Barbie faces an existential crisis -- really

 

     Imagine a world in which Barbie (yes, that Barbie) suddenly begins thinking about death. What if dark thoughts intrude on Barbie’s otherwise bright and shining life?

     But wait. You don't have to imagine such a scenario. Director Greta Gerwig has done it for you.

     Part satire, part pop-cultural celebration, and part cheering session for feminist assertion, Gerwig's Barbie tries to accomplish a neat trick -- at least as far as its audience is concerned. 

    The movie attempts to please the adoring legions of girls who grew up playing with Barbies while also taking a bite (a soft one to be sure) from a satirical apple.

      Whatever it's about, Barbie derives much of its comic kick from the pink-hued work of production designer Sarah Greenwood and costume designer Jacqueline Durran. They create Barbieland, an aggressively happy place that might be the best thing the movie has to offer.

      Two star turns help keep the movie spinning. Margot Robbie makes a smiling Barbie whose perfect life unravels when she begins having unwanted thoughts and (oh, the horror!) her beautifully arched feet turn flat.

      Working a high-beam smile and allowing an occasional lonely teardrop to roll down her face, Robbie slips into full Barbie mode. 

    Ryan Gosling plays Ken, the male doll who, at the outset, lives only to bask in the warmth of Barbie's gaze, a role that’s bound to breed discontent.

    Written by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, the story eventually takes Barbie to the real world of Los Angeles where she tries to find the girl whose thoughts plunged her into existential crisis. There’s evidently an emotional link between the Barbies and the girls who play with them.

    Ken tags along with Barbie but eventually returns to Barbieland, where he tries to establish his stilted idea of patriarchal government, ousting Barbie president Isa Rae and engaging in parodic muscle flexing. He becomes the ultimate poseur. 

      Barbie remains in LA for a while, eventually meeting and fleeing from Mattel executives -- led by Will Ferrell -- who want to put her back into a box -- literally.

       Hey, if you’re looking for subtlety, you’re in the wrong place.

       When a fleeing Barbie finally returns to Barbieland, she's accompanied by humans. America Ferrera plays a former Barbie enthusiast, a Mattel employee who travels to Barbieland with her skeptical teenage daughter (Ariana Greenblatt). 

      Robie's Barbie describes herself as Stereotypical Barbie, which suggests she's not alone. Barbieland is home to all manner of Barbies, some representing various stages of the doll's evolution.

         Ken isn't alone either. A multitude of Kens inhabit Barbieland.

         Kate McKinnon plays Weird Barbie, an exile in Barbieland who fell out of favor when someone played too hard with her. 

         Gerwig works overtime to incorporate meaning into this pink bauble of a movie. Does Barbie inspire girls to be more than smiling dolls?  Is she a product of the male quest for dominance, an unattainable role model to which no girl can measure up? Can the human world coexist with heavily marketed merchandise? 

         In some ways, Barbie is nothing more than a dressed-up sketch that wants to have it both ways, treating Barbie as a pop-cultural heroine and as a satirical object in a story that argues that young women must create identities free of commercial and social influences. 

         Another way to pose the question: To be plastic or not to be plastic?

         Gerwig finds enough laughs to keep anyone from trying to plumb any depths or wonder whether the plot makes any sense at all. 

       Enough. You've probably read that Barbie ends with a one-liner that gives the film its sharpest kick. It does.

       

       

         

        

 

The women who toppled Roger Ailes

Bombshell tells a topical story about sexual harassment. A scattered movie has some impact.

Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, and Margot Robbie lead a #MeToo charge in Bombshell, a story about the ways in which the late Roger Ailes was toppled for abusing his power as the head of Fox News. Ailes not only gave the network its trademark rightward slant, but he also used his position to sexually harass some of the women who worked at Fox.

When Bombshell finally gets around to the serious business of watching Ailes dethroned, the movie makes an impact. Powerful men who use their positions as casting couches deserve to be scorned and Bombshell satisfyingly makes sure that Ailes gets his well-deserved comeuppance.

But Bombshell also is a mixed bag of a movie that swirls is way across the screen as if the ingredients have been put into a soda can and shaken. It’s part the story of Megyn Kelly (Theron) and her gradual disaffection with Aisles; it's part the story of an evangelical working girl (Robbie) who's sullied by the toxic Fox atmosphere and part the story of Gretchen Carlson (Kidman), the woman who sued Ailes for sexual harassment, beginning a series of disclosures that would finish Ailes’ career.

Theron makes Kelly a cool customer, highly capable and sensitive to political intrigue inside and outside the Fox empire. Having once been an Ailes target (she resisted), Kelly mixes control with ... well ... more control.

When we meet, Kidman's Carlson she's on the downside of ambition, on the verge of being banished to the afternoon TV dead zone. Carlson, however, was smart enough to know that if she planned to challenge Ailes, she better have evidence. She taped a year's worth of her conversations with him.

Make-up and impersonation combine to create plausibility as far as Kelly and Carlson are concerned, but there’s a double edge to this approach. So much work has gone into making the actresses look like the real-life characters they’re playing, it’s sometimes difficult not to confuse performance with mimicry. Theron’s acting is exceptional, but she has an unnatural look, something on the order of an anchor mannequin.

Robbie doesn’t have that problem because she’s playing a fictional character. Her Kayla Pospisil is taken underwing (and into the bed) by a lesbian producer (Kate McKinnon) on the Bill O'Reilly show.

The movie initially treats Kayla’s naivete (she's a fundamentalist Christian who seems comfortable in a same-sex dalliance) with straightforward amusement that's in keeping with the nutty spirit that director Jay Roach brings to the movie until he gets serious.

Bombshell begins with one of Kelly's career highlights, the night she asked then-candidate Donald Trump about his women problem at a debate of Republican candidates. After the debate, Trump famously responded by saying that Kelly had "blood coming out of her eyes, out of her wherever." The fight's on, and Kelly begins to feel the pressure.

Kelly eventually retreated, conducting what some saw as a conciliatory interview with Trump. Kelly's husband (Mark Duplass) criticizes his wife for going easy on Trump as she tried to negotiate the choppy waters of career and principle. She says she just wants to stop the flow of Tumper venom that has been directed her.

Swimming in a fat suit, Lithgow’s Ailes proves imposing but he doesn’t seem as in-the-know as we might expect. He comes across mostly as a right-wing pasha.

Ailes’ harassment MO emerges in a meeting between Kayla. Ailes insists that TV is a visual medium. It’s only fitting then that he asks Kayla to standup up and "give him a twirl" (a 360-degree spin) and then to hike her skirt until he’s satisfied that she’s air-worthy. It's obvious that Ailes is more interested in compliance than looks because the ambitious Kayla isn't what you'd call a modest dresser.

There's not much to the rest of the men at Fox. The actor who plays Chris Wallace (Marc Evan Jackson) doesn't look like him. And Richard Kind lands with a thud in a brief appearance as Rudi Giuliani. Look, I’ve seen Rudi Giuliani and ... well ... you know the rest of the statement.

Showing some much-needed gravitas, Malcolm McDowell makes a last-minute appearance as Rupert Murdoch, the ultimate owner of all things Fox.

Roach’s often breezy approach can work against the material. Big Short screenwriter Charles Randolph's screenplay can have a scattered, lightweight feel that takes the edge off what we're seeing.

I'm betting that the industry; i.e., Oscar voters, will find plenty to embrace about Bombshell. It may soothe consciences in a year when the rumbles of #MeToo haven’t settled. But it’s worth remembering that making a movie about sexual harassment isn’t the same as solving the problem. That’s a whole other story.

'Rough Night' founders -- badly

A strong cast can't save this formulaic and unfunny comedy.

It doesn't matter that the raunchy comedy Rough Night was directed by a woman. It also doesn't matter that Rough Night employs a group of talented actresses that includes the fiercely funny Kate McKinnon.

And while we're on the subject of irrelevance, you should know that it's equally unimportant that Rough Night gives us a much-needed opportunity not take Scarlett Johansson seriously or that the movie makes no fuss about a gay theme with Zoe Kravitz and Ilana Glazer playing former lovers.

Similarly, Jillian Bell's portrayal of the gal pal who Johansson's character has outgrown since the two bonded during dissolute college days is of little consequence.

It doesn't even matter that the movie follows a well-tested formula for crass comedies.

All of these things could have made a difference had this comedy about former college classmates who gather for a bachelorette party in Miami been either perceptive or funny. Maybe, Rough Night isn't funny precisely because of its inability to get close to anything that might be called incisive.

An attempt to darken the comedy -- the women accidentally kill a man they believe to be a male stripper -- isn't handled with enough wit or finesse to save the day. No Weekend at Bernie's, Rough Night arrives on screen as a painful misfire.

Any movie that resorts to cocaine snorting for one of its running gags -- as this one does -- immediately declares itself ineligible for any awards involving imagination.

Even the brilliant McKinnon, who plays an Australian visitor to the US, can't hit the necessary high notes, and the movie leaves us wondering what motivated the filmmakers to encourage McKinnon to channel her inner Naomi Watts.

Although designed as an ensemble comedy, the movie revolves around Johansson's Jess, a woman who has left her hard-partying college days behind to run for the state Senate. Once in Miami, Jess quickly sheds her sense of propriety to join what's supposed to be a fun weekend of clubbing hopping and debauchery.

Now and again, the movie offers scenes involving Jess's fiancé (Paul W. Downs). While the women are trying to be wild in Florida, Downs's character attends a sedate bachelor party. He and his buddies spend an evening at home in New York testing wines. Attendees include comedians Eric Andre, Hasan Minhaj and Bo Burnham, all mostly wasted.

Director Lucia Aniello doesn't do much to explore this bit of role reversal, and Downs's character quickly heads to Miami on a non-stop car trip involving adult diapers, stimulants and beer. Why adult diapers? So there's no need for him to make bathroom stops. A misunderstanding leads Jess's fiancé to believe his impending marriage may be endangered.

In Florida, the women stay at the upscale home of one of Jess's major donors. They also meet a couple of leering swingers played by Demi Moore and Ty Burrell.

Low on creativity, Rough Night at one point finds McKinnon's character feigning sex with the corpse that the women desperately are trying to hide. So, yes, this one tries everything, including a joke about necrophilia. Like the corpse, the joke dies. The movie isn't far behind.

A party you've attended before

Ever since the Hangover movies pushed the gross-out envelope to the breaking point, comedies have been trying to ascend ever higher rungs on the ladder of crudeness. So, it's hardly a surprise that Office Christmas Party -- a holiday formula job -- goes for gross-out gold. No stranger to lame comedies, Jason Bateman plays a computer exec who works at the Chicago branch of a computer company whose ruthless CEO (Jennifer Aniston) wants to impose massive layoffs. The CEO's brother (T.J. Miller) runs the company's Chicago branch as if it were an especially genial frat house. It falls to Miller's Clay and Bateman's Josh to find enough business to stave off a total shutdown. To accomplish their mission, they invite a potential major client (Courtney B. Vance) to the company Christmas party. Predictably, the party gets out of hand as directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck (Blades of Glory) try to jam a raft of supporting players (Rob Corddry, Kate McKinnon and more) into the preposterously overstated mayhem. Olivia Munn has a larger role as a computer whiz and love interest for Bateman's character. I won't bore you (or myself) with a recital of the tasteless gags you'll find in Office Christmas Party -- from prostitution to cocaine to a pimp (Jillian Bell) with a personality disorder. The movie's employees work for a company called Zenotek Data Storage Systems, which made me wonder whether someone (the Russians?) hadn't hacked most of the laughs out of this collection of comic missteps. Only McKinnon, as the flatulent head of human services, brought a smile to my face, which most of the time was either in full or partial grimace.

Women vs. ghosts, no winners

If you thought a female version of Ghostbusters would save the summer, think again.

For some time now, a stream of on-line scorn has been directed at the new Ghostbusters, which attempts to reboot the 1984 original with women in the principal roles.

A confession: I don't regard the original, which starred Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd and Ernie Hudson, as an inviolable work or even a great movie. And in a time of remakes, do-overs and sequels, a Ghostbusters reboot should do little to denigrate anyone's pop-cultural sacred cows.

So, no, the idea of the movie doesn't bother me in the least. The movie? Truth be told, it didn't bother me, either, but it also didn't make me laugh enough to enthuse over it.

As a special-effects driven comedy, the 2016 edition of Ghostbusters can't scare up enough yucks to haunt a closet, a problem that should come as a surprise to those who believe that Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon are capable of brilliant comic work.

McKinnon outdoes her comic compatriots, but this quartet gets slimed by the overblown scale of the production.

Adding Chris Hemsworth as a sexy but dumb receptionist was an interesting comic idea in gender reversal, but one that's beaten to death before the original Ghostbusters gang begins to turn up in dutifully placed cameos.

The wittiest cameo belongs to the late Harold Ramis, who appears as a bust on a mantel in the background of an early scene.

As for the rest: There's plenty of green slime and a few chuckles, but mostly the movie wastes an opportunity to bring four gifted comic actresses together for what should have been one of summer's surefire bets.

Director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) might have been in the unenviable position of having to keep fans of the original happy and make a refreshing new comedy.

Plot? Yeah, there's a semblance of one, but who really cares? I can't imagine you'll shiver because of Neil Casey, who plays Rowan, a creep with evil plans.

The movie's idea of feminist assertion arrives in the form of an online barb one of the characters shares with her colleagues. "Ain't no bitches gonna bust no ghosts."

Ghostbusters, of course, is meant to challenge that notion as its quartet of ghost fighters aims ray-spewing devices at a series of phantoms.

But the movie is too mired in blockbuster sensibilities to say much of anything. And if it has little to say and too few laughs, what exactly is the point?

Still, I guess Ghostbusters can be considered a form of progress. Why should only men be able to make silly, bloated comedies?