So, with a comfortable one-week break for mental digestion between the two movies, I have acquired the Barbenheimer achievement, checking the biggest “safe from FOMO” box a middle class European can think of in the summer of 2023. As is expected from an early-thirty-something man, I watched Oppenheimer first. And then, having expertly dodged almost all spoilers (a skill honed to perfection during the Game of Thrones era), last weekend I finally watched Barbie, too. And it was so good.

First of all, the movie itself is of really high quality. It follows a hero’s journey-type story. As everyone will point out, the props, the old-school practical effects, the song and dance pieces felt like a love letter to the art of cinema. But they also reminded me of the plays I saw as a kid in my home town’s theatre. However, there’s more than that there. Barbie has (light-hearted and for the most part, comical) action sequences and chases. In an office environment, in a skyscraper’s lobby, on a highway. As much as the practical effects pay homage to the golden age of the silver screen, these scenes felt like they took a healthy bit of inspiration from films like the Matrix, or even Inception, subtly playing with 1990s and 2000s movie tropes. If you keep your eyes open, you’ll see how much artistic depth the story has beyond just the visuals, and how it builds upon the last few decades of Hollywood cinema culture.

The movie’s story follows the epinomous Barbie (Margot Robbie) who lives in a parallel/alternate/dream world (some creative wibbly-wobbly stuff right there) of Barbieland, and who faces the existential threat of real-world issues seeping into her perfect world. This Barbie, one of many varieties, is a Stereotypical Barbie, the OG blonde doll as Barbie was originally made. Armed with nothing more than big ambitions and aided (kinda) by her loyal Ken (Ryan Gosling), she has to travel to our world to fix the rift between realities – And along the way, learn more about those real-world issues that threaten Barbieland.

The story is balanced, well-paced, and the humor actually works. Some of the jokes are obvious, some are more subtle, and some of them are so niche and high-brow that only a Barbie with double degrees in political science and history will get them. What is surprising is that for a light-hearted fantasy comedy, it discusses many heavy topics, all centered around the experience of being a woman in a Western society. It balances fun and serious reflection masterfully, like a roller-blading Barbie doing tricks on a handrail. It goes from women’s struggles to criticism of corporate virtue signalling, to questions of body image to a complicated relationship with the patriarchy, even hitting on the issues of self-worth and insecurity that men face.

Of course, everyone knows by now that Ben Shapiro burned a Barbie doll in his 43-minute rant about this, and it’s really hard to miss the fact that this is a feminist movie. But even people who liked it had noted that the movie hits you over the head over and over with its messages. And I don’t think that’s true. Now I can only say what I saw from the point of view of a young, cis-het man, and I guess that’s one of the points of having feminist directorial movies like this one. And what I saw made me laugh, made me feel good, made me feel uncomfortable, made me rethink things that I myself might have said, or thought, or judged harshly, and in the end, after having challenged my world view, it also offered comfort. And that’s art.

Secondly, if so many women have reported feeling empowered by this movie, was it really too much? Or was it that people (sometimes reluctantly) agree with most of the movie’s messages but don’t want to talk about these issues too long because they’re uncomfortable thinking about the patriarchy? In any case, for any man complaining that women should tell us plainly what’s wrong, well, here it is. The Barbie movie tells you, in detail, the problems and the struggles of what it means to be a woman. And it does so in an entertaining way that makes you think long and hard about things. But it does much more than that. It gives you a heroine story, with stellar performances, an actually enjoyable and engaging plot, witty humor, compelling characters all done by people who know their craft well and do it right and enjoy doing it.

So my recommendation is, go watch this movie. This Barbie knows what she’s doing.

Image credit: Warner Bros.