The day I watched “Barbie,” I was alone. But I also wasn’t. Groups of friends were dressed up in pink cowboy hats and feather boas; moms and daughters came in matching sparkly outfits. The man sitting beside me laughed at all the Ken/patriarchy punchlines — incel behavior — but he did come in pink with his girlfriend beside him. I had to ask myself, when was the last time people dressed up for a movie that wasn’t a humongous franchise?
Two weeks after it premiered, “Barbie” is now one of the highest grossing films of all time — earning $800 million as of early August, and is on track to earn a billion dollars globally. Gerwig joins a small group of female directors who have managed to achieve this feat. Ever since photos of leads Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in roller skating outfits first leaked, the film has become part of our collective consciousness. The tagline “She’s everything, he’s just Ken” inspired memes all over, and the Mark Ronson-produced soundtrack featured prominent artists like Nicki Minaj (whose fans are called “barbz”), Dua Lipa (who plays Mermaid Barbie in the film), and even K-pop group Fifty Fifty (whose song “Cupid” was the TikTok audio of the summer). The added hype of Christopher Nolan’s biopic “Oppenheimer” coming out the same weekend also compounded excitement by way of “Barbenheimer,” as though it’s the first time ever that two films came out at the same time.
By the time the movie premiered, “Barbie” fever was at its peak, and I certainly wasn’t immune. As soon as the opening scene came on (a parody of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”), my expectations were cranked up. Cinema! I thought to myself. I was about to get an emotional kick in the ass, my heart on the chopping board as director Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird,” “Little Women”) wielded a pink, sparkly cleaver in the form of a monologue that would tear me up once again. Forget J. Robert Oppenheimer. “Barbie” is the real destroyer here.
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