Tremble…Sigh…Wonder…

By James Kenney

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is certainly an event, what with the gargantuan promotion (and box-office), and many educated in film champeening it as a masterpiece of sorts, with the estimable Richard Brody speaking of the “overwhelming–and substantial– delights” of the film. However, others such as the increasingly distressing Armond White counter that the film is fascist and “feminazi” (!); White, while a gifted writer with keen insight, has, if you haven’t been paying attention, fully embraced the right-wing’s current drift to be absolutely outraged at anything — movies, beer, Target — that in their eyes signals inappropriately.

Me? I think there can be quality entertainment that might even be seen as fascist in its message — I don’t agree with John Milius’ rather deranged philosophies but love a good deal of his movies — and if Gerwig had made an aggressively angry (nay, fascist!) broadside against the patriarichy with hundreds of millions of dollars of Warner Brothers and Mattel’s money, all the more intriguing. As a man and a dad, I can take it, and I do wonder why White is so threatened, other than the National Review party line allows no other perspective and he is perhaps amused at his own outrage.

As we left the theater (filled with people of all ages, genders and stripes dressed in pink), my estimable daughter said she loved it and wanted to see it again, and indeed most of the audience appeared happy with what they saw. Good for her, good for them, good for Monsieur Brody, who is disappointed in the muted response the film is getting from some quarters, particularly Amy Taubin on the U.S. front (they had a bit of a Twitter war), and his beloved French compatriots, which resulted in Brody’s tweeting “La critique française me déçoit: je comptais sur sa reconnaissance du vaste, extrème, débordant imaginaire de Barbie; or, on semble lui préférer le réalisme ordinaire”; apparently the French couldn’t give themselves over to the luxuriant imagination of Gerwig’s take on the Mattel doll, introduced in 1959 and considered both progressive and sexist at various points in history, which Gerwig’s somewhat schizophrenic film recognizes and….critiques? Embraces?

Yes, I too, alas, couldn’t give myself over to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. It is colorful, actually under two hours, and much unlike anything else playing currently; all should go check it out and decide for themselves. While I’m indeed wary of any film developed by a toy company as the first in what they hope will be a series of incredibly profitable films featuring toys, Barbie is eccentric enough and even (very) occasionally inspired enough that I won’t ride the wave of cynicism that calls out to me; the one that insists that the project is ridiculous, that Gerwig is “doth protesting too much” in the many interviews where she explains assiduously all the good films she’s seen that she’s stolen/borrowed/referenced stuff from, and that we’re all trying to like this thing too much simply because it doesn’t have a “2” (or “7” or “10”) after the title.

No doubt there will be a Barbie 2: In the Real World sequel if Mattel has any say in the matter.

I will try to wait out this wave, no matter how attractive, because it would be too convenient an argument. I did laugh out loud at the “Depressive Barbie” commercial that abruptly appears in the middle of the film like a Monty Python non-sequiter.

I didn’t laugh out loud at anything else though, and herein lies my problem. To me, Barbie does indeed play as the film for people who love Barbie, and the film for people who don’t love Barbie, as the trailer (which really contains all the good stuff in the film save “Depressive Barbie”) announces. It isn’t wonderfully anarchic, though, it just feels like a self-satisfied, mildly smug 95-minute commercial for Barbie, with just enough “edge” so the filmmakers can say they’re not corporate lackies or whatever.

But even then, I understand the difficulty inherent in trying to make a Barbie film. And while Gerwig, like the movie itself, keeps shifting gears (“I made this film because I love Barbie and played with her until I was 14!” “I made this film to explore what’s wrong with Barbie!”) in interviews and keeps mentioning “Umbrellas of Cherbourg” as if seeing it and borrowing color schemes from it is armor against forthcoming critical slings, I root for her because her first two films were very fine. However, as she now speaks of doing a Chronicles of Narnia reboot and potentially a Marvel film, I do feel I must address the weakest aspect of Barbie; Gerwig’s direction.

I mean, she certainly has a right to climb the corporate ladder and make a lot of money, but it doesn’t mean I have to show continued interest in her work. Just like many Metallica fans embrace Master of Puppets and tolerate or loathe their more recent, more commerical output, I think I’ll double back to Ladybird before checking out Narnia. Gerwig continues to show acuity as a director of smaller, character-driven moments. At the very end there is a montage of “real world women” that is nicely done, even if I don’t trust Mattel’s sponsorship of it. It’s everything else she fumbles here, in my eyes.

I found the film, frankly, a mess. A colorful mess, sure, with nice set design, but a sloppily staged, sloppily constructed, sloppily edited one. Is no one else seeing this? The film is noisy in its staging, but not inspired, and falls back on that favorite 80s trope, ladling bright pop songs all over the soundtrack to distract from the fact the material underneath isn’t all that well thought out or realized.

I thought Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s script had a fair share of moments that make theoretical dramatic or comedic sense but either were played out too quickly or too slowly. Some scenes have moments of inspiration that are buried in uncertain editing or staging, while others drag out unfunny conceits (there’s a lot of dead space while the film waits for Will Ferrell to try to do something funny with his incoherent character). The various car chases and foot chases are laugh-free, and multiple jokes (the teenage girl asking if Barbie and her mom are “Shining”) just die because they make no sense or are uncomfortably adult in nature (are 15 year old girls really referencing The Shining? Are 50 year old audience members grateful that Gerwig has a 15-year old referencing the Shining and provides some sex jokes?)

Thank goodness adept and appealing Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling headline this thing, because they remain interesting to watch even when they’re running around working up a sweat doing not much of anything. The problem with the film is summed up in the final 20 minutes of the film –Gosling’s climactic final beach assault on the other Kens, where he sings a song about Barbie not related to the action on screen or even where their relationship is at that point of the film, is overly busy,extended and laugh-free (and strangely sidelines Barbie from the action), followed by 10 minutes of speeches of variable quality in a dragged-out resolution that indeed might have more emotional resonance for you than it did for me. Decide for yourself.

So I’m all for the film’s message, and happy that it makes Ben Shapiro foam at the mouth. I have no issues with others who are responding much more positively than I do to the film, and do have issue with those outraged by the film; what in the world did they see?

At worst, I can enjoy Dirty Harry and still think citizens have more rights than Callahan affords them, so why are they taking so personally Barbie’s (not exactly new) critique of the patriarchy? If anything, Gerwig’s not brutal enough in her assault.

At best, I basically agree with Barbie’s message (and find the key speech, given mid-film by America Ferrara, a much more effective speech than the ones given at the end by various Barbies and Rhea Perlman as Barbie’s creator) and can’t imagine anyone with critical thinking skills being outraged by the message of this thing.

You disagree with Gerwig’s message? OK. I agree with it; what I disagree with is her uncertain, mediocre execution of it. It really plays like just one more SNL skit film, with inorganic pop culture references jammed in for us to recognize, only more obscure than Mike Myers’ efforts because Gerwig and Baumbach are “hip.”

I just wished I liked Barbie more, but as an attack on society and the patriarchy I’d rather return to Joel Shumacher/Jane Wagner/Lily Tomlin’s Incredible Shrinking Woman, and while I wouldn’t say it was an overall success, I found Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry, Darling more involving in its depiction of women buying into a plastic artificial society that masks what is “out there in the real world.” Then again, maybe Gerwig did the best she could in the ridiculous state that Hollywood filmmaking finds itself in at the moment; I can see a thousand serious ways this thing could have gone wrong that she avoids, and can see what she did right that makes a lot of people, including family members, embrace this.

So consider me the loyal opposition. Maybe I’ll get with Barbie more on a second viewing, I’ll certainly watch it again as my daughter, who is absolutely smarter than me, really loves it. As for Gerwig, two out of three ain’t bad!

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