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Margot Robbie

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Barbie On The Big Screen Delivers On Being Clever And Entertaining

by Emerson Unger
written by Emerson Unger

 

She’s a Barbie girl in the Barbie World. Life in plastic—its fantastic. Yes, Barbie on the big screen is finally here! Considered one of the most anticipated films of 2023, Margot Robbie steps into the iconic heels of “typical” Barbie for this one-of-a-kind film about Mattel’s legendary toy doll.

Now, bringing Barbie to the big screen has not been easy. The film has had multiple writers and directors and even at one point had Amy Schumer playing Barbie, but all of that changed when Margot Robbie was cast in the lead role in 2019. The momentum kept growing when it was announced that Oscar darling and “Ladybird” director Greta Gerwig would take on the daunting task of bringing Barbie to life with the help from her longtime partner, Noah Baumbach, co-screenwriting with her. Subsequently, the excitement for the film spiked again when Ryan Gosling signed onto the film in 2022 to play Ken. The film is also produced by British film producer David Jonathan Heyman, who brought the Harry Potter film series to life. Margot Robbie is also listed as a producer as well.

The film tells the story of “typical” Barbie, played by Robbie, who sets out on a quest for the real world after experiencing “being less than perfect” in perfect Barbie Land. Accompanying her on this journey of self-discovery is her longtime boyfriend Ken, played by Gosling. The film also stars America Ferrera as a Mattel employee who helps Barbie in the real world and Will Ferrell as the over-the-top Mattel’s CEO. Likewise, Kate McKinnon plays Weird Barbie, while Issa Rae plays President Barbie and  Simu Liu as another Ken. Rounding out the cast Rhea Perlman plays Ruth Handler, the creator of the Barbie doll.

The film is slightly in the vein of campy like other toy movies, in which an iconic toy brands breaching the big screen, such as Transformers and the Lego movies. However, this film, with Gerwig at the helm, comes out swinging right from the beginning being extremely feminist centric, but in a tongue and cheek way giving Barbie the credit for solving feminism and females’ issues in society. #JustJoking #JustNotInTheRealWorld While in Barbie Land, like Beyoncé sings, “Who runs the world? Girls!,” the real world hasn’t really embraced all that girls can be like it is in Barbie Land.

In Barbie Land we find a Barbie president, Barbie doctors, Barbie astronauts, Barbie reporters, and all the Barbie’s own their own dream homes, while Kens seem to be OK on the beach, not surfing, not as lifeguards, but just hanging out on the beach. Every day seems great until typical Barbie has an existential crisis and realizes she’s not perfect. Her shower is cold, she has bad breath, her milk is expired, and her toast is burnt, but worst of all her feet are flat and she discovers she has cellulite after falling off her roof all while obsessing over death. It’s at this time that she enlists the help from Weird Barbie, who guides her to the real world. In the real world she realizes that all the dreams that little girls had and who they wanted to be were very far from the truth. Donning her iconic rollerblades with canon toe she happens upon a construction site expecting to find hard-core female construction workers only to be mocked and cat called. She is shocked that the real world is a lot less female friendly than Barbie Land.

Upon her arrival into the real world, Mattel is alerted to the situation and acts quickly given what happened to Skipper several years prior in the Florida Keys. Mattel quickly tries to get Barbie back into the box but being a quick one she escapes into the care of a Mattel employee, who played with her as a child. With Barbie on the run, the Mattel employee and her daughter join Barbie in return to Barbie Land only to realize that Ken had returned before them and brought back a concept called patriarchy, which saw all the Barbies give up their power in order to appease their oppressors a.k.a. the Ken dolls. Barbies dream House is turned into mojo dojo casa house and is full of horses and beer drinking boys. It is at this time that Barbie hatches a plan to release her fellow dolls from their brainwashing and to take back Barbie Land. Not long after their plan is hatched, Mattel employees venture into Barbie land as well. The Barbies work together to free Barbie land from patriarchy and to return it to its previous prosperity. Upon successfully doing so Barbie is revisited by Ruth the creator of the Barbie doll. After speaking with Ruth, Barbie realizes that she wants more from this life then Barbie Land can offer and she sets out to find it.

The strength of the film comes from its clever messaging. Its tongue and cheek depiction of what we would like reality to be a.k.a. Barbie Land and what it really is– the real world, insightfully comments on humans’ innate ability to better themselves. The film is cleverly written for an open-minded audience seeking more than mere mindless entertainment but the movie is packaged in a way that is just the opposite i.e., a pure spectacle of cheerful escapism. For example, while moviegoers may be frustrated at the depiction of Ken as an over the top clingy, whiny, complaining character, who lacks depth, it is obvious when you take a step back that his character is an homage to that one-dimensional female character, seen so often in film, who lacks depth that would resemble a real human being. The cleverness of the film continues and its campy exploration of bringing fun whimsical Barbie notions into the real world, such as joking about how Mattel is led only by men even though it is a brand that is female centric. It just goes to show you how Mattel is not only willing to poke fun at itself but to be the butt of jokes. The movie also tackles troubling issues like how Barbie is designed in an unrealistic way with the perfect proportions that no woman can actually obtain. There also is a joke mid film delivered by the narrator played by the one and only Helen Mirren that jokes about Margot Robbie’s casting that is sure to get an audience to laugh. There are also other heartwarming moments like America Ferrera’s speech to the Barbies, in which she highlights the struggles of women and their inability to accept themselves in their quest for acceptance. There’re so many poignant moments in this film however it does seem that there is a bit too many messages leaving the film slightly convoluted at times. That being said the film is visually a feast for the eyes and certainly entertaining when it comes to comedy. It does what a movie should do; it entertains and inspires and that is why it’s so amazing to see Barbie on the big screen in this way.

Barbie hit theaters on July 21st, 2023 in US theaters.

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EntertainmentFilm

Film Review: “Babylon”

by Ethan Singh
written by Ethan Singh

Cinema is dying. It’s hard to believe given the glut of options we have being released every week on the myriad of streaming services that lay themselves at our feet for a mere pittance, but it’s something I ungraciously believe. A body without a soul is nothing more than a corpse and a movie without a point is no different. A lot of the movies I’ve seen in the past couple of years have had nothing to say and if a movie has no voice, then it has very little point in existing. But every so often, there is a flicker of life in the midst of every ashen pile that reminds you even embers may burn again. Babylon is one such flicker and Damien Chazelle is the perpetrator of this.

First and foremost, this film is not a love story or even a drama as Chazelle has done in the past. Rather, it’s an epic, which I would categorize as a genre all on its own. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself seeing one being made today after I, along with the other great film writers at the Knockturnal, discussed this topic on one of our more recent podcast episodes. An epic is an old style of making movies, filled with grand shots and numerous plot lines, but with an overarching theme. These are films that have incredible scope and often span years, acting like literal novels come to life. Each scene is less a fluid story and more a highly connected and interrelated series of vignettes that epitomizes the central theme and often time period. Babylon is very much so an epic which follows the lives of different characters during the late 1920s in Hollywood as the industry moved from silent films and the raucous age of the roaring 20s into the slowly sterilized but pioneering golden age of film which began with the onset of “talkies”, films with sound.

Babylon essentially opens on a large, off the rails party filled with every form of debauchery you could imagine, as well as you few you didn’t. The music is bombastic, the setting is ostentatious, the attire of the party goers is shocking to say the least, and their behavior is purely a degeneration of social norms. In fact, the scene itself is loud in every single way you can imagine, aside from the dialogue, which is almost unintelligible. At first, I thought this was a shortcoming of the sound mixing team when I realized that this was the point. Drowning out the sound of dialogue is the pure spectacle of the moment. Not to mention the fact that Chazelle is such an adept storyteller that even without understanding what’s being said at all moments, it’s clear what’s taking place. This opening act spans the first thirty or so minutes of the runtime but it perfectly exemplifies the spirit of the film and the silent era: it’s one large party that’s hit its peak, but it’s on its way to a downturn.

It’s beautiful and is not unlike the rest of the film which carries on for another 150 minutes to a total runtime of three hours, which sounds like a lot, but it’s not. Most movies I find myself watching today are so slow and poorly placed that I’d rather repeat a year of high school than finish the sleepy mess I was watching. I’ve seen movies this year with the usual 120-minute runtime that were 90 minutes too long. And yet, Babylon almost feels rushed at 3 hours. I actually wish it was 4 hours. The only flaw I could find in this movie is that because it tells the stories of so many different characters, there are scenes which aren’t given enough time to breathe and there are no scenes that I would cut. That and the fact that writing dialogue has never been Chazelle’s strong suit.

This is an interesting review to write. I’ve been a writer for nearly seven years and in that time I don’t believe I’ve reviewed a single epic. It takes me back to my days in film class and learning why John Ford’s How Green Was My Valleywas a masterpiece, even though it never really quite clicked for me. Looking back, I was too young and unbothered to understand the depth of that movie, but today I can appreciate the beauty of it. Babylon is much the same in that I don’t believe this film will receive the audience reaction it deserves. Honestly, I’m not even sure it’ll receive the critical praise it’s rightly owed. It’s a bold step that seeks to revive something from the past that most have decided to leave in the grave it found itself in. However, Chazelle has shown that once again in this film that he has in the past, anything old and underappreciated, like the genre of musicals, can still work if under the watchful hand of an extremely talented auteur. That is what Chazelle is now, by the way. With this film, I feel the argument is more than clear cut than ever that he is a true auteur, one who can tackle and navigate the choppy waters of the most under-appreciated and overlooked genres. Looking at this film as a standalone piece of work may seem like an almost experimental test of what a movie can be. A take on an old format. However, consider this in the work of everything Chazelle has done and it makes for an incredibly interesting piece to the creative psyche he portrays so well in his work.

I believe it was the director Howard Hawkes that once said that a good movie is one with a few good scenes and no bad ones. By that definition, Chazelle has certainly made a good movie and I feel it’s the best scale to grade this product by. It’s a piece of cinema for cinema lovers, but sadly, I’m not sure a regular audience member would enjoy this. I certainly don’t see a regular movie goer like my Dad going to a theater and saying it was time well spent. Movies of this style are ones that require an acquired taste, made specifically for the movie goer with a developed palate in the pursuit of something more that regular run of the mill production won’t provide. It saddens me to say that. I remember hearing people laugh at what may be one of the most tragic and heartfelt scenes of the film and thinking to myself that this is not going to be appreciated by movie goers and probably not even by critics. In time this film will get the critical praise it deserves, but it may go as a misunderstood masterpiece from an era where Hollywood had a creative drought.

Babylon will be in theaters on December 23rd, 2022, and I sincerely hope that against all odds that it’s a smash hit.

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Tribeca Film Festival Review: Margot Robbie Plays Murderous Bank Robber in ‘Dreamland’

by Chantell Hayden
written by Chantell Hayden

Dreamland is amongst the dozens of films that debuted at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival this week. It stars Margot Robbie (I, Tonya, Suicide Squad), alongside her co-stars Finn Cole, Darby Camp and Stephen Dinh, walked the red carpet on Monday at the world premiere of the film. It also stars Travis Fimmel (Vikings) and Kerry Condon (HBO’s Rome).

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