One of the most current conflicts on social media, and probably the most popular one, is between the two movies, Barbie, and Oppenheimer. Some people claim that Oppenheimer is a way better movie than Barbie and that Barbie is just feminist propaganda that has no intellectual profundity while others claim that the Barbie movie has a deeper meaning that is not understood by most people and that the messages, “easter eggs”, and the themes explained in the movie make it worth watching. I haven’t watched Oppenheimer, because the movie is a biography and it is about historical events, which are extremely interesting for most people, but biography and history aren’t really in my field of interest.
The Barbie movie first came out on June 21st, 2023. I have been waiting for it to come out for a very long time and I was extremely excited to go and watch it the day it was released, but when it was released, I was in England and I didn’t have enough time to go and watch it there, since I wanted to spend my time exploring the country. So, I watched it with some friends when I returned to Turkey. There are 15 days between the release date of the movie and the date that I watched it, which is not a long time, but enough to be exposed to tons of spoilers. I knew about some scenes, the main concept, and the cast of the movie before I watched it, which I thought would polish off the excitement of the movie, but ironically only made it better! Now, I want to review this movie in detail. Spoilers ahead!
The beginning of the movie was extremely impressive. And the beginning is generally the part in which the audience decides if the movie is worth watching or not, so it was quite important for the rest of the movie. We see a deeply matriarchal society at the beginning. Barbies are leading the whole land and they are in the important roles of society. But the issue in this system is the role of Kens in this society form. One of our main characters, the main Ken in the movie (played by Ryan Gosling, you might remember him from the movies “The Notebook”, “La La Land”, and “Blade Runner 2049”) is a really weak character at the beginning. He is always in the shadow of Barbie and as the movie mentions, “Barbie’s day is always perfect, but Ken’s day is only perfect if Barbie looks at him”. I don’t have many negative comments on the movie but if I had to make one about the beginning, I would say that they should’ve shown the cons of matriarchy as much as they showed the cons of patriarchy. “The Barbieland” was represented as “a perfect place” and the misery that Kens went through wasn’t shown enough.
I was more curious about the visuals of the movie than the plot, and the movie didn’t disappoint me in visuals. The blowout party scene was one of the visually most impressive scenes in the whole movie. All the Barbies’ dresses, the background, the choreography, and the music were perfect for the theme of the movie. Also, they had a disabled Barbie dancing, which I found inspiring.
I listened to the soundtrack of the movie beforehand, thanks to Instagram, and therefore, I knew that there was going to be “Dance the Night” by Dua Lipa in the movie. But I thought she was just one of the soundtrack artists. She was playing the role of mermaid Barbies in the film, which was a huge surprise. She only said one or two sentences in total, but it was the fact that she starred in the movie. And yes, she played multiple roles, let me show how:
Stereotypical Barbie (who is played by Margot Robbie, you might remember her from the role of Harley Quinn in the movies “Suicide Squad” and “Birds of Prey”) suddenly starts having a fear of mortality at the blowout party. She doesn’t care about it for the day, but the next day, she notices negative changes in her daily routine, like the temperature changes in her shower, her flat feet, and her cellulite. She eventually talks with other Barbies about this, and they say that it is a malfunction and that she should see “Weird Barbie”. Weird Barbie is one of my top three favorite characters. She is the Barbie that kids get if they play too hard with a stereotypical Barbie. Every kid who owned a Barbie doll had a weird Barbie at some point and seeing the reflection of such a relatable character to the movie was perfect.
We generally see Barbies as “strong and independent women figures” in the beginning but their behavior towards my two favorite characters, Weird Barbie, and Allan, was just unacceptable. And I want to mention Allan, who is the most underrated character ever! He got on well with both the Barbies and Kens, but he hated patriarchy. In my opinion, he was going through so much more than Kens (considering there are no multiples of him, and he seems like such a lonely character, compared with all the other Barbies and Kens) but that didn’t stop him from seeing the negative sides of patriarchy. He was the character that showed the audience what a doll with a perfect point of world view would be. And he has around 3 minutes of screen time total, which is a big loss for the plot. Allan was the one who guided our main mother-and-daughter characters to Barbie, and he could have done so much more if they gave him just a little more screen time.
Weird Barbie and our main, stereotypical Barbie talk about the “malfunctions” the stereotypical Barbie has been going through. Weird Barbie says that to solve these issues, she should go to the real world, and find the sad person who played with her. So, she starts her long journey to the real world with a car ride. But little does she know, Ken is also in her car, hiding in the back seat so that he can come with her. Ken was kind of bullied into that situation by another Ken who told him that Barbie doesn’t love him and wants him around and that she probably hasn’t even asked him to come with her. The scene in Barbie left Barbieland to get to the real world was one of the scenes where I was extremely mad at Barbie. I didn’t have any expectations for her love life, since it is her life and she has every right to decide whom she loves and whom she doesn’t but she could’ve at least said “goodbye” to Ken, she always acted like he didn’t even exist, and in the real world scenes, she acted like he was a toddler, she never even acted like Ken was a friend, which was the main theme of the movie, since they were trying to swap gender roles but still annoyed me.
Our characters finally arrive in Venice Beach and Barbie starts struggling with real-world problems that women face every day, like harassment, verbal, and physical abuse, etc. Then she has a vision about where she can find the sad person who played with her. She sees a high school and goes there to talk with this tween girl called Sasha. Side note, in the scene where Barbie came to talk with Sasha in front of her friends, Sasha and her friends represent Barbie dolls’ biggest opponent, Bratz dolls. And, considering this reference, Sasha calls Barbie “a fascist, who been making women feel bad about themselves since she was invented, instilling unrealistic physical ideals, setting the feminist movement back 50 years, and destroying girls’ sense of self-worth” and making her cry isn’t surprising.
When Barbie starts crying over Sasha’s comments, Mattel, which is Barbie’s manufacturing company, gets informed about the situation, and decides to capture Barbie walking around in the city.
Meanwhile, Ken starts learning about a concept he has never heard of before from a book he got from the library, which is “patriarchy”. Living in a world ruled by women all his life, this concept catches his attention, and while Mattel captures Barbie, he goes back to Barbieland to adapt this concept to that world, since he couldn’t have a job without a degree in the real world.
Barbie goes to Mattel headquarters and when she’s just about to get in a box and go back to Barbieland, she decides to run away, and by the help of Sasha (the mean tween girl) and her mom, she gets away from the “important” men running around trying to capture her again. The scene where Barbie talked to the CEO of Mattel about women working in the company was the second funniest scene in the whole film. When they’re in the car, Barbie realizes that the person who played with her wasn’t Sasha, it was her mom, Gloria, who is a middle-aged mother struggling with depression and thoughts of death. Also, she’s having trouble communicating with her tween daughter. These issues lead Gloria to start playing with the doll of her daughter and as she is playing, the Barbie and her feelings connect and therefore, the malfunctions in our main Barbie start.
Sasha, Gloria (Sasha’s mom), and Barbie run away and go to Barbieland. But when they arrive, Barbie notices some changes, like the President Barbie serving beverages. She goes back to her house, only to see that Ken changed her house to his one and only “Mojo Dojo Casa House”, and yes, he is aware that he doesn’t have to use the words “dojo”, “casa”, and “house” altogether, he just gives the house this name because it sounds cool. Seeing the patriarchy and the Barbies turning into “items” made for Kens, our main Barbie goes into depression. Then, Sasha and Gloria just get in the pink car and attempt to return to the real world. When they were on their way, Allan just pops out of the back seat and tells them that he is tired of the patriarchal system and that he wants to escape this place. And as they are going to the real world, some Kens who can’t build a wall intercept them, and surprisingly, Allan beats them off. This is, again, one of the scenes which proves that Allan is the best character. He isn’t normally a violent character, but he uses force for self-defense and to protect the people who are traveling with him. Then, as they’re about to continue their journey, they realize that they cannot leave Barbie alone in such misery, and they return. They ask Allan where they can find Barbie and he leads them to the house of Weird Barbie.
When they get there, they see the stereotypical Barbie in an existential crisis. She is hopeless about the whole situation. And we see a hypnotized Barbie in the house with others. Then, Gloria makes a motivational speech about the issues women go through, which causes the hypnotized Barbie to get out of her subordinate behavior. Then, they realize that they can use this technique on all the other Barbies and start doing so by removing the Barbies from their Kens and giving them a talk, then they start a jealousy war between the Kens to take over their government. At the war scene, we see the funniest part of the whole film, and probably also the most popular one, the song by Ryan Gosling, “I’m Just Ken”. At the part where the other two Kens kiss the main Ken on the cheek, we just couldn’t hold our laughter anymore. The song was both deep and funny which made it perfect for this movie.
Then Kens realize what just happened and goes to Barbies, who already cleaned the “Mojo Dojo Casa House” and turned it back into “Barbie’s Dreamhouse”, then our main Barbie and Ken talk about Ken’s independence. We see both Ken and Barbie draw their paths apart from each other which I think was beautiful since it is breaking the unwritten rule, that every Ken and Barbie should be a couple to be respected. And then we see the most emotional scene in the whole movie, the scene where they used the song of Billie Eilish, “What Was I Made For”, which has perfect lyrics for the movie. We see Barbie seeking her identity and facing the reality of death, which was a reality check that hit the audience like a ton of bricks. The scene was reaching for every individual’s feelings and traumas, which was extremely sentimental. In the end, we see Barbie wanting to become human since she cannot find her role at Barbieland.
To be honest, I would’ve written a different ending to such a movie, since Barbie was representing all the individual women who are trying to remain standing, despite the pressure of their lives. They could’ve at least shown us how Barbie was going to adapt to the real world, and whether she would be able to stand on her feet after living in a matriarchal society all her life. And they gave the message that both genders should be a say in the system in which they both live, but we never see the adaptation of Kens in the system. Also, Allan was also ignored in the end, we didn’t even get a clue about his ending! And, as I said before, they should’ve shown the negative sides of matriarchy more, since they showed the cons of patriarchy so strictly.
Other than that, I view the movie as a big success. I still view Barbie as a fascist toy, but what the movie tried to express was way beyond a doll. The movie handled critical topics such as death, abuse, bullying, middle-aged depression, identity crisis, being a teenager, being an outcast, verbal, and physical abuse, being left in someone’s shadow, platonic love, and so much more such as way that every individual in the audience could find a piece of themselves in the movie if they watched it carefully. I think that everybody should go see the movie and criticize it themselves, apart from the comments on social media, since it is an extremely subjective movie.