HELLO! was in the pink this week as Barbiemania swept the UK and we joined the Stetson-wearing, rosy-hued hordes (sprinkled with spot-on Ken clones) for a sneak preview in London's Leicester Square of the movie that will set the mood for summer 2023.
From its opening Dame Helen Mirren-narrated spoof of the black monolith sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey to the beautiful Billy Eilish theme tune (What Was I Made For?) over the closing credits, this is a film that pretty much achieves the impossible – being all things to all women (and some men).
It's a serious investigation of sexual politics cleverly disguised as a very funny, frothy, relentlessly pink celebration of all things Barbie. One that uses the springboard of the now 64-year-old Mattel doll to leap, spin and backflip to some big ideas with many a knowing wink to a modern audience.
Full disclosure: I did not have a Barbie as a child. I was an Action Man boy, a binary choice forced upon me by the times and one I circumvented by dressing him in his England football kit in preference to all the macho army stuff.
But I knew Barbie. Everyone knew Barbie, right? And everyone laughed at/ignored Ken? And here is one central theme of Barbie: The Movie and one deliciously played to the max by Margot Robbie as the title character and Ryan Gosling as her boyfriend-in-title-only.
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So, some background here. Margot's Barbie is just one of many Barbies, who inhabit and run Barbieworld, where everything is plasticly perfect and today is perfect, just like yesterday was perfect and tomorrow will be perfect forever and ever and ever. And Ken is one of many Kens, who enjoy – no, enjoy is the wrong word – endure the status of being the Barbies' arm candy while reaping no actual physical or emotional closeness from it.
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But this is Barbieworld, where real life, with all its anxieties and trauma, can't intrude. So why does Stereotypical Barbie start having thoughts of death? And why are her heels on the ground instead of ready for her stilettos?
It's complicated, so I won't bore you with the plot, but basically she has to enter the Real World and sort out some stuff, but obviously, that's a hole in the space-time continuum (have you noticed how Mattel and Marvel begin and end in the same letter sequence? Just saying) and it all starts going horribly wrong. And Will Ferrell does his Will Ferrell thing as the boss of Mattel and it's all really, really meta.
Sooo… deep breath. That's four enormous names there already. The cast of this film is officially astonishing. They even have the new Doctor Who (Ncuti Gatwa) as one of the Kens. Kate McKinnon is phenomenal as Weird Barbie. America Ferrera is admirable as a grown-up Barbie fan. Barbies and Kens of all shapes and colours turn out to be A-list movie stars (plus Dua Lipa, who's in there somewhere). And don't even get me started on "Ken's friend Allan", played by Michael Cera.
And they all seem to be having huge fun doing it. And that is director Greta Gerwig's great accomplishment – this movie is Fun with a capital F (talking of F words there's one very cute moment that involves the one cuss-word in the movie, but I won't spoil it).
So anyway, I loved it. The rest of Leicester Square loved it, judging by the cosplay and the applause that swept the cinema after the show.
Downsides? It's very binary and heteronormative. There is a transgender Barbie, folks, but not in this movie. There's some mushy girly scenes that involve Rhea Perlman as a ghost. Bah. So good to see Rhea Perlman, though! And the representation of Allan veered dangerously close to being a gay stereotype.
But I guess that's part of the message of the film – for all the President Barbie, Astronaut Barbie, Lawyer Barbie, Doctor Barbie stuff, Barbie is a stereotype in a stereotypical, unreal world. She can break free of the stereotype and so can you. End of message.
Barbie, 12A, 114mins, dir. Greta Gerwig. On general release from 21 July.