Kingsley Ben-Adir – Movie Musings

Fabulously pink comedy with serious – and very earnest – things to say on sexism and gender

Director: Greta Gerwig

Cast: Margot Robbie (Barbie), Ryan Gosling (Ken), America Ferrera (Gloria), Will Ferrell (Mattel CEO), Ariana Greenblatt (Sasha), Kate McKinnon (Weird Barbie), Issa Rae (President Barbie), Alexandria Shipp (Writer Barbie), Emma Mackey (Physicist Barbie), Hari Nef (Dr Barbie), Sharon Rooney (Lawyer Barbie), Kingsley Ben-Adir (Basketball Ken), Simu Liu (Tourist Ken), Ncuti Gatwa (Artist Ken), Michael Cera (Alan), Rhea Pearlman (Ruth Handler), Helen Mirren (Narrator)

Who knew that the film which sparked the most conversation in 2023 about the roles of men and women would be one launched by a toy company, with the goal of selling toys? Barbie feels a little like a project happily hijacked. In another world this could have been a straight-forward, Adventures of Barbie flick, designed only to get kids crying out for that Margot Robbie Barbie to be appearing under the Christmas tree. Instead, thanks to the team of Gerwig and Robbie, this is a self-reverential, witty, smart and highly engaging look at gender politics which also manages to be a fun, gag-filled evening out at the cinema.

Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) leads a blissful life in Barbie-Land, where every day is the best day ever. Every Barbie knows they’ve inspired change for the better for women in the Real World. Everything is perfect until one day Barbie starts thinking about Death. Before she knows it, she has flat feet, cellulite and a crisis of confidence. The only way to fix this? A journey to that Real World to meet with the child who’s playing with her. But Barbie and Ken (Ryan Gosling) find the Real World very different from what they expected: all women’s problems are not solved and Ken discovers The Patriarchy, a wonder he is determined to bring back with him to Barbie-Land. Can Barbie save Barbie-Land and help rebuild a relationship between moody teenager Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) and her mother Gloria (America Ferrera) in the real world?

Barbie’s sharp playfulness mixes heartfelt messages on gender politics with the sort of joyful fish-out-of-water stuff beloved of family films where a naïve figure from our childhoods finds the real world a much harsher, more cynical place than they expected. Barbie’s expects our world to reflect of the female-dominated Barbie-Land is immediately exploded. Arriving in California, the reaction to an attractive woman roller-skating along a beach is remarkably different to what she’s used to. Wolf whistles, a parade of sexualised comments from construction workers (not a woman among them, to her shock) and a world where nearly all the top jobs are held by men.

Barbie addresses head-on whether a doll can really be an aspirational figure. In a surprisingly complex manner, Gerwig’s film looks at the pros and cons. Teenage Sasha doesn’t think Barbie has shown her world of possibilities, but instead sees her as a puppet of corporate America presenting a veneer of opportunity to women, while pushing them back into a box marked “pretty woman”. (This deadpan tirade provokes one the film’s many laugh-out loud lines as Barbie bemoans she can’t be a fascist as “I don’t control the railways!”.) Barbie may be able to do any job under the sun but this encourages attainment and also piles expectations on young women. If you can be almost anything at all, doesn’t that make it even the obligation to be something even more of a burden?

The real world is also a revelation – in a different way – to Ken. In our world, Ken discovers men (and possibly horses, Ken isn’t sure) rule though a marvellous thing called “the patriarchy”. Watching the Kens become infected by toxic masculinity, becoming high-fiveing bros who down beers, mansplain and call all the shots, is both funny and also a continuation of the film’s earnest exploration of gender politics. You can see, unpleasant as he becomes, that Ken might well want a piece of that action, coming from a world where men are so marginal they don’t even have homes (after all Mattel never made “Ken’s Dream House”). It’s also a neat gag that the other Barbies are easily brain-washed into accepting demeaning Stepfordish roles (dressed almost uniformly as French maids or in bikinis) because the confidence with which the Kens express their rightful place as masters-of-the-universe is literally mesmerising.

It’s also a neat part of Gerwig’s commentary here that the crucial factor to breaking out of this state is all about embracing the pressures of being expected to do it all: of being clever but not a know-it-all, ambitious but not a monster, raising a family but also having a career etc. If Barbie-Land in its beginning is a sort of vision of utopian feminism, then its salvation lies in accepting and embracing the struggle of marrying together a raft of contradictions and expectations. Sure, this isn’t exactly reimagining the wheel and its fairly easily digestible stuff – but it also rings true and you can’t argue with the connection its made with people.

All of which might make you think Barbie might be a po-faced political lecture. Fortunately, not the case when every point is filled with laugh-out-loud, irreverent humour expertly delivered by a cast clearly having the time of their lives. They are led by Margot Robbie, sensational in bringing to life a character who begins the film feeling like a doll made flesh and ends it as a three-dimensional character who embraces the contradictions of life. Robbie, who produced and set out much of the film’s agenda, is fabulous – funny, endearing, heartbreakingly vulnerable and extraordinarily sweet, mixing light comedy with genuine moments of pathos.

Equally good is Gosling playing the almost preternaturally stupid Ken with a winning sense of self-mockery, walking a brilliant line presenting a character who is (at times) the nominal villain but also a lost soul. Barbie also employs him and Robbie in some outstanding song-and-dance routines, deliciously performed and exquisitely funny. The other Barbies and Kens are uniformly excellent in their winning mix of initial shallowness and growing emotional depth while America Ferrera and Ariana Greenblatt are immensely winning as a mother and daughter overcoming a divide.

Barbie is also an explosion of delightful design and superb eye-for-detail, in its pitch-perfect recreation of a host of Barbie toys and props in real-life size, all thrown together with the perfect level of pink presentationalism. Drily narrated by an unseen Helen Mirren, every scene has a winning gag or laugh-inducing piece of business, especially when poking fun at the naïve optimism and artificiality of the Barbie world. Saying that, the film stumbles when it blurs the lines in the real world, which is half presented straight, half as a weirdly Wes-Andersonish oddity, particularly in the Mattel building and its corporate board, who are played as even more cartoonish than the actual toys populating Barbie-Land.

Barbie though generally works because it successfully mixes a heartfelt, earnest look at gender politics and the pressures on women with great gags, winning performances and a bouncy sense of off-the-wall fun that ensures nothing gets too serious. From its 2001 style opening, through its pink-led-primary colour settings, to its song-and-dance and larger-than-life-but-grounded performances, it’s a treat and in particular a triumph for its originator, producer and star Margot Robbie.

Aldris Hodge, Eli Goree and Leslie Odom Jnr have a passionate debate in One Night In Miami

Director: Regina King

Cast: Kingsley Ben-Adir (Malcolm X), Eli Goree (Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali), Aldris Hodge (Jim Brown), Leslie Odom Jnr (Sam Cooke), Lance Reddick (Brother Kareem), Christian Magby (Jamaal), Joaquina Kalukango (Betty X), Nicolette Robinson (Barbara Cooke), Michael Imperioli (Angelo Dundee), Lawrence Gilliard Jnr (Drew Bundini Brown), Beau Bridges (Mr Carlton)

One night In Miami in 1964… civil rights activist Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), NFL super-star Jim Brown (Aldris Hodge), “King of Soul” Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jnr) and world heavy-weight champion of the world Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) all gathered in a motel room overnight. We’ll never know what they talked about: but playwright Kemp Powers imagined what might have gone down in that room in a play, which forms the basis of Regina King’s film directing debut.

What do they talk about? Along with some home truths, it’s mostly the state of America and the struggle for racial justice. Malcolm X – edgy and worried for his life – feels singer and businessman Sam Cooke has sold out by pandering to white audiences. Cooke angrily argues that building his own record label for himself and his black artists is beating the white man at his own game. Cassius is having last-minute doubts about converting to Islam. Jim Brown is pondering switching from sport to film-making: after all, what are he and Clay really but “gladiators”?

King’s film is passionate and directed with confidence, even if the film never really escapes from its heritage as a single-setting, one-act play. The action largely takes place in a single room – despite efforts to open it up by having our heroes visit the roof or pop out for supplies. It’s not a surprise that the best moments are also the most theatrical, not least the heated debates that allow the actors to shine.

These debates are so strong, I wish there were more of them. The heart of the film is that argument about the balance between pandering and creating something that will sell. Sam Cooke has had a lot of success – but is it at the cost of not singing about the things he really cares about? Or is he right that people like The Rolling Stones will always open doors he can’t – and if he and other artists can make fortunes from the Stones covering their songs, isn’t that a win for the black community? Malcolm X has no time for that possibility, accusing Cooke of a soft-pedal Uncle-Tomism, content to leave the sort of impassioned protest songs he could be singing to men like Bob Dylan.

Both Brown and Clay are largely left to play peacemaker and devil’s advocate. Hugely successful athletes, they balance justifiable pride with a determination to be their own men. But the film fails to really explore issues in their industries – is their success elevating their community, or just enriching rich white guys? It would have been interesting for Malcolm to turn some his fire on these two. After all an early scene with Brown shockingly demonstrates the limits of sporting success to truly change the opinions of some white Americans about their black neighbours. There would certainly have been plenty for him and Malcolm X to get into in a debate about the right way to progress civil rights. But it never quite happens.

Not that the film is afraid to turn some of its guns on Malcolm X. Kingsley Ben-Adir excels playing a far more fragile, anxious and gentler Malcolm than we expect (after all, it’s so hard not to immediately think of Denzel Washington). This is a Malcolm worried for his and his family’s safety, going through the turmoil of leaving the State of Islam and not sure where his life is heading, other than the fear it won’t be a long journey. Ben-Adir has the fire and passion, but also the nervous sense of being the youngest, least well-known (at the time) of the four, and he creates a successful ambiguity as to whether his friendship with Clay is at least partly based on self-interest.

There is some seriously rich material in this film for the four actors to sink their teeth into, and King’s direction allows each of them a showpiece, while expertly shuffling perspectives. Odom Jnr is superb – not least for his heart-rending and emotional performances of several Cooke songs – as a man who knows deep-down there’s truth to what he’s being accused of, while feeling his shared success is part of doing “his bit” and he’s being unfairly picked on.

Aldis Hodge’s Jim Brown is the most settled and content of the four, certain of his own destiny and comfortable with his life. In the hands of a lesser actor, his role could be potentially overlooked, but Hodge’s charisma keeps his careful performance compelling. Eli Goree perfectly captures Muhammad Ali’s exuberance, good-natured arrogance and restless energy and mixes it in with a sweet desire for everyone to get along. All four of these actors riff brilliantly off each other.

The film doesn’t let us forget the dangers of the time either. The opening sequence demonstrates the dangers and prejudices all of them face: from booing crowds to threats of physical harm. It’s something we return to time and time again – while Malcolm X’s fear about shadowy figures watching him is a constant reminder that his own death is so close.

But I feel there could have been more. Sam Cooke would also be dead by the end of 1964 – but you could watch this film and not have a clue that within 18 months half the people in it would be murdered. Away from the debates, the film takes a while to get going, and there gaps in issues of racial politics that you feel could have been richly explored.

For all that the film could have been a moment of time, it actually feels a bit disconnected from the rest of history. Where does this event – and the insights we gain about our characters – fit within the perspective of civil rights for the rest of the 1960s, let alone the rest of the century? The film doesn’t quite capture this. More ambition to expand the play beyond that one night into something more far-reaching (imagine what Spike Lee might have made of it) would have been fascinating. As it is, this is a brilliantly acted, well-made film – but still feels like an adaptation of a night at the theatre, a more reassuring rather than challenging film.