Review of Barbie (2023)

 The Barbie Outfit

Review of Barbie

“Fuck the patriarchy” 

• Taylor Swift, extended version of ‘All Too Well’ 

““She’s everything. He’s just Ken”

• Tag line for Barbie Movie

“Peace in patriarchy is war against women”

• Maria Miles

  
  
  
  

Barbie has been a strange tabula rasa since its creation in 1959. It was based on a German doll sold as a gag-gift to mostly men in European tobacco shops. One can only imagine the role play ideas for the original crowd. The American redesign was crafted by an aerospace engineer who worked on American military missiles. He also had been the sixth husband of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor and he died by suicide… this isn’t covered in the film. The force behind Barbie’s creation was Ruth Handler, who named the doll, and her companion Ken, after her children. The sibling roots of their namesakes were also not covered in the film. Ruth’s forced resignation from the parent toy company, Mattel, was mentioned, but financial fraud is not something you want to dwell on… which brings us to the strange questions surrounding the storyline of a Barbie movie. What to talk about?

Ms. Gerwig & Mr. Baumbach are art house sensations. How do the creator of Lady Bird, a film showcasing the struggles of girls in 21st century America and the co-creators of Frances Ha, a movie showcasing a struggling woman artist, keep their credibility? They will be making what is essentially a product placement film for Mattel, “the leading toy company & owner of one of the strongest portfolios of children’s and family entertainment franchises in the world”. The boilerplate from Mattel’s website reads like fodder for corporate shills, rather than respected artists. And then there is the doll itself… yes Barbie has “evolved,”  eschewing the pre-civil rights, Mad Men world of her birth by embracing careers et al. But does any woman, aside from the mentally ill , want to be Barbie? Isn’t the name itself still a pejorative term for any female over the age of 14? How on earth can Ms. Gerwig create a film that won’t end in career suicide or corporate disaster? Talk about building tension! 

Well they did it… sort of. The film is a smash hit. Warner Brothers is making bank. Mattel’s girl is on everyone’s lips and audiences are stampeding, many in pink, to the theaters. There are some humorless cranks who are offended, but this only adds to cache. Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach worked very hard… and you feel it. That’s the problem. The sweat of pleasing the many interested parties produces an extremely clever film… but not a good one. 

Things begin very well. Barbie parodies the paradigm cinema moment of man’s achievement from Kubrick’s 2001. Instead of the bone morphing into a space station, Barbie the astronaut floats above the world,. As we enter Barbieland, the portrait of this pink plastic paradise is… pitch perfect. Margot Robbie is a superb incarnation of the “stereotypical ” Barbie, with her trademark blonde locks. Sharing the synthetic aryan look is Ryan Gosling as the paradigm Ken. Both these characters are individuals, but they exist in a world of types. In other words Barbieland is ruled by the Barbies, plural, with a cast of supporting Kens (plural). Gosling's Ken rival is an Asian “Ken”. They both exist to attract the attention of the Margo Robie . The weird and wonderful land feels as if the Wizard of Oz’s Emerald City was dropped on the beaches of Malibu. 

There is a strange conceit that gives this world the simulacrum of an actual child’s play area. All liquids are hard or invisible. Imagine a little girl giving Barbie a “pretend” drink and you witness what it is like for stereotype Barbie to sip coffee in the morning. Ken tries  to “surf” the ocean and is blocked by hard plastic water . The playfulness and slick recreations are marvelous. Sadly the tone of the film shifts and we enter a very convoluted drama that relies on Barbie having an existential crisis, interacting  with the “real world”and confronting, for the first time, the dreaded PATRIARCHY. 

Ken, played delightfully by Ryan Gosling,  is the foil in the story, but this never quite works because he is, by definition, a subservient dolt. One can feel the screenplay writers bending over backwards to give this professional idiot some standing. Are we really to believe that upon entering the real world Ken goes to a library to read about patriarchy? The gags regarding male arrogance and macho foolishness are hysterically funny, but in the end there is a narrative pull for Barbie to say that things will change in Barbieland in terms of Ken. She feels she has taken him for granted. Ken can stand tall. Ummmm…. No. I’m sure of few things in life but one might be: no one will ever buy a Ken doll without him being subservient to Barbie… The movie forces a very adult notion that fails to mesh with child’s play. It’s never a good thing when kids are forced to act as if they are adults. It doesn't work dramatically either. 

This film is strongest when it simply plays, rather than preaches. The tone instead resembles that of the  social satire of Citizen Ruth, a film poking fun at both sides of the abortion debate. It would seem more appropriate, given that subject matter is a doll designed for pre teen girls, if the film had the spirit of a lighthearted musical comedy, like Mamma Mia, or issue-less social satire, like the original Batman TV Series. In both cases fun is paramount while concerns about messaging take a back seat. Obviously this is a tall order given Barbie’s odd place in the social order . As I write this a news story broke about a sports commentator who was fired for using the term “Barbie” to describe another reporter. How could the writer/director avoid making our heroine more than a… Barbie doll. Strangely this also forces the issue of Ken’s status a professional flunky. In the world of Barbie… who cares? but the real world has real cultural baggage. And how to manage the baggage-handler?

Whereas Ken is a miscast delightful character, Will Ferrell, the CEO of Mattel in the “real world,” and his male Mattel minions, are simply a drag. Their role as clownish, corporate villains is muddled. Their cartoonishness belongs in Barbieland, rather than the “real world”. Kudos for the real Mattel executives for green-lighting the project. Certainly the filmmakers pushed the limit in directing jokes at the corporation. They are openly marked as chauvinistic with Barbie’s outfits being dictated by taking advantage of social changes, rather than championing women.  The real life suits are now laughing all the way to the bank, but had Barbie laid an egg, they might have lost their jobs. There’s some real drama. 

As for Gerwig and Baumbach, their creation might not be an artistic triumph, but has been genuine gold for the bottom line.  The blatant errors are there and go beyond the odd storyline and the portrayal of the corporation. Does this film need to be 2 hours long? That’s the same length as the the bio pic of Alan Turing, and he invented computers.  And what are we to make of Michael Cera as Allan? Mattel never really knew what to do with Ken’s brief sidekick and neither does Gerwig. Then there was an odd technical matter. This is a first rate spectacle with the fantasyland brimming with state-of-the-art props and special effects. There is a divine smoothness to the fakery - the houses, the ocean, the campfires. These are moving dioramas that are really captivating. I felt like a child pushing my nose against the glass in the Museum of Natural History.  I also wanted to jump in during the choreography of Ken’s ridiculous battle where weapons never hurt… and despite all this I felt the character’s faces to be under-lit  in many of the scenes. It is as if the basics were ignored in order to spend artistic energy on complicated social satire.

Perhaps there would have been more gold for everyone if the film stuck to Barbieland and eschewed reality and its never-ending source of conflict. This fantasy world already had its strange corner of intrigue:  the character, “Weird Barbie”, played by the brilliant comedic actress Kate McKinnon. She represented dolls that were mistreated by their guardians. Interestingly when Barbie is faced with thoughts of death, the other Barbies point her to “Weird Barbie”. It seems not all little girls have wholesome role-play fantasies with dolls. In some cases Barbie becomes a whipping post for anger and aggression.  It is interesting to note that McKinnon is often splayed on the floor, as if being nearly torn apart is “natural”. Once again there is no need for this film to plumb the depths of all social ills, but it is interesting that the filmmakers felt the need to go outside. Perhaps they were channeling the Wizard of Oz’s use of a separate plane of fantasy. The failure of Barbie is that the split between Barbieland and “the real world” is cloudy and confusing. There is no neat black and white vs. color delineation that showcases the clear line between the drudgery of real world cruelty and the joy of escapist fantasy. Would Barbie, while experiencing Los Angeles, ever want to click her heels three times and return to Barbieland? It’s a complicated question and that’s a problem. Why not simplify everything? There is enough drama “in house” to shape a story about Barbie facing her demons. The arc of the story, however, needs to be rooted in the anodyne innocence of playfulness, rather than the meanness of adults. 

I might be the wrong demographic to comment on this movie but I did find the most profound aspect of the film lay in the audience’s laughter. In my years of going to movie theaters I have never heard so many older women guffawing. This film touches something, despite what I perceive as a strangely muddled script. I never played with Barbie dolls and maybe to get the overall joke, you need to really live that experience. I felt this modern take on the meaning of Barbie fell short… too much stereotypical Barbie, not enough Weird Barbie… too much real world, not enough Barbieland…. Too much talk, not enough dancing…. Too much figuring out, not enough enjoying the moment.… but maybe I’m just another Ken, without the looks; or worse yet… an exploitative male Mattel executive. But in the end Gerwig’s work has grossed over a billion dollars. For that, everyone can thank… Barbie. 

Review of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

Review of Once Upon a Time In Hollywood

The Good, The Bad and the Careerists

“A longtime ago being crazy meant something, nowadays everybody is crazy” -Charles Manson, Interview with Diana Sawyer

“Going through life with a conscience is like driving your car with the brakes on” Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run?

Quentin Tartentino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (OUATIH) is a paean to the entertainment business in Los Angeles in the late 60s. It would be difficult to think of a more perfect union of the director’s oeuvre with this era of tumult and violence. Now the creator of the martial arts styled Kill Bill could deliver Bruce Lee in the flesh. The auteur behind the WW II inspired Inglorious Bastards could show the star of The Great Escape poolside. The writer/director of the dystopian Pulp Fiction could give his portrayal of Charles Manson and his family roaming LA looking for prey. Ironically the burden of telling an inside story of his forebears clouded Tarantino’s vision. His brand of action requires taught storylines and moral clarity. OUATIH is an interesting 85 minute film buried in a meandering 2 hours and 41 minutes of gossipy sidetracks. Tarantino put a great deal of homework into this feature and it shows. There is a heavy carefulness to all the lightness and horror. Behind the wonderful acting, exacting set design and costuming is a script that never settles on a direction. Is this a film about Hollywood? Is this a buddy film? A commentary on the past? A parable about success and/or failure?

OUATIH is brimming with wonderful sequences that recreate the TV shows, promotions and tableaux of the era. Who doesn’t enjoy DiCaprio’s character yucking-it-up with the Hullabaloo Dancers or the recreated scenes of the nearly forgotten TV Westerns Bronco and Lancer. There are also many fun filled joy rides and walks through the airport while a superbly curated 60s soundtrack blares. He chooses the magical Jose Feliciano take on California Dreamin’ rather than the universally familiar original version. Unfortunately Tarantino tries to shoehorn a couple of actual linear narratives into the mix. For those who remember the times it is fun seeing Steve McQueen gossiping about Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski. The director shot at the real location, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion. It is all pitch perfect, yet somehow out of tune. How can anyone, connoisseur or novice, latch on to these colorful recreations? The conceit is that Tarantino wants to raise the offscreen shenanigans to the fever pitch of low budget melodrama.

In truth Hollywood in the 60s certainly had its share of “action.” Tarantino has adapted the darkest horror moment, the Manson killings, and replaced the senseless carnage with his interpretation of a “happy ending.” All the self-righteous justice of the TV cop shows and spaghetti Westerns is channeled to right the wrongs. The bad guys are the ones who are butchered and incinerated. The ingenue and her entourage, including her unborn child, are spared. The long-struggling B movie hero Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) is freed from the purgatory of commonplace stardom. He and his loyal companion, stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), now have entree to the A-lister, Polanski, whose wife they have rescued. The only problem is that Tarantino forgets that heroes or anti-heroes need to be heroic; or at least their journeys must include meaningful quests. The classic feature All About Eve, the definitive statement on reaching for the stars, has characters who put their “goodness” on the alter of fame. OUATIH, by contrast, brings to mind the Springsteen lyric, “its just winners and losers and don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line.”

The most morally compelling figure is Pitt who, literally, takes the fall for DiCaprio. In addition to being a loyal sideman he, unlike the rest of the cast, shows his chivalry on many occasions. He refuses sex with an underage Manson devotee. He tries to come to the aid of an elderly friend he feels is being taken advantage of by the Manson crew. He puts an arrogant movie star, Bruce Lee, in his place by physically defeating him and never complains when he is fired for Lee’s transgression. Strangely, Tarantino includes a plot point that undercuts all the warm fuzzy admiration the audience feels for this embodiment of brute force and justice. We learn in a flashback that Pitt is guilty of killing his wife for being annoying. The fact that Dalton sees uxoricide as a small blemish in Pitt’s character plays out in his treatment of his trusted confidant. After finding redemption as a spaghetti Western hero, Dalton replaces his buddy with an Italian spouse. The new found financial security doesn’t spare Pitt a pink slip. This is a world where everything revolves around being on the right side of the “in” and “out” crowd. This attribute makes all the players unsympathetic pawns in an abusive hierarchy. It starts to narrow the divide between those who worship a sociopathic cult killer and those who build their lives around the whims of studio executives.

Everyone, from grimmest slovenly hippie to the slickest Kung Fu icon, is a hustler with an agenda. Tarantino’s fails to slide these misfits into the entertainment rubric of “good guys” and “bad guys.” The scenes at the Spahn ranch are supposed to evoke the white hatted cowboy against the mob. Despite wonderful performances from Bruce Dern, as the demented Spahn landlord, and a truly terrifying rendition of Squeaky Fromme by Dakota Fanning, the set up fails to inspire anything other than passing fits of horror and glee. Spahn is getting laid. Fromme is accredited leadership status by her guru. Pitt meanders on main street, a pale ghost of Charles Bronson in Once Upon A Time In The West. It is fun to see Pitt kick ass after his car is vandalized, but what is at stake? A creepy errand boy beating wayward cult member does not make for high drama. Sadly it doesn’t make for low drama either. Whose side are we on when Bruce Lee picks a fight over, literally, nothing. There is a quick burst of adrenaline while Cliff takes down the egotistical jackass but, like the rest of the film, it never grabs the heart. The zeitgeist of pulp fiction, Tarantino’s dramatic muse, relies on simple plots and clear victories.

The moment of where one feels a heroic note is when Dalton is struggling as a guest actor on the downhill slope of stardom. He interacts with a child actress. The little girl is a monster of the overly-efficient, almost robotic, future. She is ALL BUSINESS and mean beyond her years, almost a parody Sammy in the devastating indictment of show business, Bud Schulberg’s What Makes Sammy Run? DiCaprio is vulnerable and brilliant as he digests the hard-core professionalism of the child-upstart. In spite of the endless banter and the unfortunate sharpness of the child, one feels the pain of the over-the-hill star and his outdated simplicity. It is worth the price of admission to watch Dalton tear up his trailer after woefully blowing his lines. DiCaprio’s recovery scene, in which he hurdles the child to the floor, shows the star (and the man playing the star) on the top of their game. After “cut” is called he apologizes for being rough with the she-devil of efficiency. She actually thanks him as she knows a good performance when she sees one. Dalton’s brilliance isn’t about money or status but…. dignity. He wears his own white hat and shows us how it is done.

Unfortunately even in this magnificent sequence one feels DiCaprio’s Dalton battling choices made by Tarantino. The interaction with the child could have been half the length and made twice the impact. The humiliating scene where he flubs his lines is carefully played opposite a nemesis, an actor who is rising in the ranks due to scoring the lead role. The comeback would have been more effective if DiCaprio’s brilliant retort was played against this spiritual rival. Instead Tarantino was locked into the original TV show script, which demanded a cameo. No doubt it was fascinating to see Luke Perry in his final performance but sticking to the other actor would have made Dalton’s recovery more poignant. Furthermore there is an odd amount of camera time spent on the fact that the lead actor leaves the set on motorcycle. This references the original star’s tragic motorcycle crash which left him without an arm and a leg. This fact is never covered in the film leaving yet another layer of clues for the experts of the era. All this extra padding works against the thrust of the action. It is as if Tarantino is a telling a story and constantly turning his head to gossip about inside-baseball minutia. The director sacrifices smooth clarity to the static of being cool and clever.

Tarantino is never is able to step over his narrow conceptions of the era. It is hard not to avoid the misogyny label when you make the good guy in your film a wife killer. But it goes further. Aside of the annoying child, the film is devoid of powerful actresses. That era had many important female leads, not to mention a burgeoning women’s rights movement, but Tarantino is only interested in a relatively obscure starlet whose fame is based on being butchered. Margot Robbie gives a great performance but her contributions to the films are limited to giggling in a movie theater while gauging the audience’s reaction to her work. More importantly she buys the novel Tess of the d’Ubervilles for her husband, Mr. Polanski. It is not covered in the film but he went on to create a much heralded feature based on the book. Of course that detail is exclusively crafted for those who have more than a passing interest in Hollywood.

OUATIH is not made for the general public but rather industry insiders who get the extra layer of jokes and messages. Tarantino’s denouement of the actual story, after exacting real-life detail for the first 2 1/2 hours, shows a strange defense of his own perceived demons. The Manson family descends on the house according to schedule but decides, rather than attack Tate, they will get Dalton. This affords the director to “righteously” focus his, much criticized, depictions of violence on a “just” cause. It might have been deemed tasteless to record the actual murder of Tate, her fetus and the friends. The real events included the painting of slogans in their blood all over the walls. The director, however, innoculates himself from criticism by turning the savagery on the demons themselves. It is hard to object to someone being roasted alive, or having their head bashed in, knowing the true life actions of these monsters. There is, however, a caveat to all the seemingly justifiable carnage. The director might be using this film as a way to erase his own morally dubious actions.

Tarantino’s Manson monsters have a confrontation with Dalton at the foot of Tate’s driveway. They recognize him as their childhood TV hero. One of them suggests perhaps they should turn their murderous rage on the TV god that “taught them how to kill”. In this light Tarantino might defend his own track record of onscreen violence as merely being the product of an apt pupil. All the gore in his own work has been past down from past masters. His Manson clan are abandoned on the driveway by the very member who made the suggestion to perpetrate VT violence against the TV good guy. The actress playing that part is Maya Hawke. She is the daughter of Tarantino’s former leading lady, Uma Thurman. During the filming his Kill Bill feature the director bullied Thurman into performing a dangerous car crash sequence. She was seriously injured. This obviously put a damper on their relationship as she went public about his abusive, nearly fatal, behavior. But she never took formal legal action against him. Furthermore she tweeted support for her daughter’s appearance in OUATIH. It is reported that her former husband, the actor Ethan Hawke, help secure the part for Maya.

Most people would have qualms casting their daughter in film by a director who nearly killed her mother, your ex-wife. Most children might avoid working for someone that put your mother’s life in danger. Most people would avoid praising the work of someone who nearly killed you. Many parents would think twice about their child being part of the production given Tarantino’s track record. Many people would feel squeamish about appropriating gruesome real life events to buttress personal demons. But these people will never make it Hollywood. It is a land peopled by those who play the parts of rescuers, Calvary riders and good people in white hats. But all this is ON SCREEN. Their real life actions are equally ambitious and shocking, but not melodramatically captivating. Audiences want Superman, not an in depth look at the process of become a cosplay Superman. Tarantino never fully understands that the off screen sourness cannot be excised with clever plot twists, fancy art direction and a wonderful soundtrack. He thinks that his formula of flash and violence will mask the hollow center. It might have worked for 85 minutes. But not for over two and a half hours. Note: more of the dreams; less of the dream factory.