11/19/2023 0 Comments Mighty vibe review 2020![]() ![]() The cutting's snappy, the references cut deep, and the performances have been sharpened to arrow points of keen camp. If nothing else, the Mark Ronson-produced soundtrack is as poppy a manifestation of the now as you can get. Is Gerwig's vision too indebted to 1980s-90s Mattel aesthetics to feel wholly relevant to today's paradigm? Perhaps, but that's part of the point, Barbie having to grow up after girls have grown out of her. Together, they have conjured a fever dream that's both gently mocking and celebratory, shot by Rodrigo Prieto as a bright-hued, bright-lit repudiation of the clichéd studio mega-production of our age, so fixated on pushing superficial notions of "realism" to the point the whole enterprise pratfalls into grey sludge. It's all in the details, how Gerwig, production designer Sarah Greenwood, and costume designer Jacqueline Durran pick up on the distinctive ways kids relate to the eponymous toy, how adults remember it. It's an existence defined by child play logic and the hyper-artifice of a Golden Age Hollywood musical, the soundstage materiality a paradoxical mixture of movie magic and perfect imperfection. They wake up every day to another faultless spin 'round the painted sun and moon, every motion in tune with a Lizzo track playing somewhere in the ether. There's BarbieLand and the Real World, where the dolls' fuchsia revolution solved all problems women have ever faced, and everything's perfect.Īt least, that's what the Barbies think. And so we go, flying into a universe split in two. Standing tall, the 1959 original Barbie blocks the sun, her contact with fertile minds brings forth the future anew. It's the plastic Genesis, when little girls, relegated to playing with baby dolls since time immemorial, first glimpsed another way of life – the fashion doll par excellence. Like in the famed teaser that drove the internet mad with excitement, Barbie opens with Helen Mirren's dulcet tones, narrating the beginning of everything over a Kubrickian 2001 parody. Better yet, she does it with the attitude of a kid, their favorite toy in hand, eyes widening at the playtime possibilities before them… ![]() But, even if Gerwig can't quite have her cake and eat it too, she manages to share a personal, goofy, deeply idiosyncratic proto-existentialist dream with her audience. That doesn't mean the picture's perfect, exempt from criticism, or its enthusiasm is without drawbacks. It glows with the kind of resources seldomly bestowed upon women directors. Barbie's too ambitious a creation - in terms of text, tone, performance, audiovisual stylings galore - to support such dismissive readings.įrom beginning to end, the summer's biggest comedy bursts at the seams with ideas, saturated with the clear intent of a creative mind given free rein. This line of thought posits the director's fourth film, Barbie, as capitulation to the tyranny of big bucks, no more than a glorified toy commercial for " vacuous, hypersexualized dolls." But when you're actually watching Gerwig's movie, it's difficult to take the pink oddity as proof evident of any sacrifice of vision or integrity for the sake of profit. What does it mean to sell out? Some would decry Greta Gerwig's move from mid-budget indies to big studio fare as a modern example. ![]()
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