“Barbie” is a lovely, eccentrically imaginative example of brand extension and raw, untrammeled commercialism. Well, maybe a little trammeled. Any $145 million studio movie based on a doll, accessories sold separately, no doubt comes with a few restrictions. And yet this one actually feels spontaneous, and fun.
Co-writer and director Greta Gerwig’s project — her third consecutive success behind the camera following ”Lady Bird” (2017) and “Little Women” (2019) — has its merry, thoughtful way with everything Mattel’s implacable smiler in high heels has meant, pro or con, to millions. The toy company, working with everyone’s favorite new conglomerate Warner Bros. Discovery, could have played things far more safely (and less interestingly) with their cinematic spin on the doll introduced in 1959.
Instead, they let Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach create a kind of cinematic seminar, full of ideas and feelings, along with the jokes, built around the cultural impact of a plastic star called out by her own movie as an emblem of “sexualized capitalism” and “unrealizable physical ideals.”
