a perfect outfit, and a perfect breakfast, before going out to have yet another perfect day. Every day, Barbie has the best day ever.

Yet, she does not do anything. The other Barbies around her fill their days with meaning, however trivial the tasks may be, all the way down to the Barbies who come to collect the trash in the mornings, but stereotypical Barbie has only her dream house, her pink convertible, and her boyfriend Ken. A big joke in the movie is that Ken’s job is just “beach”, and funnily enough, Barbie’s own job seems to just be “Barbie.” The most perfect, idealized version of the doll that we could possibly think of. It makes sense that when Barbie begins to experience phenomena such as flat-feet and cellulite, she has an entire mental collapse over it – how is she supposed to be THE Barbie, when she doesn’t have the smooth perfect plastic legs or the pointed feet so she can wear high heels all day, every day? If she’s not the perfect stereotypical Barbie, then who is she?

When Barbie and Ken enter the real world together in Barbie’s quest to go back to being the perfect Barbie doll, the film’s heavy-handed feminist message begins to fully rear its head. Most of the feminism in the film centers around how women are perceived by men as an object, how women are expected to juggle being a thousand different things at once, how hard it is for women to get into male dominated fields, how society views women as mothers first and foremost, and etc etc. A lot of the criticism that I’ve read about the film has centered around how a lot of the feminism in the movie is too basic, as though all of these issues that Barbie dives into are issues that have been solved or fixed already, like we don’t need to talk about them anymore because third wave feminism fixed everything. A lot like how in Barbieland, the popular opinion is that the real world is full of women who are empowered and inspired by Barbie, because Barbie’s mere existence has fixed all of the problems that modern women used to face. Barbie can be anything, and do anything, and look like anyone; feminism is no longer necessary, according to the Barbies.

But, like Barbie herself discovers as soon as she’s in Santa Monica with Ken, these issues are just as prevalent as they ever were. It’s funny to me to hear people talk about how the basics of feminism are almost reductive at this point, when it feels like every single week there’s more evidence in pop culture of how untrue that is. The feminism is the film is basic, I’ll give you that – but it is, after all, a movie about a Barbie doll, and a movie that’s for everyone, including young girls, who I believe still deserve to go see a movie where they are told that they can do and be anything, and where they learn in no uncertain terms that patriarchy is fucking bullshit. It is oversimplified; for Christ’s sakes, the Kens idea of patriarchy is getting handed beer by women and explaining the plot of the Godfather before going out and getting into a literal war over their respective Barbies. It’s presented as silly, and funny. But maybe that’s the point. Unfortunately, to me, feminism 101 is still necessary.

All that said, it was not the feminism or the girl power in the movie that moved me the most – my favorite part about the movie was by far Barbie and her relationship with Gloria. One of the strongest bonds that a little girl ever has is the bond that she makes with her favorite toy; whether it’s a barbie, or a stuffed animal, or a blanket. It’s something that leaves an indelible mark, and something that makes Barbie monumentally important to girls all over the world. Gloria’s connection to stereotypical Barbie was that, initially, she was her daughter Sasha’s toy, something that they played with together when her daughter was still little, particularly poignant now, because Sasha has grown up to be a disaffected tween girl who sneers at the sheer idea of Barbie, citing her as being one of the worst things to ever happen to women. But what was most important to Gloria was not what Barbie represented to the entire world or to women in general, but what Barbie represented to her family, and her relationship with her daughter. Barbie was something that they played with together. And now that Sasha can’t even barely stand to be seen with her, Gloria had gone back to playing with Barbie to try and get back some of the joy that she felt when Sasha was still a kid, and they still had a good relationship.

Barbie was an idea to her more than she was anything else, a representation of happier times, the embodiment of when her relationship with Sasha was better, and more than that – she was something that made her and her daughter happy. It made me think about the relationship that girls all over the world have had with their own Barbies, and how different all of them are, and what they learned from Barbie, and how their experiences with their Barbies might have shaped their lives going forward. My favorite line from the movie is when Ruth tells Barbie that, “humans only have one ending, but ideas live forever”; I loved the thought of Barbie not being a physical thing, but the idea of a thing. An idea can be anything. It’s different from person to person. It’s whatever you decide to make it.

Which is why I was so entirely disappointed when the movie ended with Barbie deciding to become human. I understood it, and some of the most poignant moments of the film are when Barbie is feeling her most human – at the bus stop looking up at the sun in the trees, and seeing an elderly woman, something that has never once existed in Barbieland, and the intensity of experiencing real emotions for the first time. She also had a real connection with Gloria and her family, and they were both important to each other and etc etc.

But I felt like the message of the movie overall is that Barbie is bigger than being a real woman. She represents real women, yes, but even more important than being a woman is what she means to women. Stereotypical Barbie’s main dilemma in the film is that she didn’t know what she was supposed to do, and didn’t have a real job like the rest of the Barbies did – she was simply Barbie. I felt that the ending of the movie was setting her up to realize what her role in Barbieland was, that just being Barbie, an inspiration and influence to girls and women all over the world, was enough. For her to decide that being an idea for women to see and use wasn’t good enough for her, and that she wanted to go out into the real world, I felt cheapened the overall message of the movie. Especially because we have no idea what she goes out into the real world and actually fucking does. They end the movie with what at first seems like her going in for a job interview, but instead is just a joke about her going to the gynecologist because now she has a real vagina as a human woman and not a doll. The movie is meant to be campy, sure, but I would’ve honestly really preferred a ham-fisted ultra feminist ending where she’s like an organizer for women’s rights or some shit like that, than ending the movie on a joke. I was really moved by the sentiment of Barbie being an icon to women that can be anything women need or want her to be; to have her ending be a cheap-shit joke about how going to the gynecologist is scary really kind of took away from the overall movie, for me.

That said, overall, I loved the movie. I loved Ken’s storyline and Ryan Gosling’s entire performance, I loved all the Barbies, and I loved the sets and the plot and the watered down feminism, even. The ending was, to put it really really simply, fucking meh. However, in my mind, I will choose to believe that Barbie went back to being stereotypical Barbie, realizing her worth, and how important that role really is to so many girls and women who loved her when they were children. 4/5