My first impression of the movie Barbie was, I felt the two leads looked too old to play Mattel dolls. Margot Robbie, one of the most beautiful and talented movie stars of all time, could make an ideal angel for Charlie and perhaps a life-sized doll for lonely playboys. Ideally, Barbie Doll is a role for an actress aged 20 at the most. Ryan Gosling, with his hair bleached blonde, looked like your typical American grandpa. He is less a Ken doll and more the cigar-chomping Colonel Hannibal Smith in The A-Team.
I could be accused of being an ageist. Wasn’t it Michelle Yeoh who told the ladies never to let anyone tell them they’re past their prime? And with today’s Barbie Doll being so woke that little girls can own a doll of any race and shape, it’s not farfetched for this movie to have a “mature” Barbie. So who am I to argue with its international success? The two A-list stars ensured that Barbie would hit it big at the box office. They do play their parts with gusto, and I did forget about my reservations. Yes, they pulled it off. Margot Robbie is perky and so pretty in pink; it’s hard to notice anyone else in the movie.
Penned by Greta Gerwig (she also directed the movie) and Noah Baumbach, the story begins in Barbieland, a utopia for Barbie Dolls of all shapes and sizes. The blonde Barbie Doll (Margot Robbie) we’re familiar with is queen of this colorful valley of the dolls. The male dolls, all named Ken, are mere supporting players.
However, blonde Barbie notices something alarming about herself. She’s slowly losing the attributes that make the ideal Barbie doll, among them, the ability to stand and walk on tiptoe. She’s thus compelled to travel to the real world to find out why this is happening to her. Blonde All-American Ken (Ryan Gosling) goes along for the ride, and they end up in Venice Beach in Southern California. Think of Daryl Hannah as the mermaid trapped in New York in Splash, or the wholesome Brady family toiling in cynical 1990s Los Angeles in The Brady Bunch Movie. Those two films were better at doing the fish-out-of-water routine.
But Barbie and Ken getting lost in California and the headquarters of Mattel is actually the fun part of the movie. There’s even a thrilling car chase as the top honchos of Mattel, led by its CEO (played by a game Will Ferrell), try to capture their runaway doll.
Suddenly the movie goes Thelma and Louise on us. Both Barbie and Ken learn that the real world is ruthless and patriarchal, and Ken loves it. He returns to Barbieland alone and organizes a coup d’état. He and his fellow Ken dolls turn the rest of the Barbie dolls into subservient Stepford wives. At this point, the movie gets ballistic in shoving its woman empowerment message down our throats.
Obviously, the writers didn’t have actual Barbie Doll owners as its target audience. Not all the pink that adorns the movie could camouflage the dour tone of the movie’s second half. Barbie has no heart, and the name and the product are merely used to impart the social agenda of the filmmakers. It’s best to stick with the Toy Story movies.
Not all the pink that adorns the movie could camouflage the dour tone of the movie’s second half
Still, many woke film critics have sanctioned Barbie and even mentioned possible Oscar glory. Today’s American critics are of a new generation. They’re younger and probably the same ones who predicted Oscar success for Crazy Rich Asians. Well, that didn’t happen. Barbie, however, could win for art direction. With all the pink in it, I half expected Madame Leni Robredo to suddenly materialize!
In terms of product placement, Barbie is heaven-sent for Mattel, and Chevrolet. All the cars we see in the movie are Chevys, including Barbie’s pink sports car. It brings back memories of Penelope Pitstop’s racecar in The Wacky Races.
A Man Called Otto official poster
A Man Called Otto is to Chevy what Barbie is to Mattel. Tom Hanks plays the title role, an ageing widower who’s driven only Chevrolets throughout his adult life. So loyal is he to the brand he’d look at his best friend with disgust for driving Fords and Toyotas. Hanks is hilarious whenever he reacts to the sight of the familiar blue oval emblem of Ford, a name he’d rather spell out like a four-letter word than say out loud. People who can’t drive cars with manual transmissions are also considered idiots
Otto lives alone in an apartment compound in a middle-class neighborhood in Pittsburg. He insists on enforcing the homeowners’ regulations to the letter. Anyone who breaks his laws risk facing his wrath. He’s also Forrest Grumpy to people he considers inferior. But he isn’t a redneck and he isn’t narrow-minded. He’s actually lonely and he misses his late wife. He’s made several suicide attempts but had failed miserably. Meanwhile, he befriends his new neighbors, a young family that gets to see a kinder, more sensitive man underneath his cantankerous façade.
The new neighbors somehow give him a reason to go on living because each member of that family makes him feel needed. Otto’s relationship with the Latina housewife Marisol (played by Mariana Trevino) is priceless and it’s played beautifully. It feels so real and not overly sentimental. Overly sentimental are the flashbacks featuring a young Otto (played by Tom Hanks’ son Trueman Hanks) and his wife.
A splendid mix of comedy and drama, A Man Called Otto is a Hollywood remake of a Swedish film. Director Mark Foster is part Swedish and he presents the remake like a European film. Its art house aspirations, however, are ruined by the saccharine songs that accompany certain scenes.
A splendid mix of comedy and drama, A Man Called Otto is a Hollywood remake of a Swedish film
Otto is a role that was tailor-made for Walter Matthau. The Academy Award-winning actor had played grumpy men throughout his career. It was inevitable for him to star in Grumpy Old Men and its sequel, Grumpier Old Men. But since Matthau left our world over 20 years ago, it was up to likeable Tom Hanks to fill his large shoes. I’m happy to note that Hanks rises to the occasion, though Mariana Trevino almost steals the show as the nosey new neighbor. She’s at her best when she starts mixing her Spanish with English in the highly emotional scenes. She’s funny and always authentic. Her chemistry with Hanks is epic.
Now streaming on Netflix, this movie makes the perfect bookend companion to Clint Eastwood’s Grand Torino. Eastwood is also grumpy in this one, but as the title suggests, the man he plays is an intractable Ford man. I can’t imagine the bloodbath that might happen if these two men bumped into each other, at an intersection! The difference, however, is Grand Torino ends in typical Clint Eastwood make-my-day fashion. In contrast, the bittersweet end of A Man Called Otto promises to make your day.
