I would like to start by claiming that I think I was always on the right side of this. In fairness to anyone who doubted Barbie, you would have probably had cause to if you didn’t know who the director and writers were. I have the utmost trust in Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, and I doubted I would see the likes of Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Will Ferrell and the slew of other stars with taste signing up for this if it was actually just a 2-hour toy commercial.

Compared to something like Air, which also involves trusted stars in the form of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, I think Barbie manages to be something bigger – or at least something else – and I am more able to forgive the underlying skeevyness of being sold commercialism here. Is this movie going to sell toys? Youbetcha. Was the entire inception of the movie built by a group of (probably male) executives in a board room with the intention of using it to sell toys? Also yes. And perhaps that is too much to forgive, and the fact that the movie acknowledges the harm of consumerism isn’t enough to wash away the fact that the movie is unshakably consumerist in nature.

Honestly — I don’t care, this movie rules.

With the studio blockbuster comedy being dead for nearly a decade now, most of the humor we have gotten from movies has been from jokes inserted into an otherwise non-comedy. Superhero movies have jokes (usually too many), but they’re not comedies. Movies like Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, or The Grand Budapest Hotel, or JoJo Rabbit have jokes — funny jokes even! But they’re not really comedies the way something like Step Brothers, or The Hangover were comedies. They’re dramas with comedy sprinkled in.

I think Barbie has identified the brand of comedy that can actually work in 2023 and beyond. This is easily the funniest movie I’ve seen in 5 years or longer (sorry Booksmart). The comedy works because the movie understands the brand of comedy that has been cultivated and served on social media and is able to deliver that flavor cinematically without betraying an older audience – a power that only Greta Gerwig seems to possess. There are doses of broader comedy, primarily delivered by Will Ferrell, and there are times where that broad comedy actually feels like it is bumping up against the rest of the movie. Most of the time however, everybody is firing on all cylinders and the result is absurd, fast paced, winkingly earnest, and ultimately potent.

The comedic center of the movie is found in Ryan Gosling’s Ken. Here I will admit, I had serious doubts about Gosling bringing anything unique to this movie. Until now, I think his best performance had been in La La Land, a movie in which his presence feels like the weakest part (not entirely his fault, he’s just getting blown off screen by Emma Stone’s Oscar winning performance). I was so completely dead wrong about him. In Barbie he gives certainly the comedic performance of his career, and if I’m right about Barbie identifying the modern audience’s funny-bone, possibly the comedic performance of a generation. He knows exactly what movie he’s in, his delivery is perfect, he brings a level of sincerity to an absurd character that hits the notes just right for us to be laughing with him and not at him. **SUBLIME**

While the whimsical comedy is what shines through and rises to the top in Barbie, the film also carries with it a message or two – something that was clearly important to Gerwig and Robbie and everyone who signed on for the film. At times, this message is delivered with nuance and care. Unfortunately at other times, it feels a bit ham-fisted. Having America Ferrera explain to the audience in plain english about how it’s hard to be a woman, and then explain it again to nearly every other character in the movie to break the curse and save the day felt a bit lazy coming from folks who we know are capable of delivering something like Lady Bird.

I’ve heard two defenses of this critique: that this is a kid’s movie about a toy and so it doesn’t need to have intricately woven themes, and that the monologuing being a cure is actually used as a larger metaphor for the themes the film wants to carry. To the first answer I say we can always hold our stories to a high standard – especially when the stage is this big. To the second, I say “I just don’t buy it” (at least not for now, maybe on a second watch I can get there if I approach it through that lens, but on my first watch it felt reeaaall soap-boxy).

I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about Robbie’s performance as well. She is obviously the perfect casting on looks alone, but she has a lot to balance here bringing the comedy but also hitting the emotional beats when she needs to. I thought she did a great job of both and I was moved emotionally by her performance in the final moments of the film just as much as I was brought to belly laughs at her physical performance as she morphs into depression-barbie (probably my favorite bit of the whole movie).

The second lead behind Robbie is really the production and costume design which will surely be covered come awards season. Without it, the absurdist tone (which is crucial to give credence to the nonsensical plot) would not be nearly as easily received. So much care was put into the construction of this world, opting for practical visuals which I think not only make the whimsical world feel real, but make the performances feel even more impressive against a backdrop that they can actually touch.

From the looks of it Barbie isn’t going anywhere, already nearing $500 million at the worldwide box office. I’d hope to see Robbie, Gosling, and Gerwig (in addition to the folks responsible for the sets and costumes) represented at the Oscars, but we will have to wait and see, I’m not sure whether the academy will be able to look past the brand affiliation. Either way, this has already been the biggest cultural zeitgeist moment at the movies since Avengers: Endgame, I saw more people dressed up for this movie on opening weekend than I see at Halloween. It’ll probably be the last one for a while too, as the ongoing strike is keeping major studios from producing, but who knows, maybe the new A24 movie will do Barbie numbers (wishful thinking, I know).