Barbie film review – Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling deliver dazzling fun

You have to be living under a dull, monochrome rock to have missed the spectacularly impressive neon-bright campaign around the new Barbie film. There’s even early Oscars buzz for Robbie and Gosling.

The whole world seems to have gone Pepto-Bismol pink but do we really want or need a superstar-studded, mega-budget movie about a frankly frequently problematic toy?

Thankfully you can put away the little pink bottle. What might have been a stomach-churning misfire is the best all-round family comedy to have come out of Hollywood in years.

Director Great Gerwig already stunned with Lady Bird and the sublime Little Women and triumphantly works her deftly subversive touch once more.

After too many years of turgidly adequate formulaic comedy and romcom movies from streaming platforms (you know who you are), Barbie shows what Hollywood can do when artistry meets blockbuster budgets.

As well as the constant barrage of glorious visual gags, the movie’s meta tongue is firmly in its cheek from the start. Helen Mirren’s divinely dry narrator welcomes us to Barbieland, a matriarchal utopia where only women (all called Barbie) govern, explore space, drill pavements, perform surgery, win Nobel prizes and even collect the trash.

Every night is girls’ night and the supremely smiley ladies bask in the satisfaction of knowing their shining, perfect coiffed example has solved sexism and inequality in the real world forever.

Oh, the irony. And in case you missed it, the film repeatedly (and ultimately rather unnecessarily) hammers the point home.

The set design, costuming and attention to detail are a spectacularly sensational feast for the eye and pure adrenalised nostagia for anyone who played with the many versions of the Mattel doll and all her accessories.

In the middle of this technicoloured wonderland, Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie suddenly finds herself thinking dark thoughts. Before she knows it, the worst thing that can happen to any unnaturally idealised manifestation of women occurs and she finds herself with, gasp, cellulite and flat feet no longer suited to heels.

Her distraught monologue about self doubt, lack of self-worth and no longer feeling pretty is perfectly punctured by Mirren’s meta-charged voice-over that the scene might have had more power if the filmmakers hadn’t given it to Margot Robbie.

Barbie isn’t alone in her pain, however. Eternally overlooked is her pining, bleach-blond beach-bound boyfriend. Barbieland is also populated by droves of Kens, virtually redundant apart from posing and pining for their Barbies who generally pay them little mind.

Ryan Gosling delivers yet another magnificently subtle performance, superficially ridiculous yet with a deliciously underplayed sensitivity bubbling beneath the sculpted muscles. His entire job is ‘Beach’, not lifeguard mind you, and even he (and his admittedly limited brain cells) doesn’t know what it means.

The film is dotted with cute musical numbers but Gosling’s climactic, preposterously OTT 80’s power ballad Just Ken, backed by the massed muscle-bound Kens in tiny shorts and with a gloriously silly dance-break in the middle, is the film’s crowning glory. I’d genuinely go to see it all again just to watch that scene.

The rest of the film sees Barbie and a stowaway Ken go to the real world to try and fix her sad spirits by finding the upset girl who is playing with her doll and starting to threaten the stability of Barbieland.

Naturally, she discovers a reality where women are not valued or equal, let alone running the show. Cue plenty of scenes and speeches on the subject, which carry undoubted truth but have little to say about what could and should be done.

Kate McKinnon has a blast as Weird Barbie, while America Ferrara and Rhea Perlman shine in their scenes. Will Ferrell, meanwhile, does his usual deluded manchild schtick, which presumably still entertains someone somewhere, as the president of the all-male (oh, the penetrating social commentary) board of Mattel.

The always-captivating Robbie is more than a strong enough actress to carry the switch in tone from kitchy cuteness to troubled proto-feminist, but the irony is that it is Ken’s journey that ultimately entertains more.

His emasculated himbo discovers a world magically ruled by ‘the patriarchy,’ which he thinks has something to do with horses and giant posters of Sylvester Stallone. What he does know is that he likes this new feeling of (coded toxic) masculine power and dominance after being neglected by Barbie for so long.

Again, the film has enormous fun reaching this point (and the ensuing chaos) but doesn’t actually have anything new to say in how it is all resolved. The entire current shifting cultural landscapes around men and women have never been more fascinating and are well-aired for younger audiences but bring little to the rest of us.

The film is rooted in gender roles, with plenty to inspire younger audiences but falters in representing any productive ideas for harmony between the sexes or the advancement and betterment of either. Apart from, of course, the prerequisite Hollywood homily of just being yourself.

The aforementioned insanely crammed cast provides fun spotting blink-and-you-miss cameos from John Cena, Dua Lipa and Derry Girls’ Nicola Coughlan. Simu Liu alone of the other Kens makes a real impact as Gosling’s arch-nemesis, but most of the supporting roles from teh likes of Sex Education’s Emma Mackey, new Doctor Who Ncuti Gatwa and Connor Swindells are ever present but underused.

What is undeniable is that Gerwig delivers more than enough effervescently exhuberant wit and whimsy to keep it all bouncing merrily along, with younger audiences dazzled and older ones endlessly amused.

Ultimately, channelling Gosling’s character’s own epiphany, and considering the dire current state of Blockbusterland, that is more than Ken-enough for now.

BARBIE IS OUT NOW IN CINEMAS