Margot Robbie’s Barbie might be a fizzy, bubblegum-scented bomb but it’s definitely not for the kids

After months of hype and unprecedented levels of pinkness, Margot Robbie’s Barbie movie is finally here. But it’s definitely not for kids. See review.

Barbie (PG)

Director: Greta Gerwig (Little Women)

Starring: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Kate McKinnon, Will Ferrell, America Ferrera

Rating: ***

Doll-ightfully rolling the dice

The hyping of Margot Robbie’s new Barbie movie has been so heavy and so unrelenting for so long that our planet has officially surpassed all previously known levels of pinkness and sparkliness.

And now, like a bubblegum-scented bomb dissolving in the bathtub of your mind, that movie is now here, and you can finally immerse yourself deep within the Barbie-verse.

It is almost impossible to predict what any one individual will make of this big-screen Barbie blockbuster.

Margot Robbie as Barbie with Simu Liu and Ryan Gosling as rival Kens in a scene from Barbie.

Some will undoubtedly hail Barbie as the cleverest dumb movie ever made. Others will damn it as the dumbest movie to ever try and pass itself off as clever.

Almost everybody else will often find themselves wondering if there is even a movie here at all.

What cannot be denied is that while this pastel-hued production functions effectively as both a candy-colour-coded feminist polemic and a flamboyantly appointed parade float, it is also a non-stop toy advertisement, and a grave warning that Ryan Gosling should never be allowed to have a music career.

The Barbie experience can be freewheeling, sophisticatedly silly fun for minutes at a time when it truly wants to be. However, it can also suddenly get stuck in a dull and repetitive rut whenever the filmmakers lose the slightest semblance of focus.

At this point, it should also be noted that while Barbie has been accorded a family-friendly PG rating, it is not a movie for kids.

Though the production does not really move in any inappropriate direction, it is the adult-minded approach of writer-director Greta Gerwig – and her witty makeover of Barbie as an unlikely feminist icon – that will have children stifling yawns throughout.

Alrightee then, so what could possibly constitute a plot in a Barbie movie, I hear you ask?

Well, there is a hell of a lot more story going on here that you might expect. Much of it requires some detailed explaining, but even then, not everything going on will be clearly understood.

The real need-to-know stuff runs as follows: Barbie (played to an ever-endearing level of living-doll perfection by Margot Robbie) lives in a Barbieland where all the women are all the different versions of Barbie to have been released and sold over the decades.

Oh, and every single female in this alternate dimension goes by the name of Barbie.

As for the males, they’re all named Ken (the most Ken-ergised of which is played by Ryan Gosling). Except for this one fellow named Allan (Michael Cera). If you are a male in this world, you are here only to provide buff background scenery for those ladies in the foreground living life to the fullest.

Long story short: girls call the shots, guys throw the shapes. Got all that? Good. Now here comes the first in a sequence of knotty meta-twists that will tie Barbieland to the real world.

Barbie (the Margot Robbie one, often referred to in the movie as ‘Stereotypical Barbie’) is experiencing sudden pangs of humanity – feelings of anxiety, frustration and even depression – that are melting down the plastic-moulded perfection of daily life.

The only solution to reversing this disturbing trend – or risk ending up like the much-derided Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) – is for Barbie to journey to contemporary California, walk purposefully into the corporate headquarters of her manufacturers Mattel, and politely request they fix this situation ASAP.

While Mattel’s CEO (Will Ferrell) and his board agonise over how to get Barbie to revert to her original assembly-line specs, a newly enlightened and emboldened Ken (who followed Barbie over to the other side) explores a society where blokes get the best jobs, highest pay and all the cool stuff to do.

By the time the movie has reached its rather convoluted conclusion back in Barbieland, a radicalised Ken has persuaded all the other Kens that is they who should be ruling the roost.

As for Barbie, she must recruit, train and lead all the other Barbies in a guerrilla mission to reclaim a female-facing way of life before it is too late.

As you may have gathered by now, the high-concept nature of Barbie’s premise means that those who attend expecting a good time all the time should lower their expectations somewhat.

Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken visit the real world in Barbie.

The Barbie screenplay’s calculated combo of the incendiary and inane is a tricky balancing act that never quite captivates as long as it should.

Just as there is a solemn message here worth hearing, there is also a busy, fizzy carnival unfolding at a moment’s notice. Each cancels out the other all too often in Barbie.

This is not to say Barbie is a failure in any pronounced way.

In fact, when it comes to stealthily exposing and addressing life’s many unnecessary gender imbalances, Barbie stands as quite an admirable (if slightly compromised) achievement for a mainstream Hollywood movie.

On a purely technical level, the day-glow production design and its controlled explosions of undistilled dollhouse-playtime nostalgia deserve to be regarded as next-level works of pop art.

As for the cast, well, the two true standouts, fittingly are Robbie and Gosling as Barbie and Ken.

In assessing Gosling and the inspired strokes he applies to the broad, blank canvas that is Ken, let’s just say he keeps stealing scenes across the length of the movie, and is always selfless enough to give them back when asked.

Gosling’s Ken is the most happening hunk of himbo to hit the screen since Ben Stiller introduced us to Derek Zoolander over two decades ago.

Just as importantly, Robbie’s uncanny likeness to the original Mattel blueprints for Barbie – along with her sheer likability in front of a camera – generates the right kind of feminised force field from which the film can continually draw power.

Barbie premieres in cinemas across Australia on Wednesday, July 19.

Originally published as Margot Robbie’s Barbie might be a fizzy, bubblegum-scented bomb but it’s definitely not for the kids