Barbie

The suits are making fun of themselves and we’re buying it.

As corporate franchises go, Barbie, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, tries to turn what is an extended brand commercial into a winking, meta, feminist, au courant look at a decidedly old-fashioned pop culture icon. Gerwig and her cowriter Noah Baumbach have a field day sending up this particular doll. The Mattel executives who greenlit this screenplay seem to have understood that Barbie is a pop culture trope, and the only way to go about this in this day and age is to spoof her.

The filmmakers have tempered what could be a more mordant satire with an earnest alternative reality, Barbieland, where Barbies (diverse, inclusive) have all the benign power, and Kens (diverse, inclusive) are just eye candy. Then Barbie (Margot Robbie) gets a taste of the real world where things are exactly the opposite, and this is an opportunity to make fun of the patriarchy, of power-hogging, female-objectifying men and their sundry lip services to women. Mattel has always tried to keep Barbie up to date, and continues wanting to transform this quintessential 1950s statuesque All-American bombshell into a contemporary feminist icon. Today, they are willing to be the butt of the joke to cry all the way to the bank.

The plot is convoluted and has giant metaphysical holes but it doesn’t really matter because Barbie has a game cast, with a…