By Tyler Gibson

Barbie is the film Greta Gerwig was born to make. Wielding and adopting the mix of confusion and scrutiny spawned by the initial announcement of her involvement in the project, Gerwig crafts, and weaves together a tapestry of camp and sincerity that effervescently splashes off the screen with a gleeful mania that’s been missing from the studio blockbuster. It’s further evidence that Greta Gerwig is one of our finest filmmakersConcerns were raised whether the capitalist claws of Hollywood would gobble up a vital artist like Greta Gerwig. Rest assured; these doubts are defeated within minutes. With Little Women, Gerwig has brilliantly used large-scale projects as analogs in engaged conversation. She has already emerged as one of the few recognizable voices to Trojan Horse their sensibilities into the studio system, and “Barbie” climaxes her filmography’s deeply inquisitive observations about womanhood. Between the deliberately mannered movements of a joyfully synchronized ensemble to the unbelievably large dance sequences, a feeling of little girls drifting away into imagination with their dolls serves as a guiding light.

The film is tantalizingly crafted with really constructed fantastical sets and zany attention to boisterous costumes. Wide frames and compositions evoke the crammed diorama inside plastic toy boxes. This childlike wonder associated with choreographed artificiality ushers the grand Barbieland into cinematic legacy. Gerwig is a wise stylist with innate film grammar, and she pushes her aesthetic to an animated height. Since Gerwig is a humanist of remarkable grace and empathy, condescension is avoided, and this gesticulation of knowing awareness and camp gradually reveals a reconciliation. Mattel has manufactured and enterprised the Barbie doll throughout historical and cultural stages. Barbie has been everything from an astronaut to a Drag Queen. Gerwig and cowriter/collaborator/decorated filmmaker Noah Baumbach share a genius offhand sense of piercing humor, and together, their brazen and unwieldy screenplay farcically throttles into the company’s industrialization of art/iconography and the harm of this corporate curation. Gerwig feverishly and broadly advocates for personality instead of being informed by individuality. Wacky yet sly jokes and setpieces are directed towards everyone at Warner Bros to Greta Gerwig herself for making this movie without mean-spiritedly collapsing in shallow or self-absolving lazy meta 4th wall breaking.

The resulting ramifications interlinked with inclusivity by representation and symbolizing can prove contradictory identity politics, and the admittedly erratic yet breathlessly entertaining 2nd act exposes this peril within third-wave feminism as it plunges into Barbie’s graduation and deconstructionist journey from subject to author. Gerwig warmly hand-crafted a singular story about feminine self-worth and ownership, and while this is a hysterically bonkers, genuinely and thrillingly unpredictable carnival, her unwavering ability to burrow and culminate into sensitivity and emotion remains a rare godsend. She taps into a beautiful irony of plasticity and reality because nobody on earth is as gleefully excited to make movies as Greta Gerwig. Her films are gift-wrapped with a bow and ribbon, and she can’t help but smile as you open it. Even as the movie threatens to burst at the seams during this segment due to its overactive energy and volcanically satirical edge, the sheer blast of bonanza filmmaking that crackles and sizzles hold you snug. These sequences won’t land for everyone with nuance, and the America Ferrara subplot as a dehumanized Mattel employee is established with narrative heft only to flee aside as an afterthought. But the fact a summer IP blockbuster dares to earnestly and humorously offer and engage in such pointedly incisive conversations regarding gender promises an unhinged third-act resolution that is unshakeable and exciting. It is an awesome sensation to gather collectively and experience an instant classic movie.

The transcendent cherry on top is Ryan Gosling’s mindblowing and unforgettable performance as Ken. Not to take Margot Robbie for granted as the vivacious movie star gingerly steps into the shoes of Barbie with a very sly commitment to overt precision and eventual self-discovered, painstakingly earned looseness and conjures unique chemistry with her scene partners. Still, Gosling goes for broke with a rare ferocity recently absent from male movie stars. His trademark intensity is applied to Ken without any vanity. The devoted seriousness of the character’s himbo presence and cadence becomes increasingly more surreal and absurd until it’s finally soulful and heartbreaking, which is the Greta Gerwig specialty. Each Barbie and Ken doll has only been created with one specific trait (“Weird Barbie,” etc.), and Ken’s attribute is undefined outside of Barbie. It’s a hilarious notion about unrequited love, and his third-act shirtless musical ballad number is one for the ages. He’s comedically never in on the joke or plays at the expense of the narrow-minded perspective, which subverts traditionally normalized masculinity. Beyond a good sport, Ryan Gosling has never been better. This is the most outstanding performance of his life and the role he will be remembered for. His howlingly haunted Ken immediately cements himself among the legendary icons like Kevin Kline in “Fish Called Wanda.”With the beautiful and funny “Barbie,” Greta Gerwig gives us everything we wanted from the movie when the set photos leaked but in ways unexpected and, therefore, more satisfying and valuable. It reminds us of an era when films would develop their vernacular and grammar in the zeitgeist and pop culture. It’s a movie that will define a generation, and I cannot wait to watch it again for the rest of my life. [A+]