Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is still dominating 5he box office even after a month of its release. Barbie has entered the billion-dollar club and is just behind the highest-grosser of the year so far, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which has $1.3 billion to its name.
Barbie is not far behind, the movie has earned $1.28 billion and has room for more cash flow to dethrone Aaron Horvath, and Michael Jelenic’s movie. The reason for Barbie’s success, as many critics and experts believe, is that the comedy is subtle and fitting to the narrative.
Greta Gerwig’s Witty Humor in Barbie
Greta Gerwig wrote the script for Barbie with her long-term partner Noah Baumbach and the script of the movie is filled with witty humor fitting to her own feminist spin. Barbie is indeed a comedy but underneath the obvious chuckles, there is a different yet engrossing flavor, spicy enough to hit hard for the moviegoers, but it was not intended for all.
The underlying comedy is pickled with the thematic essence or the narrative i.e. girlhood and patriarchy. Of course, it worked, there is no stopping as Barbie is far ahead of the race at the box office. Talking to BBC Radio One, Gerwig revealed that she wrote some of the jokes in the film and it is even surprising for the director as it is out there in the world for everyone to have a taste of it.
“There’s lines in this movie, maybe one person will laugh at them. Like when she says, ‘I’m having a real Proustian flashback,’ and he says, ‘Remember Proust Barbie? That did not sell very well.’ Things like that, I’m like, ‘I can’t believe we’re writing these jokes into this movie. And it was like, so much of it felt so… in a way we did [write it for ourselves].”
Gerwig’s jokes are sometimes specific, like the use of complex references like ‘Proustian’ is still a clicker which loosely refers to a memory being triggered involuntarily. The pop-culture references and the specificity of the jokes seemingly worked and even received enormous mass appeal. Also, teasing $7.34 billion worth Mattel and without a question, well, that’s even strange for Gerwig.
The Real Reason Why Mattel Said ‘We Don’t Care About Ken’
Barbie star Ryan Gosling who played one iteration of Ken “made an amazing gift for everyone.” Recalling the shoot of the movie in Leavesden, Gerwig told BBC One that Gosling made “shirts it is like Kenergy tour from Leavesden was like a horse with a blonde wig on.” While making these t-shirts, Gosling printed Barbie on them as well. “When he was making these t-shirts um he at one point had Barbie on it too,” Gerwig recalled.
“He had to go through a process with Mattel and they said you can’t use Barbie like you know we’re very sensitive about Barbie. He’s like, ‘What about Ken?’ They were like, ‘Oh you can do whatever you want with Ken. We don’t care about Ken.’ and it was like literally that’s what the movie is and they were like you can use that but we, it doesn’t matter. They really were like, ‘You can’t use Barbie we don’t want you to make a shirt that anything Barbie but yeah go for it Ken who cares.’”
Poor Gosling, he had to leave Barbie out of his t-shirts and Mattel said straight to his face that they don’t care about the character he was playing. Hurting much? Probably for the La La Land actor.
Margot Robbie starrer Barbie is still showing in theaters.
Source: Cinemablend
