The Pop Corporation

Hype can be a terrible thing, leaving us plebs feeling like a moment has shot it’s load before you’ve even got a chance to digest the damned thing. In a period where everything has felt frantic, fraught, and fucking shite, we could all do with a dose of something camp and ridiculous to cheer us the hell up.

The Barbie Movie is looking to do exactly that, but with a bit of bite and undertones of existential dread. Like we said, fun stuff! However, we’re worried about it. At first, there was a bit of puzzlement with everyone wondering what the hell Margot Robbie (seems like a genuinely nice person) and Ryan Gosling (seems like a genuinely nice person too) would be doing signing up for a film about a doll. What even is it about?

Then, a trailer came along and everyone started oohing and aaaaaaahing because of the cheerily delivered line “do you guys ever think about dying?” In it’s own way, a perfect slice of Hyper Real Existential Daftness, as seen by a myriad of pastel coloured young people screaming into pillows while gentle music plays on Tik Tok.

Greta Gerwig’s film caught the zeitgeist and we won’t know if it all hit us too early, or if this is going to be a perfectly judge candy-coloured psycho-horror for the Gen Z crew. And the Gen X crowd might go for it too, thinking of their youth and Riot Grrrrl bands in babydoll dresses and the films that poked fun at picket fence USA.

It’s going to be kitsch, that’s for sure, and as aesthetics go, it’s not a bad one, especially if there’s some evil lurking underneath it all.

And soundtracking the whole thing will be Dua Lipa, Pinkpantheress, Charli XCX, and a remix of Barbie Girl by Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj. Disco and bubblegum trap – it’ll either be a soundtrack riddled with smashes, or it’ll all feel just too cynical and overwhelming – again, only time will tell. That’s because, regardless of the film’s aims, we don’t know what a mega high budget movie will feel like when the world’s youth are so virulently anti-capitalist and seeing Big Hollywood as emblematic of the latter stages of gross wealth.

And the all-star music cast is matched on-screen. Greta Gerwig is a big name directing the film, and to stare at, the aforementioned talents of Robbie and Gosling, alongside Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp, America Ferrera, Emma Mackey, Michael Cera, Dua Lipa, Issa Rae, Hari Nef, Simu Lui and Ncuti Gatwa, and probably more which will be revealed in further teasers. It reeks of a dozen or so cameos, doesn’t it?

There’ll be sugary disco and hip-pop, and the story reads: “After being expelled from “Barbieland” for being a less-than-perfect doll, Barbie sets off for the human world to find true happiness.” Kimmy Schmidt meets Edward Scissorhands?

“It deconstructs the feminist iconography of Barbie and recontextualizes her for a new generation,” an anonymous source told World of Reel. “Margot plays Barbie with a Valley accent, interest and agency, as she questions her position in Barbieland and clashes with Ken about patriarchy. Gosling is outstanding as Ken, perhaps his best performance. He’s a huge scene stealer and gets to sing and dance.”

A look at feminism? Then Barbie is clearly going to be going through some ‘unrealistic beauty standards’ chat in the real world, and Ken looking on dopily, and we watch Barbie’s tenacity turn into fury, while Ken’s trad guy thinking turns into dopey realisations and, you’d hope, a hugely bloody ending where the pair go postal. That’d be real fun.

The movie is being push hard and feels like the kind of big budget that the studio needs to be a success. You couldn’t escape the marketing for the last Top Gun movie and we think this Barbie flick is going blow that marketing spend out of the water. It’ll be all-encompassing, leaving us wondering if we’ll go beyond saturation point before one second of the movie has been seen by a regular punter. The songs will be on heavy rotation on pop radio, the streaming algorithms will favour the artists involved, the billboards will be full, the papers will churn out endless pieces – there’s a chance that this could peak too early and we’ll all be done and the critics no doubt, already have their drafts ready with the words ‘flop’ good to go.

That all said – are we looking forward to it? Sure are. We happen to love an expensive and camp flop, if that’s what it ends up being. We’re also ready for it to be a hoot too.