Barbie

 

Greta Gerwig's marvelous deconstruction of the 60-year-old Barbie doll phenomena is a MAGA Nation nightmare about female empowerment, gender non-conformity and corporate fecklessness and misogyny that dismantles the country's fevered androcentrism while delivering a hilarious, tuneful, culturally dense, cinematically dazzling and whip smart treatise on how to fix what's wrong with the world -- at least a big part of it.

The film's prologue, which is narrated by 14-karat badass Dame Helen Mirren, is a brilliant recasting of the monolith discovery opening to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey that capsulizes girl / doll relations. It's been quite a while since I've been so enchanted by something so clever.

Margot Robbie, whose filmography strongly suggests she's the "gamest" A-lister in Hollywood, leads a stellar, decidedly diverse cast of characters, most of whom are named Barbie, in Gerwig and co-screenwriter and life partner Noah Baumbach's fantasy tale of the venerable toy's colossal identity crisis.

Barbie's bright and sunny disposition as Stereotypical Barbie in Barbieland is overturned when thoughts of mortality begin to pop into her head, at first inexplicably but later revealed to be related to the identity crisis of a real-world Barbie fan (America Ferrera). To avert disaster, Barbie must travel to the real world and make right what is wrong.

Barbie is joined on her journey by Ken (an equally game Ryan Gosling), who is experiencing his own crisis as Barbie's under-developed and woefully under-contextualized "boyfriend." He discovers in the Real World his own brand of empowerment that leads to a huge paradigm shift in Barbieland. According to some reports, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling were both paid $12 million for their starring roles.

Gerwig, as brainy an actress/screenwriter/director as any, has created in this $100 million pink parade an irreverent and subversive spectacle that will, nevertheless, make BILLIONS for Mattel.