Connect with us

Uncategorized

Barbie movie review: Margot Robbie awes the eyes, and warms the heart


Barbie movie review: The Margot Robbie-Ryan Gosling film seeks to reinvent Barbie for an age where asking questions is more important than the patience for answers, and where choices are always either/or.
Like the author of the book Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, Natasha Walter, recently put it, “In a world in which women are told they can be anything, too often they still have to be dolls as well.” Perfect and neat at all times, be what is needed of them.

In Barbie, brought to us after all by Mattel, the creator of the eponymous doll, the reverse is also seeking to be true: Now that there is a Barbie who can be everything, she has to be a woman as well. But should we look for women in our dolls or dolls in our women? Surely feminism is beyond this point already.
However, this film by the talented Greta Gerwig, co-written by her with her partner Noah Baumbach, is seeking to reinvent Barbie for an age where asking questions is more important than the patience for answers, and where choices are always either or: a stiletto or a Birkenstock, a Ken or a can be, patriarchy or war of the genders.

And still, the film is about the “stereotypical Barbie” — thin, tall and beautiful — finding herself. Not the pregnant (and discarded) Barbie, not the Weird Barbie dressed like a clown, not the President or Doctor Barbie, or the one in space. Trying to turn the gaze inwards into the phenomenon of the doll and its many reinventions to stay relevant, Gerwig sticks to the one Barbie who will go down most palatably.
The film’s highest points are when Robbie’s Barbie ventures into the “real world”, out from Barbie Land, on discovering to her horror that she is developing cellulite on her thighs and her feet have gone flat, no longer arched like the heels she wears. She has had thoughts of death lately — equated actually with cellulite in one scene — and it’s been all “downhill” since.

Now she must go into the real world, and find out what’s troubling the owner of her doll version, which through “space continuum” blah-blah is rubbing off on her in the real world. Gosling’s Ken hops along for the ride, and Barbie realises almost immediately that, contrary to what they have been told in Barbie Land, creation of dolls in the image of powerful people who run the world doesn’t mean that Barbies have changed the real world.
It’s men who run things here, not unlike the unfortunate Kens in Barbie Land waiting forever of approval of the Barbies. Gosling’s Ken, treated similarly by Robbie’s Barbie as an appendage in Barbie Land, can’t have enough of what he finds in the real world. Barbie meanwhile is shocked at every turn about what she finds.

Almost quickly though, when the film is getting into its stride about how a Barbie and Ken would fit in, in the real world, we are transported back into Barbie Land. The real-word mother-daughter pair who own Robbie’s Barbie come along. What follows is what happens when the twain cross paths.
You can’t shake off the feeling of the overarching Mattel influence on the film, in raising questions about Barbie and what it means or doesn’t for real women, but ensuring that the most uncomfortable ones land as feeble jokes or are kept to the background.
Gerwig is an inspired choice because of the reputation she has built with films like Lady Bird and Little Women, and her touch is there in the small jabs at the gender wars, in the meta awareness of Barbie being — at its heart — a thing of beauty to be admired. And undoubtedly loved, by many. Helen Mirren, as narrator, commenting on one point in the film that casting Robbie was the whole point of Barbie actually never being ugly is too glib for its own good.
While you might enjoy the ambition of Robbie as producer and Gerwig as director in associating with a project that could have gone either way — and it does go right for the large part — the irony is that real-life Robbie is the hero that Barbie could actually have gone for.
The dazzling Robbie is never not beautiful. She is also never just only beautiful. She awes your eyes, but she also warms your hearts. She can be anything, and you can look beyond that blond hair, boobs and body to identify with this.
Gosling has a much smaller role, though his dilemma as the superfluous Ken plays out more fulfillingly. But again, like Robbie, Gosling is an actor of latent charm, who can stride into a room and own it, or let his woman do her thing.
Gerwig is smart in choosing these two charismatic actors to play her leads. If only her Barbie and Ken matched up to either the plastic, or the fantastic.

Post navigation

Related Topics:
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Uncategorized

‘I am officially off the market’: When Margot Robbie revealed she made the ‘conscious’ decision of not dating actors


Margot Robbie revealed her decision to not date actors because of the media scrutiny that came with a public relationship of two high-profile actors
Back in 2015, A-lister Margot Robbie made a declaration that she would not be dating any actors. The actress may have alluded to her fiance Tom Ackerley, who she married the following year in 2016. In an exclusive interview with Marie Claire, she revealed that being in a relationship as an actor herself came with its own set of challenges. She believed that dating someone who was popular would add on to the media scrutiny.

Margot Robbie opened up on why she made a conscious decision to not date actorsTalking to Marie Claire, she claimed, “I am officially off the market.” She then shared the reasoning behind her decision and added, “I made a conscious decision not to date actors.” She continued to explain, “But not because I hate actors. That’s a nasty generalization to make, and that’s not the case. People take such an interest in your love life when you have a profile, it puts a lot of stress on a relationship.”
The Barbie actress continued, “So two people with profiles, I figure it’s just double the amount of scrutiny, and I’d like to avoid that at all costs.” This came after reports of her locking lips with Tarzan co-star Alexander Skarsgard started making rounds. It was reported that she was caught kissing the actor during the Sundance Film Festival.

Margot Robbie revealed she opted for a minimal lifestyle even after becoming an actorIn the interview, Robbie also opened up about how she was adapting to fame. She shared, “I have a normal 24-year-old life. If I were a waitress, I’d probably have the exact same lifestyle. I’d go to the same clubs I go to already, live in the same house with the same housemates, hang out with the same people.”
However, Margot Robbie tied the knot with Tom Ackerley who is an English producer and actor. The duo met on the sets of 2013 movie Suite Francaise where Tom was working as an assistant director. Post marriage, both of them launched their production company LuckyChap Entertainment.

Post navigation

Continue Reading

Uncategorized

Monica Bellucci and Tin Burton at lunch in the restaurant in Selci Lama


For All Saints’ Day, the Hollywood star from Tiferno returned to his native Umbria to enjoy a moment of relaxation and then visit his parentsOn the occasion of the All Saints’ Day celebrations, the Hollywood star of Tiferno origin, Monica Bellucci, returned to her native Umbria to enjoy a moment of relaxation and to visit her father Pasquale and her mother Brunella.Flanked by her current partner Tim Burton, she went to lunch, together with about twenty old friends, at the Osteria del Musicista, which has always been her favorite restaurant, in Selci Lama.Menu dedicated to typical dishes of the area, which includes an appetizer with breadsticks lined with coppa, duck in porchetta and grilled pork livers, polenta with wild boar sauce accompanied by the very typical cappelletti in broth.To conclude, a dessert based on fried “ciaccia” with Nutella and roasted chestnuts.
Having paid the bill and greeted the restaurant owner and lifelong friend, Roberto Polchi, Monica brought home cappelletti and broth for a family dinner.

Post navigation

Continue Reading

Uncategorized

‘Rocky’ Was Quite Different In His Original Screenplay, Sylvester Stallone Claims


Sylvester Stallone took his friend’s advice on a rewrite of the original screenplay to Rocky. A few tweaks later, he was on his way to major success.
In the new Netflix documentary Sly, Stallone discussed how he initially conceived of the project, which had a much harder edge. In the early version, Rocky was depicted as a “thuggish” character, inspired by Martin Scorsese’s crime drama, Mean Streets.

But Stallone’s perspective changed when a friend read the script and thought the boxer was too cruel for audiences to actually care about him.
Stallone recalled her crying.

“She goes, ‘I hate Rocky. I hate him. He’s cruel. He hits people. He beats them up.’”
Stallone took it to heart, and asked what he could do to soften the character.

“I said, ‘what if you stop short of it?’ Like, maybe he almost did. He could have, that’s his job, but he doesn’t?’ ‘That’d be nice,’” he added. “I said, ‘What if he had a girlfriend or something?’ ‘Yeah, that’s nice.’ So I go back, start writing that: ‘Girlfriend. Nice.’”
$117 million in box office later, a franchise was born.

Stallone also revealed that actor Dolph Lundgren sent him to the hospital during one fight scene in Rocky IV.
“Dolph Lundgren… he pulverized me,” Stallone says in the documentary. “Later that night, my heart started to swell—which happens when the heart hits the chest—and then my blood pressure went up to 260, and they thought I was going to be talking to angels. Next thing I know, I’m in intensive care, where I’m surrounded by nuns, and I thought, ‘OK, that’s curtains.’”
Stallone was in the hospital for nine days following the incident, praying for “one more round.”
“For the first minute of the fight, it is going to be a free-for-all,” Stallone told Lundgren. The Swedish actor joked in a separate interview that all he did was “obey orders,” explaining, “[Stallone] was the boss. I did what he told me.”
Doctors allegedly told Stallone that he received a blow to the ribs that made his heart rattle around in his ribcage, a condition typically seen in head-on collisions. “I did hit a bus, of sorts,” Stallone joked.

Post navigation

Continue Reading

Trending