Saturday, August 19, 2023

I've watched "Barbie," but not "Bombshell," YET. E TU, FUN DAD?

"'Bombshell' is another ripped-from-the-headlines story where Robbie uses her Barbie visage to expose the way women are trapped by narrow and conflicting expectations...Robbie plays a composite character named Kayla Pospisil. Pospisil is young and ambitious, her doe eyes sparkling with verve. When she starts dressing the part of a Fox News anchor, her more cynical co-worker (again, the wonderful Kate McKinnon), says, 'Oh, my God, it’s anchor Barbie!'”

Manohla Dargis, who also reviewed 'Bombshell,' described the emotional heft Robbie brings to the role, as a young woman 'brutalized' by Ailes, writing, 'it is Robbie — with her panicked, darting eyes and tensely resistant, then capitulating physicality — who conveys the horror of sexual harassment, a degradation that seeps into body and soul.'”

~ Jessica Grose 

“…Interpretation of the Feminine Ideal” 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/19/opinion/margot-robbie-barbie-feminine-idea.html

πŸ™πŸ™πŸ™πŸ™πŸ™πŸ™

"(My 7-year-old daughter still wants Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House.) At first, when I left the theater, it irked me that Robbie and her band of Barbies — with the possible exception of exiled Weird Barbie, who doesn’t fit the mold (Kate McKinnon) — didn’t get to have as much fun as any of the Kens or Allan (a hilariously disgruntled Michael Cera, who plays the only male doll not named Ken). A movie called 'Barbie,' and Barbie didn’t always feel like the main character. 

But after reflection, I wondered if that was an intentional commentary on what it means to be a woman — doing the necessary and unsung labor of plot exposition while the men in the film get to be Mr. Fun Dad. I also kept thinking about Robbie as Stereotypical Barbie. Her movements were always precise and embodied — it’s not easy to play plastic. But crucially, it was quietly moving to watch the dawning realization of mortality, human cruelty and prejudice register on her luminous face." 

~ Jessica Grose 

“…Interpretation of the Feminine Ideal” 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/19/opinion/margot-robbie-barbie-feminine-idea.html

No comments: