Major spoilers for the Barbie movie below.
There are some common denominators to the line readings I think about a lot: there are lines that are guffaw-inducing levels of nonsense (“You shouldn’t be upset that I fucked her, you should be upset that I had a laugh with her!”). There are lines that I keep turning over in my head, trying to make sense of (“Karma takes all my friends to the summit,” which I haven’t written about yet … Summit like a shareholders meeting? Summit like the men in music business conference?). There are lines that I just heard over and over and over again during the three summers I had a portable DVD player and no meaningful summer reading assignments (Never Been Kissed, the trailer for Big Fish, The Other Boleyn Girl). There are line readings that leave me giddy with delight, like someone has said something in a new, magic way that I want bottled immediately “You best start believin’ in ghost stories Miss Turner…”). The Barbie movie has one of the latter.
On Sunday, severely jet lagged and suffering from a mood because the only tickets I could get were in the third row, I saw Barbie. (I returned again, Monday afternoon, because I just felt like it.) Barbie is a movie-movie, a dizzying collection of visual gags and gems. When Margot Robbie’s Stereotypical Barbie steps out of her heels, her perma-arched feet keep their shape; Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie has a keyring of a dozen doll legs. The no-walls doll houses! The musical numbers! This is a movie that understands the elasticity of play, the way Barbies can do anything, because imagination always fills in the blanks. Greta Gerwig wanted Lady Bird to look like a memory; Barbie has a designed, thoughtful perfection, like the best-designed childhood dream, or the playroom of the richest kid in your fourth grade class.
Most of the script is as lush and vivid as the production design: a deliriously funny little line about fascists controlling the railways, jokes about cellulite and patriarchy and Will Ferrell whine-whispering “Get in the box you jezebel!” But nothing compares to Issa Rae, as the Barb in the White House (President Barbie), walking into a living room where a Ken is watching TV to ask: “Are you watching The Godfather?” No one has ever said “The Godfather” this way before and no one will ever say it this way again. I’m sorry Francis Ford Coppola! Still kiss me, Al Pacino! The Godfather is Barbie’s now...
