"Thus Spake Zarabarbie" - that's the opening message as narrated by Dame Helen Mirren who gives us a potted history of the doll - from it's origins as an inanimate plaything of young girls to it's current status as an empowering conduit for young girls to emerge into society as uninhibited and aspirational beings with only the sky as the limit. Well, that's the philosophy in Margot Robbie's "Barbieland". A sterile sort of environment that lives it's life along the lines of a pink "Groundhog Day". Men? Well yes, there are - as embodied by the tanned, rippled and toned "Ken" (Ryan Gosling) but they are very much the in-app purchase in this world, with little purpose aside from augmenting a "Barbie". Strangely, one morning, the stereotypical "Barbie" finds she has lost some of her charm! She is flat footed, her endlessly elysian existence is fraying at the edges? What do do? See "Weird Barbie" (Emerald Fennell) and seek her sagely advice. That, however, she doesn't like. She must enter into the real world and find whoever is supposed to be playing with her - clearly not an happy girl - and see if she can cheer her up and restore the equilibrium. En route, she finds that her ever devoted "Ken" will join her and their arrival in the big city introduces both to a bewildering world of sexists, misogynists and cynics. The latter best exemplified by "Sasha" - her somewhat disenchanted owner. When the boss of Mattel (Will Ferrell) discovers her escape, he mobilises the whole of his organisation to get her back in her box whilst an equally disillusioned but newly engaged "Ken" heads back to his home realising that maybe the men don't have to live quite such understudy lives. Can she elude her pursuers long enough to befriend "Sasha", her much less cyclical mother "Gloria" (America Ferrera) and then get home before both of her world's are alien to her? This is good fun, this. Gosling is a talented actor who can also churn out a decent power ballad (there are a few) and there is the oddest of chemistries here between him and an very much on-form Robbie who puts her heart and her soul (and loads of joyous/bemused facial expressions) into this role. Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach have written a witty script that pitches the naive and the innocent in with the venal and the observational. It swipes at all things sexist - and not just from the woman's perspective either - and though it does ridicule the restrictions society has put on the historical progression of women through the ranks of corporate America, it does so in a positive and enjoyable satirical manner. Will Ferrell - I can take him or leave him - is really only adequate as the epitome of the male dominated company structure but there is quite a nice set of scenes with Rhea Perlman (for ever "Carla" from "Cheers!") who portrays the inventor - if that is the word - of the whole "Barbie" concept, and who knits it all nicely together towards the end. Don't be a snob about this, get yourself into a cinema and prepare to be entertained. Bergman it isn't, but an enjoyable evaluation and parody of 21st century life, opportunity and all things vacuous it certainly is.
