Barbie (2023)

  I missed a post yesterday because of a near death experience.  My bad.  Hey, look, it's the Barbie movie!

Barbie (Margot Robbie) has it all: the DreamHouse, the pink convertible, dance parties, friends, and a killer wardrobe in Barbieland, a utopia run by Barbies.  But when she has a sudden existential crisis, she must turn to Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) for advice.  To her horror, Barbie has to journey to the Real World and find the girl playing with her doll to see why that girl's sadness is bleeding over into Barbie's life.  Ken (Ryan Gosling), desperate for Barbie to notice him and favor him above Ken (Simu Liu), stows away in the backseat of the convertible.  They are both shocked by the Real World.  Barbie is horrified to see that women are not, in fact, in charge of every aspect of life.  Ken is elated.  Finally, a world for men.  While Barbie searches for the little girl with her doll, Ken begins researching the patriarchy.

I can't even count the number of times I screamed while watching.  This movie is hilarious.  The entire cast is perfect (except for Will Farrell, who felt weirdly out of place, like a Lego Movie cameo gone wrong).  I was fully prepared for Gosling to be my standout, because he is somehow still underrated as a comedic actor, but it was America Ferrara with an incredible soliloquy that might have been on-the- nose, but I still needed to hear it.

The production design deserves an Oscar, if nothing else.  Every detail was spot-on, including Barbie being 23% larger than her surroundings.  Amazing.  Incredible.  I was never a Barbie girl growing up.  I mean, I was a girl so people gave me Barbies but I was never invested in them.  (The only Barbie I would have sold an organ to have was the Bob Mackie Barbie based on Cher's costumes.)  I was shocked how many Barbie-related things I remembered from commercials I saw when I was a kid.  And, if I'm honest, a little weirded out at how effective the marketing was.  Mattel is truly a soulless corporation but damn if they don't know their jobs.

I'm not the biggest Greta Gerwig fan but I absolutely loved this movie and I'm going to buy it as soon as it comes out.