"Barbenheimer" is My Super Bowl!
Haven't celebrated cinema this hard since my LOTR midnight showing days
My Barbie and Oppenheimer reviews! I will vigilantly avoid plot spoilers but will give my honest opinions about each movie. If you prefer to go in as a blank slate, maybe wait to read this.
On Thursday, July 20, the Year of our Lady Greta Gerwig, my friend Laura and I joined a hoard of other guys and dolls at the movie theater to watch Barbie and Oppenheimer back-to-back.
We were part of what what became the fourth-biggest box office weekend in movie history.
Timeline: We started with Barbie at 4:45 p.m., stone-cold sober [a mistake!], ran across the street for a quick bite to eat at 7:15 p.m., bought cans of bad wine at the corner shop, and were back in our seats for Oppenheimer at 8:00 p.m.! By then, the AMC looked like a bomb had gone off, showering everyone inside not with nuclear radiation but bright pink paraphernalia. Finally, at some time nearing midnight, we trooped out of the theater and spent the subway ride home spiraling in existential dread.
And that’s what I call a Super Bowl! I had the absolute time of my life and only just survived with my bladder intact! I’m already looking forward to watching both movies again with Ben next weekend!
*upbeat music slows*
I am sorry to now have to admit that despite having a good time equal to frat-bro-with-a-beer-and-two-tickets-to-a-Tom-Brady-Super-Bowl, I did come away feeling that both movies were worthy, yes, but also very flawed.
Could it have been my expectations were too high? Considering they were set at “Higher Than a Kid’s on Christmas Morning,” yeah, you could maybe say that! But we’ll get to all that.
Read on for my unsolicited thoughts and opinions on Barbie and Oppenheimer!
👙 The Barbie Question
Before I get to the good, the bad, and the ugly of my *very posh voice* “film reviews,” my question for you this week is — predictably! — What was your relationship with Barbie!?
I may have been homeschooled and worn mom jeans [by choice] until age 15, but I DID play with Barbies. Like many of us, my parents didn’t love the idea of Barbie for all the right reasons, but they weren’t about to tell Grandma she couldn’t buy us our heart’s desires! So, Barbie crept into the house and set up camp.
We even had the 1999 Limited Edition Millennium Princess Barbie that we never took out of the box tried not to take out of the box in case one day the family needed to make a quick fortune.1 My favorite, though, was my “Dolls of the World” Indian Barbie and my Scarlett O’Hara Barbie, who was married to Sarah’s Rafiki action figure from Burger King. Normal kid stuff!
So: Did you play with Barbies growing up? Why or why not? Which Barbie was your favorite? Leave a comment and tell us all your childhood traumas!
Barbie
Summary:
An absolute confection of a smart film that I will be seeing again, despite the fact I feel it failed on several conceptual levels.
The Highlights
1. It aims high: The “Barbenheimer” meme is preoccupied with the fact that these movies seem diametrically opposed. One is all sparkly girlie fantasy; one is all dark masculine reality. One is all froth and bubbles; the other, destroyer of worlds. But that does Barbie a disservice. It’s also about Real-World, Grown-Up Consequences. It’s just packaged in plastic and neon and, of course, the Indigo Girls.
Barbie was written and directed by Greta Gerwig, perhaps the most exciting young writer/director we have right now? Not least because she’s breaking glass ceilings as a woman telling women’s stories. She created Ladybird and Little Women, two of the best movies I have ever seen in my life. Both made me sob like a little baby, specifically because of their exquisitely wrought, deeply specific, and nuanced portrayals of women and girls’ inner lives, relationships, and the challenge of living as women — and humans — in the world.
That’s what Barbie attempts. Whether it was successful may be in the eye [or the level of tipsiness!] of the beholder.
2. It’s visually SPECTACULAR: It was like a spa day for my eyes! It was unforgettable, even if some parts dragged out for no reason! It was iconic! Hilarious! I screamed with laughter several times! I felt SEEN! It was clever and joyful and deeply thoughtful and a damn good time.
3. It’s already shattering records: Barbie scored over $155 million its opening weekend [compared to $80mm for Oppy] — which is the biggest domestic opening for a solo female director EVER. Our daughters thank you, Greta Gerwig!!!
The Lowlights
Okay, I’ma be real careful about this. People had spiritually transformative experiences watching this movie, and I would never yuck that yum! I had a spiritually transformative experience in Frozen 2, so like, I GET IT. That’s the whole point of this blog! BUT:
1. It tried to do too much and was 20 minutes too long: What Gerwig is trying to do here is perhaps an impossible challenge: Make a movie that’s brand marketing for Mattel + about the most problematic toy ever made + has a sympathetic protagonist and + shares a thoughtful and morally courageous story + won’t offend the aforesaid parent company.
You can feel Gerwig’s massive talent and liberal arts degree straining against the weight of all of this baggage. The fact that she succeeded in any way at all is a small miracle. But ultimately, it didn’t totally work for me.
2. It got trite: The fun, frothy [and, yes, profound!] story gets weighed down by the burden of trying to explain itself—to the point that it overexplained itself. A LOT. There’s a monologue that’s supposed to be the heart of the message, and instead it was preachy and pedantic and, perhaps worst of all, it just wasn’t fresh.2 It was…dare I say it?...trite? Like, the entire speech could’ve been on a framed Etsy crochet from 2015.???
Yes, it’s hard to be a woman! Yes, it’s full of contradictions, just like this movie! But, unfortunately, this movie — just like the plight of the modern woman — tried to do and be everything, and as such, lost some of its impact.
3. It didn’t totally walk the walk: It’s hard to really buy the message when everyone in the movie still looks like every part of their face/hair/body was photoshopped to perfection. But that’s just MY OPINION.
4. All that said: I WANT more stories like this out there — for me, for my niece Mila, for my friends’ daughters and sons, for all of us! And inasmuch as Barbie waveringly succeeded at doing this, I am wholeheartedly glad.3
Who won the movie?
I hate to give the Barbie prize to a human man, but it was definitely Ryan Gosling! As my friend Kayla said upon reaching the same conclusion: The irony of that statement is not lost on me! But he was HYSTERICAL; he was moving; he was critical to the film not devolving into man-bashing [which it did NOT, no matter what Fox News says about it].
Funny Ryan Gosling is back! The Other Funny Ryan [Ryan Reynolds] is probably shaking and crying in a dark room somewhere!
Runners up: Greta Gerwig, obvi, and Kate McKinnon. In addition to Margot Robbie’s nuanced and empathetic performance, Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie was the emotional note that worked the best for me. Her jokes all hit; she was perfect.
Oppenheimer
Summary:
Rendered me speechless. Awed. Afraid. Then spent the last 45 minutes making me irritable, bored, and over it!
The Highlights
1. My body left my body (aka the production was stunning): Like Barbie, and yet in a wholly different way from Barbie, this movie was like experiencing ART. In both films, the production design and the artistry is just at a height you rarely get to see.
Magnificent! If you’ve seen any Christopher Nolan movies [Dunkirk, Interstellar, The Dark Knight, Inception], you can imagine what a visceral experience this was. I was wholly transfixed for *nearly* all of the three-hour runtime. [More on that “nearly” below.]
2. The cast is insane: Cillian Murphy in the role he deserves, Robert Downey Jr. amazingly transformed, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, and even, inexplicably, Rami Malek. All excellent.
3. The storytelling gripped me: Nolan took a different tactic from Gerwig in terms of the movie’s message. He really held back from any stark editorializing [they never exactly said “dropping the a-bomb was a terrible thing for humanity, we should never have done it!”]. He *mostly* let the ins and outs of the story do the showing.
Though, as we’ll explore in the next section, he did not succeed in keeping his story tight or his themes crisp! Oops lol, Nolan being Nolan!
4. I will be watching this again, in IMAX: Periodt!
The Lowlights:
1. It was 45 minutes too long: Christopher Nolan must have a vendetta against people will small bladders!!!! Make sure you pee several times before you see this movie anywhere but in the comfort of your own home with a pause button and a nearby toilet!!
Barbie may have been doing too much — but I bet if I asked any movie buff on the street, “Who is a director who is ALWAYS doing too much?” nine out of 10 times they’re gonna say Christopher E. Nolan!
We get to the Big Moment — the testing of the bomb. It’s everything you hope for in a film like this; it’s earth-shattering. You feel shocked to find you’re still seated after it’s over with your popcorn bag fully intact. Then you’re like, “Bravo! Great film! Time to empty the ol’ bladder and head home!”
SIKE! You are only two-thirds of the way through the movie!
I said there wouldn’t be spoilers and I won’t spoil it but I will say the last 45 minutes of the movie are spent largely in a small BOARD ROOM. Like an office off of a PARKING LOT. The big “reveal” in this section is like so unnecessary and boring.
2. It’s also — as always with Nolan — unnecessarily complicated: The timeline jumps around, presumably using color and black-and-white scenes to separate them. But then he doesn’t do that consistently so it’s hard to follow where you are. And while that trick CAN be used well, it just wasn’t used to the best impact here.
3. Nolan has never met a human woman in his LIFE! I mean, I love Florence Pugh, but why was she here? For crying and boobs?? Emily Blunt gets better treatment as a slightly complex person, but is still mostly a caricature. Boooooo.
Assignment for Christopher Nolan: Watch Barbie, I guess?
Who won the movie?
Cillian Murphy, hands down: the performance of a lifetime!!! I hate to be that girl but I’ve been on the Cillian Juice since 2005!!! [I mean, have you SEEN Red Eye!?!]
Also, the use of faces: In a story so big, so visually stunning as this, Nolan chooses to focus close up on faces a lot, juxtaposing the inhumanness of nuclear power and the intimate humanness of the tiniest expressions on our faces. That’s where the message was most successful for me. One writer described the close-up shots of Murphy’s face as both “vista and mirror.” When the movie succeeded, that’s what it was, too.
And there you have it, folks! I’ve already been dragged for not loving Barbie with zero caveats, so please let me know if you also think I’m off my rocker! I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions, and can’t wait to go see both of these fun and flawed movies again.
Google says they’re now selling for between $10 and $4,699! But mine is, as far as I know, in my parents’ attic melting in the Texas Heatwave of 2023. So much for saving the family farm!
To be fair, a friend of mine said she felt the subject matter demanded overt and pedantic — when you’re dealing with something as unsubtle as Barbie, you must, in dealing with her problems, be equally unsubtle. That’s a fair assessment!
A movie that DID succeed with the message of the constraints, beauty, fear, delight, contradictions, and complexity of being born female in this world? Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. That movie was perfect. It had all the nostalgia, the joy, the fun, the love that Barbie aimed for, and was better to me at showing the message, thanks in large part to Rachel McAdams’ performance as Margaret’s mom. [Also successful at this: Gerwig’s recent films Ladybird and Little Women.]
I never had a Barbie (I was a G.I. Joe girly myself) but I also never really heard any specific messaging about her from my parents. I’m sure they were homeschool-Christian-level against it. Rafiki and Scarlett?? an original crack ship if I’ve ever heard one.
I loved Barbie but all your points are also valid - I probably agree with your friend that the messaging needed to be overt because the figure/idea of Barbie has always itself been so overt. As to #3 - I appreciated the tongue-in-cheek nod to this from the Helen Mirren omniscient narrator but it felt like a “no offense, but…” moment. Like calling the offensive thing out could itself make up for it being offensive.
Weird Barbie felt like such an apt metaphor for people who feel like outsiders (and are ostracized intentionally) - for me, that resonated with my queer experience and I can imagine others who don’t live up to the “perfection” of stereotypical Barbie might relate as well. Hot take: Margot’s Barbie is a lesbian.
“I love Florence Pugh, but why was she here? For crying and boobs??” UGH SO ACCURATE. The worst part of the movie, for me.
FABULOUS. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 Now I can't wait to watch the movies and re-read this!!