True Man, I Liked Barbie

Monday is movies, and sometimes TV. Today it's about this movie called "Barbie" which you might know about. I gave in, and watched it...

I took a lofty punt on a new film over the weekend, and wasn’t disappointed. I like to sniff out cinema’s lesser-known things, its wildcards; there fossicking under the movie-world’s stubborn undergrowth is where you can make a cutting for yourself. It is where you propagate the good times…

So, I threw caution to the wind. And saw Barbie. Perhaps you too have heard of it? It’s the movie that turns Google pink when you try looking for it. The movie that cinemas are selling as a nice wee background watch since it is going to take you two hours to consume the pink gin cocktail they’ve just sold you since they need your ticket-money and your “you deserve this” booze money too!

Anyway, look, a couple of weeks back I wrote in reaction to all this “Barbenheimer” nonsense about both Barbie and Oppenheimer saving cinema. As someone who has been seeing a movie in a theatre about once a week for nearly 40 years – and watching anywhere from 5-15 movies a week at home as well for most of the last 20 years at least – it’s fair to say I took the news of Barbie and Oppenheimer saving cinema about as well as I greeted advance hype of anything with Exotic Marigold in the title; about as keenly as when I heard there was a Sex and The City reboot; almost as excited as hearing that live music had been saved by Ed Sheeran – or that the 50^th Anniversary of hip-hop was all down to Kanye West existing.

I’ve yet to see Oppenheimer, but I possibly will. The last couple of weeks of fever pitch announcements and social media plugs and water-cooler talks have died down a bit and the existential dread of work/life/balance is back in the lead. So it was time for a bit of escapism.

Actually, it was Oscar, our 11yo, who said, “I can’t take it – I have to see Barbie while it’s on and I’m not old enough to go to Oppenheimer”.

So, we took a family field trip to the Friday night movies. And it was a fun outing.

And a funny film. It was also a smart film. And yes, it was probably pretty pleased with itself. But it was sharp and, erm, barbed. It was jam-packed with big names and cameos and all the things. I possibly liked it slightly less than Katy and Oscar, but we all liked it. A successful film for the whole family.

It most certainly wasn’t a waste of time. So that was a huge plus. I always love it when a film is not a huge waste of time.

About 20 minutes into Barbie, I immediately thought of The Truman Show. And that nagged at me throughout. On two or three other occasions during the film I thought that these two movies, separated by 25 years – barely connected in any other way – made for perfect companions.

So, after enjoying Barbie (and you really don’t need me to say any more than that right? You already know whether you hate it or love it, whether it’s for you or not) we had a family movie night at home the next evening, and watched The Truman Show.

I’ve probably seen in a small handful of times, but I hadn’t watched it in nearly two decades.

It's an interesting movie to rewatch now – not only was it the film that convinced a lot of people that Jim Carey was more than a staggering array of rubber-faced contortions and grimaces – it’s also both the ultimate example of a movie that is both an influence on the Reality TV it lampoons, and warns against, but also a precursor to the Black Mirror-type entries into the world of dystopian commentary reminding us of our lemming-like leap towards the hurtling doom of dumbed down life; the void that opens when we embrace technology for darker impulses just because we can.

I’ve always found The Truman Show to be both brilliantly funny and really sad. It is filled with great performances (this is where I first noticed Laura Linney’s brilliance) and it is both the indictment and the propagation. It didn’t mean to be both. But that’s what happens when something is open for two readings.

And though that wasn’t exactly what crystalised for me at the time when I was watching Barbie, it is part of the connection these films share.

Margot Robbie was brilliant. Everyone is raving about Ryan Gosling (who is both very funny and very good). But the film exists because of Robbie. She was the perfect casting, and as I said in my other piece a couple of weeks back, she so fully commits to the bit that even if the film she’s in is a dud she will work hard enough to sell you on her involvement. So that’s true of Barbie, or would be – if I had happened to not like it.

Gosling was great. For sure. But it wouldn’t have mattered who was Ken with a weaker Barbie character.

Margot Robbie’s Barbie and Jim Carrey’s Truman both wake themselves up somehow to the fact that the perfect life is a myth; that there’s something out there beyond.

But Barbie, like The Truman Show is both part of the awareness and part of the ongoing problem. Pink gins and Barbie exhibitions and the thinnest of hand-smacks for Mattel on screen (laughing all the way back to the bank) mean that these clever, clever films still have some marketing people going for that irony dollar, for that anti-sentiment dollar, for that meta-commentary dollar, for that that nostalgic-hue dollar.

So, yeah, I watched both films this weekend. Kinda loved them both.

And then I thought of Bill Hicks.

And now it’s time for work.