[music]

Brigid Bergin: You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin in for Alison Stewart, and we're going to talk about Barbie, the pink juggernaut of the weekend. We're going to start things off with a little music from Barbie.

[MUSIC - Dance The Night: Dua Lipa]

That is, of course, Dua Lips Dance The Night, a song from Barbie the album, the soundtrack to the hit Hollywood Blockbuster, directed by Greta Gerwig playing in theaters alongside Oppenheimer. Both films were expected to draw big audience this past weekend, and [chuckles] boy, did they ever. Barbie grossed $155 million in box office sales this weekend as both actors and writers are on strike. The film stars actress Margot Robbie as none other than Barbie herself on an adventure to the real world, and Ken played by Ryan Gosling tags along.

Of course, many critics have noted the film's feminist themes and the contradictions of Barbie as a feminist icon. Film critic Alison Willmore wrote, "The film acknowledges that telling girls they can be anything is simplistic when the world doesn't always agree, and when getting through the day sometimes feels like an achievement in itself." I hear that. Alison Willmore joins us today to unpack the film. She's a film critic for New York Magazine and Vulture. Alison, welcome back to All Of It.

Alison: Thanks for having me.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we want to get you in on this conversation. Have you seen Barbie? What are your thoughts on the film? How did you feel about Greta Gerwig's interpretation of Barbie? Did you grow up playing with Barbie dolls? Do you plan on going to see Barbie in theaters or dressing up? Why or why not? Were you one of those moms who took their daughter to see the film? Are you having some unexpected conversations about things like patriarchy this morning? We want to hear from all of you. Give us a call or shoot us a text. The number is 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC, or you can tweet us or DM us on Instagram @AllOfItWNYC. Alison, the film is definitely raking it in at the box office, but if you had to rate this film out of five stars, how many would you give it and why?

Alison: Oh, I am always very bad at giving an actual number. Certainly, the majority of the critical reviews of this film have been quite positive. I have skewed, I've been a bit of an outlier, so I would probably give it a two out of five, I would say.

Brigid Bergin: Whoa.

Alison: I think there are things that it does very well and including its two lead performances. I think Margot Robbie is very funny and heartbreaking at the same time, and Ryan Gosling is delightful, just doing this really just overtly comedic and sometimes very physical performances can, and singing, of course, singing and dancing. I think the challenge of making a movie that attempts to bring up some subversive and unexpected big themes about patriarchy, about feminism, about expectations based on women, while also within a certain brand-safe baggage that is ultimately approved by Mattel, for me, I thought that it wasn't able to entirely pull that off.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, spoiler alert warnings, we're going to get into some of the scenes, some of the nitty gritty. Alison, with that context set up that you have some questions, some concerns, some objections to how the movie pulled it all off. Were there some early moments that you felt like were the ones intended to really draw the audience in that are worth spotlighting?

Alison: Well, I think that one of the things that the film does so well is to create Barbieland as this world within basically the mindset of the dolls and their brand. It's a world in which the Barbies are effortlessly in charge and are able to run this utopian place in which there's Barbie president and Barbie doctors, and they live in Barbie dream houses, and every day is better than the last, at least until some intrusive thoughts of death start making the main Barbie malfunction. I think that the design and the cleverness of the Barbieland is just a marvel of many, many shades of pink, but also of so many nods to the doll, not just as a object that you would own with forever pointed feet so that they could fit in high heels, but also just how you would move your doll around.

There's a mention of how Barbies never take the stairs. They always just float down from their dream house, because, of course, that's what you would do as a kid moving your doll out. You would not bother with the stairs. I think there's a lot of very clever touches there. that opening sequence, which is the part that we saw of the movie the most in terms of how it was marketed. I think it really offers so much in terms of production design and costume and in terms of detail. I think that that is really there to just draw you in before you see, then you get to the action of the film itself.

Brigid Bergin: I loved also the idea of their language, how they spoke, Ken who we'll talk about in just a moment. This was Beach Ken, so he would beach as a verb. That was what he did, which I thought was pretty perfect, because he wasn't the Lifeguard Ken, he wasn't the Surfer Ken. He was the Beach Ken, and so he would beach. Can you talk a little bit about what is this adventure that Barbie sometimes can go on from Barbieland to the real world? What is at state? Why is that part of the story?

Alison: Well, it's a movie that is about an existential crisis, essentially, on a Barbie scale, stereotypical Barbie, who is the Barbie played by Margot Robbie. She starts having these blips in her previously perfect life. She asks, during a party, if anyone ever thinks about death. The other Barbies do not. [laughs] Her feet suddenly fall flat on the ground, her heels touching the ground. Her shower, which of course she being a Barbie doll we never see the actual water, but it's cold one morning.

This spurs her to seek out a weird Barbie, played by Kate McKinnon, who has been as often happens with dolls, played with a little too hard, has left her with some marks from being played with, but who tasks her with going out to the real world to find the girl who has been playing with her in the real world. This girl seemed like these thoughts about death and also maybe depression, all seem to be filtering down from this girl in the real world who's playing with her. Barbie goes off to the real world to find her, and that is where we have a lot of real-world adventures, and then back to Barbieland for more adventures.

Brigid Bergin: [laughs] Listeners, I know a lot of you put on your pink and went to the movie theater this weekend. I saw you, I was with you. We want to get you in on this conversation. Tell us, what are your thoughts on the film? Are you in the Alison camp where this idea of Barbie as the feminist icon, maybe you have some questions about, or are you planning to go see Barbie in the theaters? Are you going to dress up? Why, why not? How do you feel about all the marketing machine behind the film?

Give us a call. Tell us your thoughts, or you can shoot us a text. The number is 212-433-9692. That's 212-433-WNYC. Tweet at us, or you can do it on Instagram @AllOfItWNYC. We're talking Barbie. We want to hear your thoughts on the movie. You can even give your review of the movie if you want. Let's talk why this idea of Barbie, this doll was such a good concept for a film. Why do you think that that could work? Does it surprise you that Mattel signed off on the version that we saw?

Alison: They have absolutely been trying to make a Barbie movie for a while. there have been different big names who have floated through this project over the years. I think at a certain point, Anne Hathaway was set to play Barbie; Amy Schumer; there have been different concepts, people have wrestled with it. I do think that the idea of a Barbie movie is one that Mattel has clearly been attached to for a long time, but has really alluded different people who have tried to take a whack at it. I am not surprised that Mattel signed off on this version.

I think that because it ultimately is something that for all that it tries to confront the contradictions of the idea of Barbie as a role model for girls, but also this impossibly perfect image anatomically impossible. If she were a human woman, she would not be able to stand up. They've done studies. I think that it still is ultimately an affirmation of Barbie. I do think that part of the reason that it has had such big appeal for audiences and resonated is that people will see it still as fundamentally a celebration of a toy that many people grew up with and is near and dear to them.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Alexandra in Manhattan. Alexandra, welcome to All Of It. I hear you so Barbie this weekend.

Alexandra: I did. I saw it on opening night with my mother, and then I went back and took my father to it on Sunday.

Brigid Bergin: What made you go back a second time?

Alexandra: I absolutely loved it. I thought first off, it was a blast. I played with Barbies all growing up. Absolutely my family loved them. I loved them. What really got to me was especially that scene, sorry for the spoilers, on the bench when she's with that older woman, and she just looks at her, and it's so simple, but it's so powerful when she just says, "You're so beautiful." The older woman says, "I know it." It made me cry. I think that entire movie represents how beautiful it is to be a woman, but also how difficult it is. I think that the way that people are perceiving the movie, officially just going in and thinking that it's maybe just simple or it's maybe superficial, but then realizing how much depth it is, is just such a great symbol for the woman's experience as it is.

Brigid Bergin: Alexandra, thank you so much for calling. Listeners, we want to hear your reviews, your reactions, your thoughts about seeing Barbie, or if you're going to go see Barbie, give us a call. Again, the number 212-433-9692. That's 433-WNYC. You can tweet at us or go on Instagram @AllOfItWNYC. I'm speaking with Alison Willmore, the film critic for New York Magazine and Vulture. We're talking Barbie. We have to take a short break. We'll be right back.

[music]

Brigid Bergin: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, in for Alison Stewart. I'm talking Barbie with the film critic Alison Willmore from New York Magazine and Vulture, the Vulture film critic. We've gotten some great texts, Alison, from some Barbie moviegoers I want to read. We got a text that says, "I saw Barbie with my 18-year-old daughter. I love all the conversations since patriarchy rule of man partner, and the balance between Barbie Land where women rule and can be anything effortless in the real world where it's so hard for women poking fun at all the men deciding about Barbie was perfectly done and her escaping being put on--" We won't give away too much. "I cried several times as a woman and a mom. I highly recommend everyone attending." That was a rave review from one of our viewers. We're going to go to one more caller. Let's go to Andrea in Montclair New Jersey. Andrea, welcome to WNYC.

Andrea: Hello. Well, I'm feeling compelled to see this movie after so much coverage, and so much intrigue that I've had. I asked my neighbor just a minute ago, "We have to go see this movie." I would love to see it with my daughter but she lives too far away. My personal connection is, of course, I played with Barbies when I was little, but I also worked the toy show from Mattel in 1985 when they were introducing two Barbies, one was Peaches and Cream, and one was Business Barbie and I had to learn all about these dolls and present them to the buyers and the toy store owners when they came through the toy show.

Brigid Bergin: Oh wow. Well, Andrea, it sounds like you will find a lot to connect with in this movie. Thank you so much for calling. Alison, I want to talk a little bit about the really star-studded cast that makes up Barbie. There's some obviously big names that we've already mentioned aside from Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling's characters Ken. Issa Rae stars as President Barbie. Alexandra Shipp is Writer Barbie. Simu Liu as other Ken. Ncuti Gatwa is another Ken, and Kate McKinnon as we mentioned, Weird Barbie. How do you think the casting of this film reflects some of the messages surrounding Barbie in the film?

Alison: Well, I think that the Barbie vision of the world and Barbieland is a place that is meant to be inclusive, modern, it's reflecting a Barbie that has changed and adapted and grown over the decades. I think that it's a really great cast that both manages to be a more diverse array of Barbies [chuckles] reflecting the changes in the Barbieland, while also being per Barbie standards, a bunch of incredibly beautiful people.

[chuckles]

I think that it does. The movie does a very good job, is very clever about its casting in that sense. I think the one downside of casting is just that there are so many people in there who you'd like to see. There are so many people who just come and go in smaller roles. It's a really abundance of great talent and great faces.

Brigid Bergin: Well, speaking of, I didn't even mention this actor who plays a mother, Gloria, America Ferrera. We're going to listen to a clip now. This is a moment in the film when Gloria is speaking to her teenage daughter, Sasha, played by Ariana Greenblatt. They find themselves in Barbieland at Weird Barbie's house.

[movie clip starts]

America Ferrera: Hello.

Kate McKinnon: Hmm, humans.

Speaker 1: We're fine.

Allan: And Allan.

Kate McKinnon: Come into my weird house. Hi. I'm Weird Barbie. I am in the splits. I have a funky haircut and I smell like basement.

America Ferrera: Oh my God, I had a Weird Barbie.

Kate McKinnon: Yes, you did.

America Ferrera: You make them weird by playing too hard.

Kate McKinnon: It's cool.

[movie clip ends]

Brigid Bergin: Well, I think that that clip, there was such a knowing laughter in the audience I saw the movie with, that Weird Barbie is like a real thing that a lot of people have Weird Barbies. In this film, there are, as you mentioned, all the different Barbies, Kens, but there's also Skippers and Midges and Allans, of course, that in particular played by Michael Cera. How do you think the film pokes fun at some of Mattel's other products in the Barbie universe?

Alison: Well, one of the great things that the film jokes about a lot is that they'll be characters who were discontinued. Midge, who was a pregnant doll, who we see her, and then the voiceover from Helen Mirren and will be like, "Let's not spend too much time on her. She was discontinued." I think it does a lot of clever things about also acknowledging that over the course of this Barbie brand, there have been some less successful attempts or flubs of characters. Towards the end, not to spoil things, but I think you see the sense of the discontinued characters coming to help out as well. Even if you aren't available on a toy store shelf, you can still be part of the Barbie narrative.

Brigid Bergin: I want to talk to Akiko in Brooklyn who is going to remind us that Barbie is not the only thing in the universe, right, Akiko?

Akiko: Yes, I just wanted to remind people about Joy Ride, the Adele Lim comedy that stars Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu, and Sabrina Wu. That's also playing along with the two big behemoths that did really well this weekend. It was a very diverse audience in there, and it was very encouraging and super funny as well. I appreciate Margot Robbie, which I know she hesitated before she took this role and she really expanded some of the [unintelligible 00:18:10], the Ken character a little bit. Yes, I still would like people to see Joy Ride.

Brigid Bergin: Akiko, thank you so much for calling. I think it is an important thing to remember that in this summer, so dominated by Barbenheimer, that, there's other stuff going on, which we know but it's always worth reminding. Certainly, our audience is filled with people who know that and we appreciate when you call in and share your thoughts. Akiko, thank you again for giving us a call. Let's talk a little bit about the direction and some of the challenges potentially that Greta Gerwig might have had as a director to bring this film to life. This is someone who is known for films like Lady Bird and Little Women. What do you think were some of the obstacles potentially to turning this into a film? How did the fact that she was named as the director shape some of the expectations for what we were going to see?

Alison: Yes, I think the biggest challenge is just figuring out what is the story behind a Barbie movie. Certainly, I think this film takes a direction that no one might have guessed. If you were to ask someone before all of this marketing had started, what they would think a Barbie movie would look like. I think that Greta Gerwig wrote the script with her partner Noah Baumbach, and I think that that was the biggest challenge is to just have a concept that creates space to both have a celebration of Barbie and maybe do more than that. I think there's a lot of pressure on Greta. She is one of the great up-and-coming directorial talents. She made an incredible indie film.

Then I loved her adaptation of Little Women so much and this is a chance she took. There are a lot of directors that go from acclaimed smaller films into a big franchise film and their voice gets lost. I think whether this film works for you or it doesn't, and it clearly works for many, many people, very much feels like a Greta Gerwig film. This writes her a blank check. I hope that this leads to her getting other projects on this kind of scale and getting to work with these kinds of resources.

Brigid: Listeners, we are talking Barbie, your reviews, your plans, if you're going to go, how you're going to dress, who you're going to go with, who you're going to bring with you. If you saw it what your thoughts were, if you have another idea of something else someone should see, we're taking it all. We have a great text here from Kai in Westchester. He says, "Dad to two boys. I saw it last night with my wife. The movie is very well done. America steals the show, America Ferrera, but decades of sexist Barbie tropes. I felt a bit gaslit by her suddenly being rebranded as a feminist icon, especially given some of Barbie's troubling history. It's a fun movie but flawed." Alison, that seems to be part of what your concerns were from your perspective.

Alison: I think that there's always this impossible balance in a film like this, which is ultimately still going to be something that is approved by the brand that is behind it. There's only so much you can do in terms of really digging into the history and the inherent dilemmas of the messaging that has been behind a doll like this. I think that the movie does do something, but I think that there are ultimately limits to just what the movie is in itself. I agree. I think there are parts that for me, left me a little hesitant.

Brigid: [laughs] Let's go to Josie in Little Silver. Josie, welcome to All Of It.

Josie: Oh, hi. Hi there. I'm listening and I'm agreeing with so much of what you're saying. I saw it on opening night. I saw Barbie opening night with my 15-year-old daughter who turned to me in the second half and said, "I think this movie is for adults," [laughs] because I was incredibly moved by the theme of motherhood and how powerfully that came out in the America Ferrera monologue, which I think you can't discuss it without really spoiling the action. The whole theme of the movie when they visit Weird Barbie turns when they go out to search for this young girl. I don't know if I'm allowed to say what happens, but at any rate, if you could just mention motherhood.

If you were a mother and you went to this movie with your daughter, you were in tears at this movie. I think a lot of moms felt that way and I think you need to bring that aspect up. Given that Greta Gerwig is a mother, and if you remember her scenes in Lady Bird, the mother-daughter relationships, I think she's really making a lot of great commentary on motherhood that's not being discussed. Maybe you want to talk about that.

Brigid: Josie, thank you so much for your call. Alison, I'm a mother and I will say that for me, I did have that moment where both, I saw a lot of mothers with their daughters at the film, and I thought about the conversations that some of the mothers would having with very, very young daughters, versus a 15-year-old versus some of the older, but that idea of the challenges of motherhood I think is something that we were starting to touch on there and is something that we've seen in some of Greta's films in the past.

Alison: I think that in this film, there's an acknowledgment that in some ways what Barbie represents is the impossibility of all of the hopes that you can have for your child. What you'd want to encourage them to grow up to be. All of the pressures that you already know are going to be put on your daughter [laughs] in adulthood or heading towards adulthood. I think that that is something that the film does manage to do really well, which is to combine the hopes and aspirations and things that a little girl wants or dreams of with the reality of being an adult and knowing the world, what the world is like, and what it will be like when your child just goes out into that world. I think that those are very real things and certainly, I think for parents watching with children I think that there's a lot there that has to be very moving.

Brigid: I'm wondering they weave in a little bit of Barbie's origin story. Barbie was born in 1959, the creation of Ruth Handler, but in the film, we have executives at Mattel that are all men led by a CEO, played by Will Ferrell. What did you take from Will Ferrell's performance?

Alison: He is very funny. It's funny that he was in The Lego Movie in a slightly similar role in that he is the representative of the real world outside of this fantasy toy world. I always enjoy Will Ferrell. I thought that it was nice of the movie to tweak a little bit. You know that sometimes the corporations behind very feminist marketing messaging can have executive suites that looked unlike that messaging. I appreciated that. The film tweaked that. Though ultimately, they're not really the villain either. As much as there is a villain in this film, it is patriarchy, I guess.

Brigid: [laughs] Well, Alison, thank you so much for joining us and for having this conversation about Barbie, maybe pulling at some of the themes, and thank you to all of our listeners who joined us. Alison Willmore is a film critic for New York Magazine and Vulture, and we've been spending this past segment talking about all things pink, all things Barbie. Thank you so much.

[silence]

[MUSIC - Barbie Girl (with Aqua): Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice]

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