Edgar Cochran ✝️’s review published on Letterboxd:
Visually spectacular, humorously cringe, undeniably capitalistic, unsurprisingly superficial, unexpectedly toxic, and ideologically disappointing.
Here we have Mattel, the creator of the “perfect” female stereotype sold in a consumerist society for decades that made several women around the world feel they didn’t suit the expected physical appearance to feel plentiful. This model is played by Robbie and addressed as the “stereotypical Barbie”, which is the first mistake, as it is the “Western vision of superficial beauty” Barbie. Mattel understood the social implications of this monster slower than a turtle, and gave Barbie many professions, which excluded all women living under oppressive capitalist economies unable to get a profession or sport hobby that new Barbie dolls exploited in every toy store, especially those with a statistically significant and higher Power Distance Index (PDI) that correlated with a big number of developing economies (Latin America, India, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Philippines, etc.). In more recent times, they’ve been trying to amass a greater inclusion considering a wider range of nationalities and even financial situation. Is this a contradiction in the original version of Mattel, forced inclusion, necessary inclusion, or simply an indirect awareness of “we made a mistake to sell a single idealized appearance of how a woman should look”.
And now, Baumbach and Gerwig construct a PG-13 rated comedy to appeal to older audiences that are not necessarily kids; the screenplay assumes direct genitalia jokes, a censored “mf” term coined by a black woman and sexual innuendo will sell. They were correct. It sold. It sold a lot, surpassing, at least by the time of the creation of this review, the $1,000,000,000 USD mark. All kinds of target markets are approaching this for different reasons: childhood nostalgia, the colors, Robbie and Gosling, the undying Gerwig fans, the pseudo-feminist agenda (it isn’t), and just for watching a light comedy during the summer.
The worldbuilding is utterly impressive, the plot is recycled garbage from Enchanted (2007), the humor is effective at times and cringe at others (Pixar did a much better job at constructing humor in a single feature for many audience types during the 90s), combines sceneries a la La La Land for finding the excuse to be labelled as a musical. That covers the first two points of the opening paragraph.
The third one is a paradox: the huge Mattel symbol is displayed before the film begins and sells itself as a fourth-wall-breaking offering more effective than Deadpool (2016) with the ultimate feminist agenda. Ok, fire away, movie. But how can this production being made with literal product placements can conciliate the non-existent, idealistic agenda between being pro-feminist without being capitalistic? It can’t. Actually, the film doesn’t care about doing it. Not only that: the conclusion embraces the idea that a woman should entrust herself to an imperfect and capitalist world to be successful in life rather than striving for social utopias.
The problem comes when the utopia that the characters strive for in the third act has an anti-feminism message: “tear down the patriarchy, we hate men taking decisions over us, if they want to begin being ‘someone’ in Barbieland they will have to struggle as hard as we women have had to do it in the real world for centuries”. This is shockingly regressive and doesn’t advocate for gender equality, which feminism is supposed to do. The cherry on the cake is when the film presents morbid obesity as ok under the subliminal message of “you’re fine just how you are”, especially in a film like this, when it is medically a dangerous health state to be in, and this character is a couple of important lines in the first and third acts.
Little Women (2019) is a storytelling and cinematic adaptation masterpiece in many regards explained in another review of mine, but there is an underlying message in the conclusion, which I found equally genius and dangerous: “we don’t need the approval of men to make decisions”. God designed man and women to be perfect physical, emotional and ideological complements; when war is declared against the opposite gender from one party, the counterparty becomes the oppressed, and it is inherent in human essence to seek justice through equally unfair means to reach a justice balance. However, God’s idea of justice does not match our own, and history has taught us that every time someone thinks he/she has the perfect way of solving gender / discrimination / racial / social / economic issues, that someone does not know squat.
The self-aware humor is impeccable and Ferrell will get mixed opinions, but he was born to play this type of roles. The musical scenery arrangements are great and some correct commentaries are meant regarding how society today sells the idea, not only that men have a predominant influence on society at the expense of women, but even that corporations try their best to hide this hideous reality under a hypocritical “internal code of ethics”. My favorite scene of the film is when the mother delivers a perfectly written speech about how women have always been expected to find middle grounds in everything they do and every role they willingly or forcedly take due to life circumstances, and it is this pivotal scene that makes her daughter wake up to some realities and why her mother lives under distress. For the billionth time, the father figure is absent and the mother must undertake all the roles while fulfilling the image that a male-dominated society imposes. Too bad the whole argument derailed to “let’s destroy patriarchy and let men have their share of struggle; we don’t need them to be happy, we are self-sufficient” (this is a generalization that is very dangerous as that cannot be set as a law... ever).
The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.
But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”
-Genesis 2: 18-23
Props to Margot Robbie, however, for being a physiognomically versatile actress able to display a wider range of emotions initially expected from such a western-capitalist-tainted role. The arc is interesting, and the visual animated / VFX transitions were exquisite, but the conclusion, given all the evidence present, is toxic, and shouldn’t be used to empower women.
53/100
