Despite not ever owning a Babie doll or ever intentionally playing with one, I was somewhat looking forward to the film adaptation of the famous doll. Two things, however, did factor my anticipation for this film that I would’ve thought twice on: one was director Greta Gerwig, who has proven to be a great filmmaker given her work on the 2019 Little Women remake and the quasi-biopic film Ladybird (2017), and; two, the release date of Barbie, which happened to be released on the same day as Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer. Now, it’s pretty common for two big movies to be released on the same day, but the films Barbie and Oppenheimer (dubbed Barbenheimer by audience) generated a lot of buzz (and memes) because of how different they are, which led people to do double features of both, including myself. Before I planned the double feature, I had already bought tickets for Oppenheimer because there was a 70mm screening of it almost an hour away. When I heard that Barbie was trending, I then decided to make it a double feature day and watched Barbie before Oppenheimer. So, now the question you’re properly wondering is: was Barbie on the same level of Oppenheimer? As usual in these reviews, let us find out. 

In this toy adaptation, Barbie starts with a brief introduction of the Barbie doll itself. It then transitions to Barbieland, a matriarchal society where a variety of Barbies live, and all are successful and self-confident. The Barbie that we follow is the familiar Barbie (Margot Robbie). She is what you’d expect from a Barbie: blonde, thin, and always in heels. Other Barbies in the film include President Barbie (Issa Rae), Dr. Barbie (Hari Nef), Writer Barbie (Alexandra Shipp), Physicist Barbie (Emma Mackey), Lawyer Barbie (Sharon Rooney), Judge Barbie (Ana Cruz Kayne), Diplomat Barbie (Nicola Coughlan), Journalist Barbie (Ritu Arya), Teen Talk Barbie (Marisa Abela), Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), and Mermaid Barbie (Dua Lipa), just to name a few. In addition to the Barbies in Barbieland, we’re also introduced to male counterpart Ken and the different variations of Ken, which includes regular Ken (Ryan Gosling), Ken #1 (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Ken #2 (Simu Liu), Ken #3 (Scott Evans), Ken #4 (Ncuti Gatwa), Sugar Daddy Ken (Rob Brydon), and Kenmaid (John Cena). The film then shows us a day of the life of the original Barbie (though through the rest of the review moving forward, I’m just simply calling her Barbie), showing her perfect life and interactions with the other Barbies. The film also focuses on Ken’s life. His occupation is “Beach,” which involves him just being at the beach. Ken is only happy when Barbie is around and gets jealous when Barbie doesn’t give him her full attention. Moments later during a dance party, Barbie randomly questions to the party guests about dying which immediately stops the party until she dismisses it. The next day, her usual perfect morning routine starts to go sideways as she wakes up restless, experiences a cold shower, has a bad breakfast, her heels are now touching the ground, and she begins to develop cellulite. When she informs the other Barbies her situation, they tell her that she needs to talk to weird Barbie for information on how to fix her. When visiting her, weird Barbie informs Barbie that each resident of Barbieland is connected to a person in the real world, and Barbie must travel there to meet with the person playing her. Despite being hesitant, she packs up her convertible and hits the road to the real world though Ken stows away. Reluctantly, she allows him to tag along. Through a series of montages, which includes traveling by convertible, RV, boat, spaceship, and rollerblading, Barbie and Ken arrive in Venice Beach, California. While rollerblading and wearing attire fit for Barbieland, Barbie starts feeling insecure about the people looking at her. Ken, on the contrary, starts feeling pretty good that people are noticing and talking about him. After a series of events where both of them run into trouble with law enforcement, Barbie begins focusing on her main objective and envisions where her person may be. She then envisions a tween girl named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) at a middle school and successfully tracks her down. Sasha’s four friends start criticizing the idea of Barbie for setting back women and encouraging unrealistic beauty standards. Now in a distraught state, Barbie is then discovered by Mattel employees and asked her to come with them. They were able to find her after law enforcement tipped them off about Barbie and Ken’s presence in the real world and the CEO of Mattel (Will Ferrell) informs Barbie that she needs to get in a Barbie box for remanufacturing, which leads to Barbie running away from the CEO and the board members. While this is happening, Sasha’s mother Gloria (America Ferrera), is informed by a Mattel employee that her daughter had seen Barbie at school that day. Gloria heads straight back to the company where she rescues Barbie. Gloria then informs Barbie that she may be the reason why Barbie is having certain feelings because Glora started to play with her old Barbie dolls while at the same time experiencing an identity crisis. Not knowing what to do next, Barbie decides to take Gloria and Sasha to Barbieland to show them all the wonderful things about Barbie. Meanwhile, Ken starts to learn about the patriarchal system in the real world and feels accepted and respected wherever he goes for the first time in his life. In other words, he notices that men are treated better in real world society and starts to become under the influence of it. He then returns to Barbieland because he still is limited in the real world due to not having valid qualifications, and informs the other Kens on what he had learned. This then results in the Kens taking over Barbieland and indoctrinating the other Barbies. The other Barbies become submissive, such as agreeable partners and maids. This upsets Barbie as her, Gloria, and Sasha get back to Barbieland after Ken returns and does a complete 180 on Barbieland where the Kens have taken over and are going to soon change the constitution of Barbieland. With Barbie hitting rock bottom emotionally, Gloria then feels like she needs to do something to bring Barbie back to old self before it is too late.

So, as you can tell from that brief summary, Barbie is pretty surreal movie and after I got done watching it, I wasn’t entirely sure what I had just saw. I will say, however, that after processing it further, I can say with full confidence that not only was this the Barbie movie that we wanted, it’s the Barbie movie that we needed. I know, bold statement, but hear me out.

While watching Barbie, I was trying to review this through two points of view: my critic side, which is the part of me that wanted to judge it on an academic scale rather that being part of the Barbenheimer hype, and my Catholic side which I do for all the films I review, but I wanted to see more through a Catholic lens than usual. 

As for the Barbie itself, if there is one word to describe it, it would be fun. As mentioned earlier, I never intentionally played with Barbies. If I did play with them, it was with younger cousins or my younger sister, though she was never an avid collector. Yet, the reason I had fun with it was because it knew what kind of film it was and went along with it. In all honestly, it’s a bit of a paradox, meaning they were moments when it didn’t take itself seriously, but it also had moments of seriousness that somehow worked and were impactful. Those serious moments touched on feminism, existentialism, and masculinity, but did it in way that did not feel pandering to feminism nor slandering when it came to masculinity. The feminism themes, for me, really stood out because, as a guy, I might not never fully understand femininity, but Barbie gave me more info on the subject. 

Now, to give my Catholic perspective of the film, I was honestly surprised how much of my faith I saw in this film given the fact that it’s not a “Catholic” movie. One example that I saw was the parallels of Barbieland and the real world in the film vs. my Catholic surroundings (i.e., Catholic parishes and events) and my non-Catholic surroundings. As mentioned earlier in my summary, when Barbie and Ken are in the real world, Barbie starts to feel uncomfortable as the real world is not like as how she expects. This could parallel how many Catholics (including myself) have felt when we leave our Catholic bubble and venture into society. I had a real experience like this when I started seventh grade at public school after attending a Catholic school a majority of my life to that point. It was definitely a culture shock, but seeing the parallels on screen was comforting to see. We all have been outside our own bubble and know that the real world may be scary, but not something we shouldn’t have the courage to explore.

Another Catholic moment I had in Barbie was when Barbie breaks down about not being good enough for anything as she doesn’t see herself as the type of Barbie that can be great. Fortunately, Gloria delivers a heartfelt speech about womanhood and the difficulties of it. I especially related to this, though not as a woman (obviously), but as a Catholic. Sometimes, I see other Catholics and often compare myself to them, feeling like I’m not living my best self as a Catholic person. Then I have to remind myself that everyone’s journey is different and it’s not the journey but the endgame when you really think about it. To others, it might be an apple to oranges comparison, but to me it was another way to see Faith through a different perspective.

Lastly, one character that I have to bring up in Barbie while I was trying to bring my Faith into this movie is Ken. I connected with him only because of him being the biggest male character in the film. During my summary paragraph, I mentioned how Ken became under the influence of how males are treated in the real-world society, and starts using his knowledge that he gained to turn Barbieworld upside down. Now, I won’t get into the area of masculinity vs toxic masculinity because that’s opening a whole can of worms. I will, however, say that when Ken gets exposed to the less positive side of masculinity and shares his thoughts with the other Kens. I saw it as a new type of sin that someone gets exposed to and tries to influence others as well. When it comes to new things, we have to examine it and see how can it benefit us, while at the same time being aware of how it might hurt others, let alone ourselves. It’s always good to be curious and learn everything we can about our world and different cultures. At the same time, we must also be cautious of the dangers of new things and determine if it leads to a positive path, or a sinful one. Ken, however, chose the latter.  

Even though I prefer Oppenheimer to Barbie (weird comparison in retrospect), I still had a blast with the film and I’m happy about its success. It’s no surprise that it has surpassed over a billion dollars in the box office given how creative, fun, and heartwarming it turned out to be. As mentioned earlier, this is the Barbie film we needed because of the themes it presents which is something everyone would benefit from especially women of all ages. I do have some criticisms that I couldn’t overlook, though, such as the lack of character development from certain characters in a film with a runtime of almost two hours. Other than that, however, Barbie is definitely a must see for the summer of 2023.