‘Barbie’ Review: Beyond Her Ken

In “Barbie,” Will Ferrell plays the CEO of Mattel, who muses, “Remember Proust Barbie? That did not sell well.” It’s the film’s second reference to the French modernist novelist, and its makers would have been well advised to heed their own joke and question the wisdom of stuffing this fantasy-comedy with references to the mastectomy and IRS troubles of the doll’s creator, gynecology, the mass devastation of indigenous people by smallpox, and (this comes up many times) “irrepressible thoughts of death.”

Delightful to look at, with its Skittles color scheme and its visual jokes about living in a land of dolls—everyone has a cup, but there’s no liquid in them—“Barbie” begins in idyllic, silly Barbieland, where many iterations of the doll live happily in their dream houses. Life consists of dancing, lounging and changing outfits. Amid many multicultural iterations of Barbie, there’s also one who uses a wheelchair and another who is overweight, plus many accomplished career women—scientists, politicians and so on. The central Barbie, played by Margot Robbie in a role that was seemingly waiting for her, is “Stereotypical Barbie”—the sparkly but brainless basic version who exists mainly to look pretty. When this Barbie starts experiencing morbid thoughts as though infected by human doubts, the movie turns into a reverse “Wizard of Oz.” She journeys to Mattel headquarters in contemporary Los Angeles, joined by her uninvited, little-considered boyfriend, Ken ( Ryan Gosling ), who is tired of being treated as her accessory, to investigate a tear in the fabric between fantasy and reality.

Feminist enlightenment follows, but while Barbie is discovering herself, Ken learns that real society is male-dominated and uses the lesson to turn Barbieland into the Kendom—a bro paradise of brewskis and weight lifting. In his ideal state, “Everything exists to expand and elevate the presence of men.” Spot the joke? I don’t. “Barbie” contains more swipes at “the patriarchy” than a year’s worth of Ms. magazine.

Though Mr. Ferrell, who brings along his sunny manchild lunacy, is amusing in his small role, he seems to be visiting from a more lighthearted film, such as “The Lego Movie.” Directed by Greta Gerwig, who wrote the script with her romantic partner, Noah Baumbach, “Barbie” is a template for how not to write a crowd-pleasing Hollywood feature. Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach are accomplished indie filmmakers (she made “Lady Bird,” he “The Squid and the Whale”; both are wonderful) who make poor choices to flesh out these characters. Try to imagine “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” as written by someone who not only hated Mario and Luigi but blamed them for highway fatalities, climate change and gorilla abuse while tossing in some Proust references. Nor do Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach have the sensibilities of kids. They pepper the film with film-nerd allusions—“2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Being There,” “The Shining,” “The Matrix”—that are likely to sail over the heads of those born this century.

As bubbly as the film appears, its script is like a grumpier-than-average women’s studies seminar. At one point, nearing the climax, “Barbie” stops cold so a Mattel doll designer (America Ferrera) with depressive inclinations can deliver a long monologue on how miserable it is to be female. For instance, she feels pressured to have lots of money but also pressured to not appear to seek it. Hearing characters issue denunciations such as “You fascist!” while Barbie muses that the fate of women is “Either you’re brainwashed or you’re weird and ugly—there is no in-between” is like going to the cotton-candy factory to find it producing lead pipes. Don’t we go to a movie like “Barbie” to escape the harrumphing tone of the most aggrieved Twitter users?

Those who have no particular reason to think women are powerless in American society will be put off by the script’s many broadsides. “Women hate women and men hate women. It’s the one thing we can all agree on,” we are told by an adolescent (Ariana Greenblatt) presented as attuned to the damage Barbie dolls supposedly do to girls’ psyches. Is misogyny actually universally shared, though? Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach try to sell the audience on a tired “Mad Men” conception of reality where men in suits beckon and timid women simply do whatever they’re told.

Our guide to the supposedly bitter reality underlying the Mattel dolls is “Weird Barbie,” played by Kate McKinnon as a deliberately uglified version with chopped-up hair and punk clothes. Her character’s name could have served as the title of the movie, which is bound to puzzle moviegoers who thought they were buying a ticket to “Fun Barbie.”