Barbie (2023)

Yep, Jack and I both loved it. A tongue-in-cheek bubble gum fantasy with feminist underpinnings, this story of the iconic doll(s) going on adventures is definitely fun for all ages. The massive cast is led by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as the main Barbie and Ken, with extra Barbies and Kens played by Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon, Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, Dua Lipa, Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ncuti Gatwa, John Cena, and so many more. More star power comes from America Ferrera, Michael Cera, Rhea Perlman, Will Ferrell, and Helen Mirren as the narrator, just to name a few.

Greta Gerwig directs with a practiced hand from a script by her and (her life partner) Noah Baumbach. Ferrera’s monologue in the second act is so good I made a note to mention it. They made sure of the accuracy of the Barbie history, too, with the clothes and accessories and other dolls.

I'm currently streaming Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt's original score on Apple Music and there's an album of songs available there. I'm sure they're streaming elsewhere, too. The candy-colored photography is by Rodrigo Prieto.

When we started watching the wonderful series Sex Education (now in its final season on Netflix) in 2019, we were taken by Emma Mackey's (here's a photo) resemblance to Margot Robbie, so I wasn't surprised to learn that Mackey would be in this movie. Ncuti Gatwa and Connor Swindells (in this photo Swindells is bottom left and Gatwa next to him) are also major players in that series and here they are in Barbieland.

As we were getting ready to rent it, I saw that, for an extra $5, not only could we watch it again later, but we would also get over 45 minutes of extras. So we now own the movie and those extras: terrific short subjects going into depth on the cast, production design (thanks to Sarah Greenwood and her team), wardrobe (by Jacqueline Durran), makeup and hair (too many to name), and choreography (Jennifer White).

I assiduously avoided reading about the movie until we could watch it. Here's an article I saved and enjoyed two months later.

Robbie was last blogged for Asteroid City, Gosling for First Man, Rae for Vengeance, McKinnon for Bombshell, Ben-Adir for One Night in Miami, Cena for Blockers, Cera for Molly's Game, Ferrell for Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, Mirren for The Duke, Gerwig for Little Women, Baumbach for White Noise, Greenwood for Darkest Hour, and Durran for Cyrano. Perlman was covered in I'll See You in My Dreams before being mentioned for making a cameo in You People.

Nef was new to me until I saw her this week in the penultimate episode of the terrifying, stranger-than fiction, climate change series Extrapolations (Apple TV) and Lipa is a Grammy-winning singer-songwriter making her feature debut. Liu's dozens of credits include 66 episodes of the hilarious Kim's Convenience (we haven't seen his Marvel action movie). Ferrera is best known for 103 episodes of Superstore and 85 of Ugly Betty and voicing in the How To Train Your Dragon movies (one and two). Ronson and Wyatt won an Oscar and more for writing Shallow for A Star Is Born, Ronson also wrote Uptown Funk for Bruno Mars and produced Amy Winehouse's Back to Black album and lots of other hits. This is the second feature score for Ronson and the first for Wyatt, who is the frontman of the band Miike Snow. White has been main choreographer on four other features and movement coach for Elizabeth Olsen on three Avengers movies and the WandaVision series.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences, averaging 88 and 83% respectively, aren't playing around. But I suspect my readers have already decided whether they'll see it or not, as we did on September 26 on Apple TV/iTunes.