Reviews Show That ‘Barbie’ Movie Contains The Right Accessories

According to CNN, “Barbie” launches into action with a creativeness and vigor that the film may ultimately be unable to maintain.

Director Greta Gerwig’s picture is an impressively ambitious attempt to consider where Barbie fits in the 21st century – less than it could be, but rather close to what it should be.

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However, amongst all the hoopla that has made its release an increasingly rare movie-going occasion, it proves an ambitious try nonetheless.

In a film whose vibrantly colored Barbie Land is awash in the kind of details (most of them pink), Gerwig has undoubtedly put together all the right accessories, starting with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.

Even if “Barbie” takes the live-action path, there are some clumsy features that weigh down, or at the very least dilute, the brilliant ones.

The most brilliant parts start off early with a narration by Helen Mirren and a nod to “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

The movie picks up, though, when Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie starts having strange thoughts that almost literally shake her to her foundation. Barbie Land is populated by various versions of Barbie and Ken living in anatomically neutered bliss.

In the meantime, Gosling’s Ken struggles with his significance and the idea that he is merely Barbie’s appendage and cannot exist without an ampersand.

Following Barbie’s awakening, Ken and she both experience separate epiphanies about how the Real World contrasts with the idealized, female-centric world in which they currently reside.

The less one knows going in, the better. However, Barbie’s quest for information leads her to Mattel.

In Mattel, she meets an employee who is human and her teenage daughter who has outgrown her Barbie phase, which ties into the movie’s overtly feminist message and desire to place Barbie in a larger sociological context.

It sometimes doesn’t connect or feel as novel as it should when those more contemplative components are placed next to the blatant giddiness elsewhere, oscillating between the serious and the ludicrous, between art and commerce.

Simu Liu is one of the more prominent exceptions as Ken’s sort-of competitor, albeit not many of the Barbies and Kens have much to do. The overall casting is particularly remarkable.

The political underpinnings of “Barbie” will undoubtedly spark discussion, in part, frankly, as a way for news organizations to capitalize on the buzz the movie has generated.

However, a large portion of the audience will probably be willing to support a film (and so highlight the positive) that many were so excited to watch.

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The fact that “Barbie’s” marketing effort has spontaneously evolved into its own entity is a reflection of the times, in which anything worthwhile frequently seems worth overdoing.

Despite all the hoopla, the film is nevertheless delightful, especially for those who are open to dissecting the neatly wrapped real-world themes while admiring “Barbie” performance.