When the news first broke that Greta Gerwig would tackle a Barbie movie, excitement started to build long before anyone actually knew what that meant. Unlike superheroes or princesses or so much other exhumed IP, the glamorous doll doesn’t come prepackaged with narrative, leaving open the question of what she would do in a big-screen vehicle primarily greenlit off her brand recognition.
Gerwig’s thoughtful track record as a film-maker suggested that she wouldn’t take the gig unless she had something up her ruffled taffeta sleeve, leading many to theorize a meta element possibly sending Barbie into the real world, but nobody could have guessed the extent to which the director-co-writer has taken the concept and run with it. Even the trailers affirming that Barbie makes the interdimensional montage from her reality to ours with Ken in tow still conceal so much of the substance and atmosphere of a film with much more on its mind than the typical Hollywood product.
