★½

Have you ever wanted to watch The LEGO Movie, except less interesting, less exciting, less funny, and less fun?  How about a dull movie that pretends to be the same kind of exploitative toy commercial that satirizes modernism and conformity, and cannibalizes LEGO in everything from the use of Will Ferrell to the insurgent infiltration methods.

Barbie is either or both versions of those in perhaps their stupidest form.  So void of fun, so alien to playful family enjoyment; it is a miserable alcoholic’s idea of a good time and a narcissist’s idea of a thoughtful experience.

“Oh, c’mon, Vivek – this movie is for little girls, and you know as much about what it’s like to be one of those as you would a sea urchin.” This movie is only for little girls who have no ability to speak or understand words.  But for purposes of this review, give me the benefit of the doubt and assume that deep within my blackened, cynical shell is a happy and rosy fluffy pink bunny rabbit looking to spread unicorns, fresh pies, and hugs to everyone.

Barbie opens conventionally enough with an overview of the routine that is perfect in one character’s eyes and imperfect in the eyes of another.  It has that Pixar quality of a universe begging to be disrupted, upset, and eventually upended entirely by an intrusion whose origins must be sought out and fixed.  Barbie (Margot Robbie), and her barbies, Ken (Ryan Gosling), and Barbie’s Ken dolls live in a pink Matrix where no one actually drinks any water or sips tea in the morning, and where no real things happen except in basic appearance.  But when Barbie starts behaving differently, when her fleet flatten and cellulite begins to appear, only Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) – a mangled, discolored, and traumatized doll who probably should’ve been the main character – can give her a hint as to what the problem might be and how it can be resolved.

I’ll just skip to the end right now for the bold and stunning revelation that Barbie takes the Herculean route, rejecting the newly restored idyllic harmony of the Barbie world for the chaotic real one where she’d previously spent all but 20 minutes.  It’s a nonsensical ending that doesn’t even follow the nonsensical script.  The creative angle Barbie opts for is to present a matriarchal fantasy that is supposed to be both too good to be true and too awesome not to desire, and satirize both the “real world” and the similarly fantastical patriarchal alternative that it seems all too determined to convince us is as real as the real world if not equally reflective of it.  Yes – a character, having supposedly just restored the rightful Barbie-dominant order to Barbieland, reclaimed her Dream House, and re-established herself as the symbol of perfection for the new, improved world where Ken is slightly more respected, chooses to become an ogled and objectified member of an oppressed victim class in the patriarchal real one.

I’d challenge someone to make it make sense, but even from a commercial sense it can’t.  Barbie loses her allure if she’s a human we’re supposed to take seriously.  No one actually gets inspired to become a pilot because you can dress a barbie doll up in an airline uniform.  It’s about the fun of imagining a bubbly voice over the intercom telling everyone how magical the flight will be.  Legally Blonde understood this perfectly, as did Life-Size.  What those movies also understood was a sense of joy that came from understanding that your purpose isn’t diminished if you aren’t a fancy looking professional.  Barbie forgets this entirely by deliberate choice.  Even when a human is pretending to explain this forgotten concept of universal experience, her words are implicitly rejected by the very experience of watching the film.

Every once in a while, Barbie teases the possibility that it actually understands that this is all just junk and made-up jargon to sell more plastic to children, but no one is funny or convincing enough to show the audience this.  For a movie with so much anger and so little beauty, romance, and magic (all three of which I’m pretty sure little girls tend to prefer over any sociopathic politibabble Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach think to feed them), the only place where any of it makes any sense is in the story of Ken.  The way he tries to prove himself, the way he is affected by that which he’s exposed to, and the way he can’t help himself is the only thing that saves a scene or evokes a relatable laugh.  My wife will tell you that I related to much of it more than I care to admit, and Ryan Gosling’s deadpan stare is as perfectly employed here as it ever has been anywhere.

The other thing Barbie gets right is its own second guessed decision to cast Margot Robbie as the title character.  Robbie’s career proves that the only way to get truly good performance from her is to transform her appearance entirely, whether it’s into a hick from Oregon for I, Tonya or Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad.  She didn’t need to act in The Wolf of Wall Street.  She merely needed to look exactly like she does on her best day in real life.  That was clearly the thought process for casting her as Barbie, but she never convinces as the fish out of water the movie needs her to be during the brief time in the real world.  Everything about Robbie is effortless and excitable, which is why the best moment in the film arrives when the Narrator (Helen Mirren) interjects a scene by noting that Robbie is the last person you’d ever believe if she told you she wasn’t pretty.

In The LEGO Movie, everything was awesome.  In Barbie everything is merely pink.  The only thing missing was the pink mushroom cloud, and you can bet your ponies that if that was in this film, there would be another half star at the top of this review.  What can I say?  Ken rubbed off a bit.

– Vivek