Barbie (2023) Review

Growing up, Barbie was my favourite toy. I had many Barbies and enjoyed how versatile stories could become when playing with these dolls. They were more beloved to me than Polly Pocket as they had better clothing and accessories, and so was Barbie better than other dolls I didn’t play with as often. There was an entire community of Barbies that I owned that had their own families and stories to share. Barbie remains iconic to me. If I have a daughter or daughters in the future, I would get Barbies and play along.

Barbie had an entire movie collection that grew with a new release each year. I started to collect them with the release of Barbie in the Nutcracker. My collection grew so much that I deemed one week out of each year to be Barbie week. I’d watch a movie each day and line up my dolls from the movies to watch along with me. They were fantastical and my favourites were ones about princesses.

When I heard that there was a new, live-action Barbie movie in the works, I was excited. It is one of the only movies I’d care to see in the theatre this year. It looked fun and looked to be something that you could watch without a care in the world. This however was shown not to be the case while I watched it. What started out as a fun campy romp turned into a movie that traded creativity for a preachy message.

Spoilers ahead!

The overall message that I got from these dolls as a child was that “I could be anything.” Barbie has had many careers. Ken has also had careers and yet it seems that all the Kens can do in the new movie was to be highly incompetent men who beach all day. While the women got to be members of government and in esteemed roles, the Kens had no power in this world. This was not the Barbie world I had dreamed of. Ken had always been a necessary man in my toy box. Though I had far more Barbie dolls than Kens, each was an essential member of the Barbie community being leaders, fathers, and competent contributors. If anyone got done the worst in this new imagining of Barbie World, it is Ken. All the Kens were treated like an afterthought with the Barbies putting other Barbies at the head of everything. I hated how they were treated and can understand why Ken would want to change things to be a Kendom.

The fact that the Barbies were “brainwashed” so easily by the Kens shows how they too were incompetent, so much for a doll who could be anything… they were reduced to idiots. How is this even a feminist movie? Even the speech that America Ferrera’s character gave was unsettling to me. While it can be hard to be a woman it is also hard just being a human. We all have unrealistic standards put on us. Her list of troubles was far too extensive to be relatable.

While I have heard some reviews of the first scene (where Barbie shows up and all the little girls kill their baby dolls) to say that it is anti-family, I disagree. It was one of the best moments in my eyes as it showed how greatly needed a woman doll was. No little girl wants to be a “mother” all day and having a Barbie has more potential for fun play than dolls that are stuck needed to be held and fed. I could really feel the energy that these little girls had as I too much preferred Barbie to any other dolly.

Barbie choosing not to be Ken’s girlfriend is something I didn’t like at all! How could the iconic couple be no more? We had already seen this happen before in the doll line and their reunion was the best thing that Mattel could have done. Ken is Barbie’s counterpart; they need each other as a real couple would. To reject Ken is to reject his very creation. For him to be “Kenough,” in my opinion would be for Barbie to see his true value and stay with him as the Barbie creators intended. She rejects him and even rejects what she was created for. Why would she choose to be a human? She was made to be a doll and a doll is what she should have stayed. The ending was the most disappointing of all. It felt very unhopeful. Barbie was now ordinary and boring compared to the fun-loving girl she has been since 1959.

Other things I did not appreciate: the lack of children and baby Barbie dolls, how sexual certain things were (as evident also in the Barbie Movie Soundtrack), and Ken dolls still being unequal to Barbies in the end.

The best thing that the film had going for it was the nostalgia and aesthetic. The Barbie World was well-made and beautiful. It captured the style of who Barbie is as a doll while giving a view of what it would really be like to have a fantastic life made out of plastic. The outfits, colours, choreography, and featured Barbie products were a wonder to watch work altogether for this dreamland. The biggest thing I took from the movie was the desire to embrace the Barbie style as I realized that I never wore pink… I found a lovely dress a few days later from my favourite thrift store.

Other things I enjoyed: Margot Robbie looks just how you’d picture a living Barbie to be, how Ken thought that the patriarchy was about horses, the big Ken battle on the beach, that a Ruth Handler character was featured, the classic pooping Barbie dog, and Weird Barbie.

Overall, I’d give the movie a 3.5 out of 5 stars. Though the message was wonky, I found it to be a fun experience.