Margot Robbie Ryan Gosling movie review

Barbie How Pinocchio di Collodi becomes flesh and blood for the audience, and from an icon of toys takes on the appearance of a modern woman, who has the face of a beautiful and very kind Margot Robbie, who fights against sexist stereotypes and patriarchy, which has become a parody of herself.

Long and restless development

Let’s start from the beginning, the development of the live-action film “Barbie” begins back in September 2009, when it was announced that Mattel signed a partnership with Universal Pictures to develop the project, but the project did not materialize. April 2014 Mattel teams up with this time Sony Pictures direct a film written by Jenny Beaks. Filming at the time was supposed to begin later that year with Diablo Cody (Juno) on a script rewrite project and Amy Pascal joining the crew. Later that year, Sony Pictures again rewrote the script, hiring Lindsey Beer, Bert W. Royal, and Hillary Winston to write separate drafts.

As of December 2016 Amy Schumer (“Wreckage Girl”) enters negotiations to star in Winston’s script; Schumer helped rewrite the script with his sister, Kim Caramel. In March 2017, Schumer left due to scheduling conflicts with filming that was due to begin in June 2017. Later, in 2023, the actress will reveal that she actually left the project due to creative differences with the film’s then-producers. In July of the same year Ann Hataway (“The Devil Wears Prada”) is being considered for the title role, and Sony Pictures hires Olivia Milch to rewrite the script and turns to Alethea Jones as director to force Hathaway to sign.

The arrival of Margot Robbie restarts the film

In October 2018, the expiration of Sony Pictures’ option on the project and its transfer to Warner Bros. Pictures forced Hathaway and Pascal off the stage. At this point, when resetting the project, it enters the stage Margot Robbie which opens talks for a lead role, with Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman) briefly considered for the directorship.

Robbie is so passionate about the project that he decides to also become a producer and personally pitch the film to Warner Bros. During a meeting with the studio, Robbie compares the film to Jurassic Park Steven Spielberg and jokingly suggests that Barbie could cross the $1 billion mark at the box office.

Subsequently, as a fan of the Greta Gerwig films, the details of the new adaptation Small woman, Robbie approaches her for a screenwriter position. At the time, Gerwig was post-production on another film, and he accepts the job on the condition that his partner, Noah Baumbach, participates as a co-author. Gerwig later signed on to direct the film in July 2021, with Robbie stating that the film’s goal is to shatter expectations and give viewers “something they don’t expect”.

The Barbie that talks to women… but above all to men

It’s been 14 years since the first idea for a live-action Barbie movie and Hollywood, in a lengthy development process, grinded through several writers and chose three completely different main characters to reach Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig, a duo that Mattel and Warner Bros were able to satisfy. in search of a project that would attract the public and stick to the concept blockbustersbut at the same time convey to the public an energetic and aesthetically strong vision of the female figure in contemporary society.

Gerwig’s vision of how the female figure has changed from the iconic doll dreamed of by millions of girls and generations of women; adjusting to new aesthetic canons from time to time, bumping into some stumbling blocks (Midge, a big-bellied pregnant Barbie, and elderly Sugar Daddy Ken), but remaining one of Mattel’s most iconic and enduring properties, thanks in part to the expansion of the multimedia franchise , which includes, among other things, animated films and video games.

Greta Gerwig and her husband Noah Baumbach used the layered, stereotypical and shocking pink world of Barbie to tell about today’s society, the struggles of young women, bombarded with often unattainable aesthetic references; judged at every turn by men who put forward delusional theories, see “toxic feminism” or the “useless” stigma inflicted instead by previous generations, whose DNA has been ingrained with patriarchy. If that wasn’t enough, homophobia, sexism and feminicide victims are added to the cauldron of intolerance, the latter being a real scourge that someone has the audacity to criticize as a “noun” coming to judge it as discriminatory against men or even belittle it by citing figures and cases, as if a lonely woman, killed out of jealousy, is not an indelible shame for the entire male sex.

Rebel Barbie in Ken’s World

The Gerwig film begins with the idea that Barbie (Margot Robbie), or rather Barbie par excellence, defined as a “stereotype”, at a certain point in her crystallized world is made up of programmed happiness and days marked by “robotic” routine. , receives external input that awakens something in it. We can compare this awakening to the awakening of artificial intelligence, which at a certain moment becomes aware of itself and begins to process human feelings and emotions. In the case of Barbie Robbie, this awakening is manifested by the thought of the end, the thought of aging and death, which accompanies a sleeping person throughout his existence, a thought that becomes a trigger for Barbie’s “stereotypical” contact with a parallel reality and the beginning of the path. It’s a journey of slow awareness that will take her from a toy to a “real woman,” with all the entanglements and predicaments of an ex-Barbie in a world of men, a world that Ryan Gosling’s hilarious Ken portrays in all of his oft-seen personas. ridiculous “Machist” references, which in reality very often hide a huge fragility and a sense of inadequacy, feelings that a strong and capable woman is able to bring to the surface with those detrimental consequences that we are all well aware of.

However, the Barbie movie is not only about “female power” and sharp satire, Barbie is also a comedy in which we laugh and let ourselves be immersed in charming scenery that takes us back to childhood and beyond; in this respect, the film’s Barbieland is a happy combination of eye-catching and sinuous restlessness, perceived just below the surface, those plastic smiles and imposed and assigned roles here, somewhat reminiscent of the ideal housewives from Wife Factory. Ira Levine, a novel twice adapted for the big screen, the last of them Ideal woman

(“The Stepford Wives”), a film starring Nicole Kidman and Matthew Broderick.

So the Barbie movie goes far beyond expectations, we don’t know what the original idea was, but the finished product that Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig brought to the big screen is a great example of how to combine entertainment with messages of a certain thickness. Plus, with all that rosy screen shot, terms like “patriarchy” and the portrayal of the Kens as immature and fragile machos, the Barbie movie is the perfect ploy to hunt down modern machismo that often keeps a low profile; whoever ruthlessly crushes/destroys this film may be hopelessly afflicted with “toxic machismo”, otherwise defined as “Ken’s syndrome”.