Barbie

The Best Mattel Cinematic Universe Movie Ever

“I’m sensing some kind of entendre here; and it appears to be double.”

Months ago, when I scheduled writing this Pitch, I probably could (should?) have predicted that the Oscar nominations would create new buzz about Barbie. Nevertheless, I consider it serendipity that I get to write about this film now, in a very special window of its existence, between its nominations (and snubs) and Oscar night.

At the beginning of the Fall 2023 semester, Barbie inspired more unsolicited student questions and takes than any other film I can remember. 

“Mr. Hernandez, did you see Barbie?”

“Are we going to watch Barbie in this class?”

“We should really watch Barbie in this class.”

As a further indicator of its popularity, it wasn’t just my Film Lit students who were asking about it. It was my AP students. It was my World Classics students. It was even former students. It was colleagues. It was everyone.

With full awareness that I would be opening myself up to critiques of going “soft,” of just cavalierly deferring to student whim, I showed Barbie at the end of last semester, as part of my very amorphous Unit 6, in a grouping I called “Post-Modern Musicals.” If students chose, they could pair Barbie with either Sound of Metal or A Star is Born. 

Looking back, I do believe there are (much) better pairings for Barbie. Off the top of my head, it wouldn’t be out of bounds to pair it with either Lady Bird or Little Miss Sunshine. But what can I say: I didn’t think to include the film in the course until early December.

After much reflection, my official position on Barbie is that I like it, but don’t love it. If we go by usual Film Lit standards, it has several glaring weaknesses. And yet, if we go by the “ability to engage students and create productive discussion” metric, it could fit very well in a Film Lit course. And, more to the point, what I find fascinating about this film is that my critiques—as well-founded as they might be—are wholly severable from the film’s teachability.

“She’s not dying. She’s just having an existential crisis.”

Barbie has been a virality rod since it began filming—if not earlier. Before, during, and after its theatrical run, it has created a whirlwind of online content, a seemingly endless spiral of everything from memes, think pieces, and (naturally) men telling on themselves by decrying the film as “anti-man.”

The latest round of viral discourse, the one that makes this particular writing serendipitous, is about the Academy Awards nominations Barbie got—and did not get.

As a Film Lit teacher, I try to see as many Oscar-nominated films as I reasonably can. In many cases—say, for example, with Parasite—Oscar nominations can lead to a Film Lit goldmine. Having said that, as a general rule, I try not to get too worked up about Oscar snubs; it just doesn’t strike me as a worthwhile investment of emotional energy. The only snubs I really care about are the ones I think should be not just nominees, but winners.

I want to start this thread by saying I loved Margot Robbie’s performance as Barbie. (I’ll add quickly that I don’t love all of her work; for example, I just can’t stand her three turns as Harley Quinn.) She effortlessly adds humanity and depth, and her ability to turn on a tonal dime saves the entire enterprise at times. For example, I know everyone loves the infinitely memed line, “Do you guys ever think about dying?” But the follow-up, one of my favorite lines of any 2023 movie, is a perfect gut punch: “I don’t know why I just said that.”

Am I going to lose sleep over the fact that she wasn’t nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role? No. Because I don’t believe her performance was the best of the year. In my view, the award should go to Sandra Hüller for her work in Anatomy of a Fall.

And, if I may, to the extent I think there’s a snub in this category, it’s Natalie Portman in May December. I don’t even know that I like May December. But I’ll say this: it certainly rattled me, in large part because of Portman’s haunting performance. I still don’t know what her real motivations were in some scenes. Put it this way: if Portman won the Oscar, I wouldn’t complain; a Robbie win would make me feel bad for Hüller.

Next, Greta Gerwig deserves a ton of credit for bringing her ambitious vision to the screen. For all its soon-to-be-discussed faults, she made an iconic movie, a blockbuster, one that will likely be remembered as the signature movie of 2023. (Yes, I know Oppenheimer will likely clean up on Oscar night. But come on: it’s not even Nolan’s best movie. It’s barely in the top five. I genuinely believe Barbie will have a longer run of popular imagination salience than Oppenmeimer.)

There has thus been much public outcry that Gerwig was not nominated for Best Director. But once again, let’s just say Gerwig did get nominated. I would be disappointed if she won. If it were up to me, I’d give the award to Justine Triet, who directed—that’s right—Anatomy of a Fall. So that Gerwig isn’t nominated doesn’t rile me up.

(If I had to bet right now, I’d put my money on Nolan winning Best Director. And I do think there’s some room and time in a Film Lit class to discuss what criteria we think should define achievement in film direction. So I could certainly see framing a discussion question around attacking or defending Gerwig’s lack of a nomination.)

I couldn’t finish this section without addressing at least two more elephants in the nominee room. First, America Ferrera doesn’t strike me as a super-compelling nominee for Best Supporting Actress. I know people love her monolgue (more on that later); I’ll be disappointed if she wins. 

But, more importantly, we can all agree that Ryan Gosling’s nomination for Best Supporting Actor is as unserious as nominations get. (Famously, even Gosling knows that.) And I’d go so far as to say that it’s hard to imagine a win more credibility-crushing than Gosling’s would be. The only caveat I’d add is that, in my view, the Best Supporting Actor field of nominees isn’t great. I love Sterling K. Brown, but I don’t know that he’s great in American Fiction. I thought Mark Ruffalo was bad in Poor Things. The best performance among the nominees is probably Robert Downey, Jr.’s in Oppenheimer.

“To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn’t just about horses, I lost interest.”

Barbie’s significant flaws do present some real teachability concerns. For example, there is a significant disparity in energy levels and pace between the first and second halves. And I get it: the first half’s world-building relies in large part on establishing the idyllic Barbie Land—so that viewers can notice and decry what happens to it on Ken’s return.

But the second half structure almost seems to be making itself up as it goes.

Early in Act II, the Mattel executives are adamant that Barbie gets in the box. Their ostensible motivation is that Barbie’s presence in the real world has started a chain reaction and thrown the market and production line into chaos, and they are just looking to get things back to how they used to be. Fair enough. We’ve seen this type of arc before. And as the executives stumble their way through their latent misogyny and explain why everyone will be better off if Barbie gets in the box, Barbie realizes that getting back in the box would be a bad idea.

Barbie’s sudden and unexpected clairvoyance serves a narrative function, so we roll with it. And the extended chase sequence ensues. Gloria, Sasha, and Barbie are all desperate to keep the executives from apprehending Barbie. But . . . why? What happens if Barbie gets in the box? What are the stakes?

Moreover, what happens if Barbie doesn’t get in the box? I ask because the previously desperate executives are remarkably cavalier about the situation when they finally find Barbie in Barbie Land. What, after all, was the point of that fuss? That it never seems to come up when Barbie makes her final decision to become a human cements the failure to execute some very basic storytelling elements effectively.

While I’m at it, I have very mixed feelings about the presentation of Barbie’s climactic decision. My favorite moments in the film include those when Barbie is on her own in the human world—in the park, or at the bus stop, for example. She begins to understand the dual, messy, complicated nature of humanity, and falls in love with it. So in that light, I find it affirming and charming that Barbie ultimately chooses humanity over everlasting perfection. (As we discuss in Film Lit often, this film is a love story: between Barbie and her own humanity. And, yes, between Gloria and Sasha.)

On the other hand, I very much rolled my eyes when Barbie admits out loud that she doesn’t know how the story is going to end. It’s a moment that demonstrates screenplay exhaustion, and is not immune to critiques that it’s at least a bit of a cop-out.

“Thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism have been solved.”

Three other moments that inspire mixed feelings nonetheless have significant potential to inspire engaging Film Lit discussion.

First is “I’m Just Ken,” a sequence many people seem to adore. For my money, it’s overlong and full of tired sight gags, and is a pace killer. Having said that, I do think there’s a lot of room to discuss the implications of Ken’s and Kens’ inflated self-importance—and the connections to the mansplaining they are all prone to. I will also say that it does provide an opportunity to discuss how Barbie plays with the conventional love story.

Second is Gloria’s viral monologue about modern womanhood. I know more than a few people who are lukewarm about—or frustrated with—the scene that undoubtedly led to America Ferrera’s nomination for Best Supporting Actress. But I’ve also seen and heard more than a few people discuss openly how that monologue changed their lives. And that would be a fun discussion question: “What does it say that, in 2024, this monologue can inspire such different takes, even and including among people who consider themselves feminists?” I also think it would be fun to tie this scene into Sasha’s opening tear-inducing diatribe to Barbie. Specifically, it would be fun to ask, “Is Sasha right? Did Barbie fail her and all the other human girls? What does Sasha reveal about herself by making that claim?”

Third is the narrator’s voice over meta note to the filmmakers that Magot Robbie is the wrong person to cast if the script includes Barbie crying that she’s “not stereotypical Barbie pretty.” I think it would be both fun and fraught to ask a class very simply, “Is Margot Robbie the wrong woman to deliver this line? Why? Or Why not?” My instinct when I first saw the film was to disagree with the narrator; and yet I do appreciate the question can get very complicated and sticky very quickly. I do think it could add more spice to the conversation to point out a historical footnote: Amy Schumer was originally cast as Barbie. 

“I would never wear heels if my feet were shaped this way!”

In the end, that the film is not a structural masterpiece is not necessarily a deal-breaker. If the objective of a film is to get students thinking and talking, Barbie could work.

See you on February 21st, when we discuss another angle to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969).