It’s not just the cast or the direction, it’s not the soundtrack or the scenography. And it’s not just the impressive advertising campaign that has accompanied it in recent months. But it is, however, for all these reasons together that the first live action at the cinema of the most famous doll in the world aims to be the most important film of the year. More, an event. Between calendar coincidences, small previews and real international rudeness, Barbie it is released in Italian theaters on Thursday 20 July, one day earlier than in the United States. Life in plastic, it’s fantastic, the Barbie sung by Aqua wanted to convince us, while the one played by Margot Robbie seems to be full of doubts and put the world of fiction in which she is imprisoned into crisis. Already from the news of its creation it was understood that a cultural and marketing phenomenon would have been created around its release. Now the question that those waiting to enter the theater want to answer is whether the operation, perfect so far, lives up to its presentation.
Plot and cast
One of the strategies used by manufacturing and marketing to advertise Barbie was to get a lot of talk about the film, for months, however showing few images and telling even less about the plot. From the few minutes of the trailer we can see the very blonde Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, in her all-pink world together with dozens of other Barbie hyper characterized and dozens of Ken. However, the idyll of the protagonist in her plastic world shows cracks, her perfection cracks and so Barbie finds herself with “flat” feet, losing one of the most distinctive characteristics of Mattel dolls. Barbie’s journey into the real world starts from these premises – with Ken played by Ryan Gosling – in which the protagonist will also have to face the perfidious board of directors of the doll manufacturing company, chaired by Will Ferrell.
It was not obvious that the film would finally see the light. The idea of bringing Barbie’s story to the big screen dates back to 2009, when Mattel signed a contract with Universal Pictures. After five years everything passes to Sony Pictures, without however materializing until 2018, when the rights are acquired by Warner Bros. In choosing the director, the production has given a clear indication of what it wanted from its product, aiming for something that could surprise the viewer. For the leading role, in the past the name of Amy Schumer had been approached, then that of Anne Hathaway and that of Gal Gadot, advocated by Margot Robbie herself when she was still “only” producer of the film. In the cast there are also Due Lipa, in her debut, Emma Mackey, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Hari Nef, Alexandra Shipp. Among the Kens, in addition to Gosling, also Simon Liu and John Cena.
What the critics say
There are some lucky ones who were able to see the film in preview, and the doubts have already been resolved. US film critics are not unanimous, even if the comments are mainly positive. There are two prevailing positions. On one side are the enthusiastic critics, according to whom the film is feminist, ironic, and intelligent enough to overcome fears that it was just a gigantic marketing operation. On the other hand, those who believe that the overwhelming push is exhausted in the packaging. “Barbie’s packaging is so much more fun than the boring toy inside the box,” said Johnny Oleksinski of New York Post, summarizing the thoughts of those who were not satisfied with the film. But there was no shortage of enthusiastic reviews, and it was mainly the funny, light-hearted, suddenly hilarious character that convinced them. “Barbie is one of the movies mainstream more imaginative, immaculate and surprising than recent memory», he writes on The Independent Clarisse Loughrey, “while it’s impossible for any studio film to be truly subversive, especially since consumer culture has taken hold of the idea that self-awareness is good for business, Barbie gets away with far more than previously thought possible”. According to enthusiasts, Greta Gerwig and her cast thus managed to escape the trap of a film where surprise and self-criticism risked being just plastic.
Greta Gerwig, the indie director
That the direction of a film worth over 150 million dollars could be entrusted to a director like Greta Gerwig was not obvious. Not because the 40-year-old from Sacramento doesn’t deserve it: for Lady Bird, making his debut behind the camera, in 2018 he was nominated for an Oscar for best director and best screenplay. A candidacy, the latter, obtained two years later for Little Women, including at the Golden Globes and Baftas. This does not mean that Gerwig’s choice in July 2021 still amazed fans, because until then she was considered an indie director, one of the interpreters of the mumblecore Californian. “His films were so independent that they didn’t show at Sundance, but went straight to South by Southwest,” he writes in the Guardian Caspar Salmon, «was once the queen of indie cinema, now she uses intellectual property to make money for a mega toy company that sells vacuous and hypersexualized dolls and nobody cares». Considering the director’s other works, Gerwig should have given the film a feminist connotation, focusing on the emancipatory aspects of the character played by Margot Robbie, without however distorting the image of the doll that has built the imagination of millions since the end of the 1950s of girls and boys. And not only.
The controversy before the release
How many liters of paint are needed to create an all-pink world? The answer to this question was found by the company to which director and set designer Sarah Greenwood turned. To paint the set that recreates Barbie Land in the right shade, the company used up all its material, running out of all the cans it had available. “They used all the paint we had. We gave them everything we could give them, they cleaned us up,” they confirmed Guardian. But if the scarcity of bright pink makes you smile, the diplomatic incident with Vietnam has instead forced the producers themselves to intervene. In early July, some images of the film made the Southeast Asian country nervous, which banned its release. In one scene, in fact, there would be a map showing Chinese claims on the South China Sea. In fact, the line of nine sections would be present, with which Beijing officially outlines what it considers to be its possessions, despite the opposition of other countries. “It wasn’t meant to make any kind of statement,” a Warner spokesperson assured, “the map you see is a childish-style drawing done with crayons, the scribbles portraying Barbie’s imaginary journey from Barbie Land to the world. real”.
One of the elements that most impressed fans with the release of the trailer was the position assumed by Barbie’s foot. Indeed, by Margot Robbie, who she declared that she had practiced and that she wanted to shoot the scene in which her character gets out of bed with “pointed” feet without stunt doubles. This is Barbie’s classic foot pose, designed to make it easier for her to put on shoes. After seeing that scene, social media users tried to recreate the scene, standing on her toes with arched foot as they took off their shoes. A truly uncomfortable – and painful – position, so much so that the actress herself admitted that, to get the right take, she had to help herself by leaning on a metal bar. However, social networks have gone crazy for another element related to the film. A coincidence that not even the marketing strategists could have foreseen: the simultaneous release in theaters – in the United States – of Oppenheimer, the film on the life of the American physicist who with the Manhattan project led to the development of the atomic bomb. A coincidence, nothing more, which made the release of the two films even more exciting. And it spawned dozens of hilarious memes under the hashtag #Barbenheimer and #Barbiecore.
