‘Barbie’ review: The revolution is pink and comes with giggles

Everything is pink and perfect in Barbieland. The parallel universe housing every single Barbie doll model – as well as every rejected version – manufactured by the Mattel group is colour-coordinated to a fault and runs like clockwork. Each day is just like the other. All the female dolls are called Barbie and the male dolls, Ken.

It’s a matriarchy run by women, unlike the patriarchy that is the Real World. But the plastic-fantastic world goes out of whack when Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) begins to have human feelings. The Ken who loves her (Ryan Gosling) piles along for the journey into the Real World. There, Barbie gets a reality check, meets the Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell) as well as a mother-daughter pair (America Ferrera and Ariana Greenblatt) and discovers the key to solving her existential crisis.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is a fantasy fairy-tale as well as a light-hearted critique of the outsized influence the doll has on the minds and bodies of impressionable girls. There is no danger here of pushing the subversion too far – Mattel has produced the movie. They won’t sue like they did when independent director Todd Haynes made unauthorised use of Barbie dolls for his film Superstar: The Karen...

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