Barbie – so much better than expected

A Sindy child myself – albeit more on the basis of my mother’s choice rather than mine – Barbie was not a film I expected to want to see. And then I viewed the trailer and read the early reviews.

My actually seeing it, though, was to be jinxed. Twice, I booked for myself and The Other Half to go and see it, but then on both occasions, he didn’t feel well enough to go. He urged me to go on my own, but it wouldn’t have felt right to do that.

 

Before my first Christmas on my own, I looked for where to stream it, but couldn’t find anywhere (Sky Cinema was overwhelmed with seasonal films), so ordered a 4k ultra HD disc of it.

 

And here, a brief diversion. At the end of 2022, The OH and I decided to pull our metaphorical fingers out and get a new DVD/BluRay player, since the old one was coughing and spluttering to the point of extinction.

 

He sorted one via Richer Sounds – all 4K ready etc – and we went down to Borough to collect. So far, so good. Oops. But it didn’t go with our telly. At that point I started looking up compatible TVs, because that would probably be less angst than returning the disc player. First, we were astonished at how affordable they were and second, we started considering size.

 

We got the tape measure out and played around with it. In the end, we concluded that we could go from 32 inches to 42 inches – without overwhelming our small living room.

 

Reader, we did it. And that 10-inch difference, with the 4K resolution etc, transformed our viewing. Suddenly, the idea of ‘home cinema’ was more than a mere idea. To add, we also invested in a soundbar. So, some pretty serious kit, which makes watching film (and sport) at home a seriously different proposition that previously.

 

Since the OH passed away in September, I have found that this is helping to transform my film watching. I’m not a big TV programme viewer in general, but the set-up makes it so much more enjoyable to watch the footy and stream films or watch them on disc. On Christmas Day, for instance, I made the centrepiece of my time watching Maestro on Netflix. For me, 42 inches seems to be the size of screen at which home viewing is where you can feel a sense of the cinematic scale of a movie.

 

Anyhow, back to Barbie.

 

Just before Christmas, feeling glum with a brutal cough and cold, the disc landed on the doormat. Perfect ‘cheer-up’ material.

 

And it is.

 

You’ll all be ahead in terms of the plot. Barbie lives in Barbieworld, where Barbies rule the roost and Kens are pretty much decoration. But then Barbie starts having negative thoughts because there's a rift in the space-time continuum (or something like that) and she has to travel to The Real World to sort it out.

 

Greta Gerwig has done such a good take with this, in terms of examining patriarchal attitudes, but also the counter to that – in effectively asking, ‘what is it to be a man?’

 

And it also makes quite clear that women can be bitches to other women, often in enforcing/trying to enforce patriarchal ideas of how women should look. 

 

The bubble gum look works so well to help this – and of course, harks back to the doll itself and all the accessories you could buy (and it was the same for Sindy).

Very funny, very clever. Beautifully filmed and directed by Gerwig, who co-wrote the screenplay with Noah Baumbach.

As for the cast, Ryan Gosling is excellent as ‘Ken’ and Margot Robie is is just so good as Barbie.

Absolutely loved it. And I suspect that, if you haven’t seen it yet, you will love it too when you get around to it.