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Barbie has been a culture-war hot spot for about as long as it’s been on toy shop shelves, which is why The Guardian is questioning the effectiveness of director Greta Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach’s decision to make the dolls empowering.

The three-out-of-five-star review reckons that the ’empowering’ “theory in this beamingly affectionate and deliriously pink-themed fantasy comedy-adventure produced by Barbie’s corporate manufacturer Mattel, and starring Margot Robbie whose own superhuman blond beauty makes her the only possible casting as Barbie herself. It is maybe down to Gerwig’s confidence and generosity as a feminist film-maker that she gives all the best lines to Ryan Gosling, who is allowed to steal the whole film playing Barbie’s non-genitaled boyfriend, Ken.”

So two stars were knocked off because Gosling’s Ken stole the show, and therefore the pink plastic world is less feminist than expected? The review goes on to suggest that the humour of the film is also lacking as it keeps “second-guessing and pre-empting the anti-Barbie impulse with a stream of knowing references and self-aware meta-gags”.

In conclusion, the “movie is perhaps a giant two-hour commercial for a product, although no more so than The Lego Movie, yet Barbie doesn’t go for the comedy jugular anywhere near as gleefully as that.”

Meanwhile, The New York Times generously notes that there are limits to how much dimension even Greta can give the branded material of a doll that has been “rebuked as an instrument of toxic gender norms and consumerist ideals of femininity” for centuries. The review writes that Gerwig’s talents are one of this movie’s pleasures, working hard to ensure that watchers have just as much fun in Barbie Land as she did.

The Telegraph, too, was more open-handed, writing in its four-out-of-five-star review that despite being a movie about the Barbie toy line and having such a pervasive marketing scheme that even those at the furthest reaches of the Amazon might have seen the trailer, Barbie “is far from the blunt-force cash grab many of us feared”, noting that it is, in fact, “deeply bizarre, conceptually slippery and often roar-out-loud hilarious….”

The Independent gave the most glaring hot pink review of all with a lavish five full stars; the headline reads that Barbie is “s near-miraculous achievement from Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie”:

“Barbie is one of the most inventive, immaculately crafted and surprising mainstream films in recent memory – a testament to what can be achieved within even the deepest bowels of capitalism.

…While it’s impossible for any studio film to be truly subversive, especially when consumer culture has caught on to the idea that self-awareness is good for business (there’s nothing that companies love more these days than to feel like they’re in on the joke), Barbie gets away with far more than you’d think was possible. “

Intriguing.

Most of the reviews give away the plot in substantial detail, so consider yourself spared. Rather, go on and enjoy the pink fever dream all to your heart’s content on Friday, the big release day, July 21.

[source:guardian]