Barbie (2023)

Apparently it’s been Barbie’s world all along, folks; we just live and dream in it. In this topsy-turvy summer where the pink day-glo sparkle of Barbie can open on the same day as the portentous and sobered Oppenheimer – and both can make a boatload of money – Barbie ends up being an excellent reminder that we can have both. If Barbie can have it all, so can we, and we don’t need to take ourselves too seriously in the process.
 
Things are great in Barbieland, a paradise populated only with Barbies and Kens (and Allan, played by Michael Cera). It’s all good until Barbie (Margot Robbie) begins to experience flat feet, anxiety, and cellulite. At the insistence of Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), Barbie ventures out into the real world with Ken (Ryan Gosling) to find out why her worldview has gotten so grim – much to the consternation of the president of Mattel (Will Ferrell).
 
From its earliest trailers and first-looks, it was quite clear that Barbie’s secret weapon was going to be self-awareness. An early trailer cast Barbie in a send-off of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, with children gleefully smashing baby dolls, and the hard cuts to the pristine plastic of Barbieland reassured us that director Greta Gerwig knew exactly what we might expect from a corporate Barbie film – and she was steadfastly opposed to creating a two-hour toy commercial. Instead, we get The Lego Movie by way of Enchanted, a film that shouldn’t be this delightful for a movie based on a narrative-less toy. (The antithesis, I suppose, is something like Transformers, a joyless toy commercial mired in its own monastic mythos.)
 
Margot Robbie is perfectly cast as “stereotypical” Barbie, the ur-doll from which all other Barbies (even President Barbie) draw their inspiration. Indeed, so immaculate is Robbie in this role that even the narrator (Helen Mirren) cannot help but comment on the utter absurdity of her lament that she’s not pretty; “Note to filmmakers,” she opines in one of the film’s many terrific jokes, “Margot Robbie is not the actress to get this point across.” Meanwhile, Ryan Gosling is, if it can be imagined, even doofier as Ken than Michael Keaton was in Toy Story 3. Gosling’s Ken is a true buffoon, a self-described accessory and self-insistent “ten” whose job is “beach” despite an apparent inability to perform CPR or even swim to shore on his own. Together, the two have some of the funniest chemistry imaginable, particularly because of the perennial lack of clarity about the precise nature of their relationship.
 
Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach are delightfully cavalier about most of the rules that govern Barbieland. Some of this is due to the logic that governs a child’s play, but more of it is in an embrace of fantasy and dreams at large. In two sequences, Rhea Perlman appears (particularly jarring for someone who, like myself, has binged nearly all of Cheers in about four months), and there’s an explanation provided in a hand-wavey kind of way that rolls over the audience like a wave. In another scene, someone ponders the possible differences between Barbieland and the real world, and in asking which difference is key, he receives a unanimous answer, “Yes.” Whether Barbieland is just down the block, like Toontown in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, or whether it is a creation of a child’s fictional dreamscape, is the kind of question that only an adult reviewer would begin to ask – and Gerwig’s response is, “Don’t worry about it.”
 
The film is bracingly unselfconscious, with no one afraid to embarrass themselves or lean into the broad absurdism of playing a plastic doll come to life. Simu Liu is wickedly fun as a Ken consumed with himself (as they all are), a walking/talking competitive vanity incarnate. Similarly, Gerwig is undaunted by the prospect of directing cardboard montages, placing a corporate boardroom on the world’s longest tandem bicycle. It’s peppy and poppy, a little subversive and a little heavy on the ‘message,’ but if anyone’s upset by the film, they’re taking it – or themselves – a little too seriously. It’s a film where Gosling’s Ken is both perplexed and disappointed about the number of horses involved in a “patriarchy,” where Weird Barbie is unapologetic about smelling like a basement. The little nine-year-old boy next to me was as enchanted as his younger sister a few seats over. Their mother, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be enjoying herself, but then again she didn’t seem like a person who enjoyed much of anything. Perhaps she needed a Barbie of her own to inspire her, to remind her that it’s okay to feel joy. 
 
That message is Barbie’s greatest gift – that it’s tough out there, but it’s okay to laugh, to dream, to blaze your own path forward on tippy-toes, wearing so much more pink than any one retina can handle – just as long as you’re you while you’re doing it.
 

Barbie is rated PG-13 for “suggestive references and brief language.” Directed by Greta Gerwig. Written by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach. Based on the Barbie dolls by Mattel. Starring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell.

Ghostbusters (2016)

Set the “controversy” aside, and take the movie on its own terms. Ghostbusters is plenty of fun and a pretty strong example of how to remake a movie with sufficient reverence balanced by satisfactory innovation.

Years ago, Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) and Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) coauthored a book on the paranormal, but Erin has tried to distance herself with a legitimate career in academia. A haunted house in New York, however, brings the two back together, with Abby’s new partner Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) and streetwise MTA employee Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones) rounding out the pack of paranormal investigators dubbed “Ghostbusters,” who become the last line of defense when New York is riddled with ghosts.

I was among the skeptics when a Ghostbusters remake was announced – having nothing to do with the gender switch, but based entirely on the fact that the original Ghostbusters movie is alchemically good, difficult to duplicate like lightning in a bottle. And remakes almost never live up to the original, let alone surpass it (aside from The Maltese Falcon and The Departed, that is). So I was a little trepidatious while in line for my ticket, but the trailers had looked funny enough, and I hadn’t been to the movie theater in nearly two months.

I’ll say that I went into this film expecting it to be something less than Personal Canon material, and I’ve found that the lower I temper my expectations the more I tend to enjoy a film. But I think Ghostbusters is genuinely entertaining even without the expectation threshold. It’s not, however, a classic like the first Ghostbusters – at least, not yet, perhaps – but it’s quite far from disgracing the legacy of the original. No, it’s a case study in how to do a remake right; it nods toward the original (including fun cameos from nearly all of the original cast, save Rick Moranis), moves in its own direction, and doesn’t forget to have fun along the way. What it’s not, and I think some of us were expecting it, is a legacy film, in which the ladies accept the mantle from the original team. As great as it would have been to see Dr. Venkman back on screen, it’s a smarter play to let the film run in its own direction.

Melissa McCarthy continues to be the queen of physical comedy, bounding about the screen while attached to a misfiring Ghostbusters backpack; she’s equally at home with quick delivery, like the moment she realizes that her proposed slogan for the Ghostbusters already belongs to another group. Kristen Wiig is perfect at playing it straight, hamming it up in overdrawn romantic gestures toward her new secretary (Chris Hemsworth, in a fun comedic turn), but it’s Kate McKinnon who steals the show as ostensibly this film’s Egon Spengler, the socially awkward genius. It’s the only role loosely borrowed from the original, but McKinnon does crazy eyes and lingering silences better than anyone. For Jones, the film never quite develops her “New York expert” character trait, but she gets to have just as much fun as the others and even ties in with one of the most fun cameos of the film.

Your childhood is safe. It’s only a movie. (It’s only a movie, the horror trailers would have us repeat.) It’s a very fun movie, the second coming of Slimer but far from the greatest film of the summer. It’s diverting and entertaining – and good heavens, is it loud! – but for an afternoon off, it’s good spectacle and hopefully the start of a new franchise where the fun keeps rolling even beyond the credits (after which, you’ve got to stay).

Ghostbusters is rated PG-13 for “supernatural action and some crude humor.” There are ghosts in here, and some of them barf green slime.