Ryan Gosling should get something better than an Oscar for how he played Ken. Including the respect of street people [RECENZJA]

it is a solid film – it touches, entertains and educates. It is skillfully written, neatly acted and lightly edited, it seems almost tailor-made. At the same time, he makes fun of stereotypes and uses them consciously. There is a lot of pastiche and emotions, self-referential jokes, pop culture quotes and pins stuck where it should hurt the most. Although the production is prepared on a grand scale, it does not aim to inflate the balloon of “epicness”. This is a warm, wise (not to say intelligent) and universal film that has a chance to be watched for many years.

Barbie and Ken as pictured

as a stereotypical Barbie, she’s gorgeous. It’s not that she looks like a living replica of her. It’s about her charisma, genuine emotions and a flash of intelligence in her eyes that gives this heroine. He manages comedy threads nicely and very naturally moves to more nuanced emotional states – even with sparing glances he can convey a huge load of feelings on the screen. I know I wasn’t the only one who wept during the scene where Barbie talks to the old lady at the bus stop. It’s hard for me to imagine that anyone could better show the main character’s dramatic trait in such a successful way and in a way that seems so natural. If anyone could outshine her in this movie, it would be Ken.

I say, after seeing Barbie, I’ll never look at Ken the same way again. I won’t say Ryan Gosling stole Margot Robbie’s movie, but I’m sure it wouldn’t have been such a successful production without him. The actor presents here a full range of quite impressive possibilities: he not only fantastically plays Ken in all his extreme emotional states with a respectable comedic sense. Besides, he sings like a bad guy with all his heart and throat, he dances like Satan and Gene Kelly in one person, and he throws such facial expressions that the head is small and the knees are soft. Although Ken is full of all his plastic-candy glory, Gosling doesn’t suck the whole screen for himself either, he only leads the partner scenes. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a richly cast film, in which such an accumulation of first-class characters from the world of show business would work so well for the plot – here it would be enough for them not to interfere with each other.

I am absolutely delighted with how Greta Gerwig has handled the theme of competition between Ken () and Ken (Simu Liu). It was a really delicious idea [drobny SPOILER]to give Gosling and Liu a duel scene. Gosling in “Gray Man” and Liu in “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” performed stunt miracles. All the more wonderful is the clever patent that Gerwig invented for their fight. Beautifully absurd and wonderfully referring to the most epic scenes from Hollywood genre classics. Thank you also for the fact that the creators provided for the film to show a picture of a young Sylvester Stallone in a fur coat, suddenly a lot of Ken’s scenes make a lot more sense. Also look out for scenes with Barbie Mermaids – there’s a great guest role there.

What’s not to like about Barbie?

Barbie’s biggest problem, aside from a few missed jokes quoting Internet classics too literally, is perhaps simply that it’s such a highly anticipated film, and it has no pretensions to blowing up the balloon of an epic, sublime Hollywood narrative. He does not throw revealed truths in the face as a farewell, but rather leaves the viewer with such a “warmth around the heart” and a satisfied smile. This is not a film that is supposed to sweep the viewer off the board, but to help him feel good about who he is. And it does it very well.

Working on “Barbie” must have been something comparable to building a bomb that could go off in their face. First of all, the expectations of the viewers and critics were huge from the very beginning: due to the subject matter, the cast and, of course, the names of the respected authors of the script – Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, the golden children of the ambitious current in Hollywood. Secondly, Warner Bros. also had their expectations. and the Mattel company, which gave the world the Barbie doll, and in the past it happened to sue, for example, the Danish band Aqua for the cult song “Barbie Girl” (j). It is not without reason that such a film has not been made before – it has to reconcile various, sometimes even contradictory, interests. Of course, the easiest thing would be to settle the matter with some sugary chestnut about the magic of friendship and love, but if there’s anything the film industry has learned in recent years, it’s that viewers have largely become immune to serial commercialism. On the other hand, you can’t overdo it with invention either, because it can hit your foot.

Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach made a really difficult art, because they wrote a funny script, full of mostly successful jokes, and not stupid, with an important message. By the way, they gave their corporate principals, i.e. Warner Bros. and Mattel, show some distance – in the dialogues there are such jokes about them that it is worth appreciating them, because as I guess, it was not easy to negotiate them. The screenwriters took Barbie in their hands with all the benefits of the inventory: all shades of pink, plastic and very attractive exterior, conventionality of children’s games, stereotypical ideas about an ideal world, naivety and wonderful kitsch. And then they collided it all with the “real world”.

They managed to explain in an understandable way why and why Barbie and Ken end up in the human world. The consequences of this escapade are obviously felt both in Barbie Land and in the real world, they also require intervention and restoring the disturbed balance. Of course, the world of Barbie was used by Greta Gerwig to show our reality in a distorting mirror, point out its flaws and show, among others, what it is like to be a woman in modern society, and how different. Only it’s not a bloated morality play – it’s a surprisingly digestible satire, let’s say social. It is also not a reversed fairy tale for adults (because it is not a film strictly for children, but they can watch it in peace), but a comedy filled with pop culture quotes and references, also about the fact that no extreme is healthy. And it ends up like every chick knows it’s going to be a roller coaster now.

It is also a story about how important it is to look for your own identity and purpose in life, independence, and at the same time building healthy relationships with loved ones. A story about growing up, a bit about motherhood, and also about capitalism. I really like that, although the list of topics discussed is the most serious and important, the film enters like fresh butter. Because this story is built on the basis of the most kitschy and proven film clichés, but at the same time it is not a tiresome pastiche. Greta Gerwig managed to keep her balance and not fall into unwanted ridiculousness, until she can annoy that she didn’t give more pots. I already predict that Billie Eilish will win an Oscar for the song “What Was I Made For”, which appears in the finale.