Barbie Review

0:01 You get more out of life when you go out to a movie. I know I'm with the show. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the box office. I'm Jeff Johnson. David Burns is on location and on assignment. And given the film that we are talking about, I do not want this to be a straight up mojo dojo cosa house, and I feel like our special guest today is gonna gonna bring enough Dreamland to it. Look she she can't do brain surgery and she's never flown on the plane, but she is anything but ordinary. I'm talking about are lovable special correspondent for a fowned by Jenna Kozo. Jenna, welcome back. Thanks, thanks for having me.

1:07 You know it's funny. Um, there wasn't a lot of the regular guys knocking down the door to talk about today's movie. But when I found out that you were you had already seen it before me, I was like, I know who is going to talk about this? So, Jenna, are you ready to talk about to talk about Barbie? Let's break it down. This is Barbie Land. Hi, Barbie, Hi, Ken. I can't believe how great this place is. Let us show you ready for fun? Yeah, let's do this hold my ice cream, ken, Wow, here I go. You can I sit in the front Barbie July twenty first, waited thirteen. Jenna, let's get right to it. It's not about this cast, is there? Could there be anyone more perfect to play the role of Barbie than Margot Robbie. Oh, I don't know. I don't know.

2:10 She's so beautiful. No, I did too, I did too. Um, this is awful to say, but I think she's almost too perfect for Barbie. She's too Barbie, She's too Barbie of a Barbie. Yeah. I know this sounds crazy, and I'm not I'm not putting her down in any way. I almost at moments felt it was beneath her. And I don't mean the role. I mean, yeah, he's so Margot Robbie beautiful, and Barbie's pretty. Barbie's always kind of like that perfection, but she's got the face. Margot Robbie's just got this face that Barbie doesn't have in the same way. And I know I'm being judgmental, but I think Margot Robbie's prettier than Barbie. That's not a that's not a put down, that's not a slam right. No, I understand that she's just dunning and such an amazing actress she is. Uh, let's talk. I want to talk about her her physicality in this role, because something I picked up on was the physical um aspect that she that she gets the role. I noticed quickly, like when when she's introduced in the movie and she wakes up in their dream land house. Quickly I noticed her movements are very doll like, like like Barbie's not a you know, look, I never I don't have I have zero experience understanding and experience and how how Barbie dolls work. I know you probably have a good understanding. I do. I do, Jenna, my only understanding about fifteen years ago, sixteen years ago, I put

3:43 together a dream house on a Christmas morning for my little sister, So right, and that is the extent of my knowledge. Those are very complicated. You are not easy. Now, I get it. I got it. But her movements in this movie are are doll like. You know, Barbies are not that articulate, you know, And I noticed, like, yeah, like robotic, Yeah yeah, I thought that was sensational that she was doing that. Yeah, I thought that was cool. I liked it too. I liked it a lot. We got to talk about Weird Barbie. I loved Weird Barbie. My Barbies ended up looking like I mean, we all get that. All girls went through that phase. Or we shaved off the baby's the Barbie's head and we rode on her face and we had her stretched in like open legs. So that's not something that Gretig makes up.

4:31 That's no, no, no, not at all. No. We well, there's a point when you kind of get sick of Barbie and you're probably in your preteens and you started cutting off her hair. Um, I did it. All my friends did it. We I get it, I get it. We went through that because remember Barbies like late eighties, early nineties, so that grunge thing was happening. And yes, yes, that character was her fact spot on and Kate McKinnon was perfect for that role. She was so fun to watch, just owning that weirdness. You know, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. Uh Someone, I could not get enough of Ryan Gosling playing Ken or one of the kids. I guess I should say not a fan of Ryan gosl I love him, love him.

5:24 I think he's excellent. He's excellent. He's but in that part, I don't know. I didn't I didn't buy him as Ken. I don't know, I really I wanted and I can't pull my finger on it. I just felt like he never fully committed to it. Yeah, and it almost came across a little hokey though. I do like Ryan Gosling. I loved him, and yeah, he apparently. So the story goes, he has sent the script and he goes into his daughter, like his daughter's outside playing and he see he finds her ken doll stuck face down in the mud and side and he responds and says, I will play the part. His story must be told, so right, No, Yeah, I like that.

6:13 He had fun, you know, he got to play they the happy kin, you know, and he and he definitely goes a little bit on the dark side, a little bit on the doucheback side, you know. And you see that in the trailer. So I'm not giving thing. We're spoiler free here, so I'm not givingy thing away. But now there's a lot of kins, there's a lot of barbies, there's a lot of kins in this movie. How about Simu Liu, who's playing the I would say he's like the secondary kin, Like he's like the biggest Kin aside from Ryan Goslin's Kin. Right. I loved seeing him. At first, I was like, is that is that who I think it is? And then I realized I was like that that's him, you know that that I loved him. I just I wish we could have got more of him. You know, he doesn't have a lot of speaking role. Yeah, I have a lot of dialogues, so I mean, which I guess maybe he doesn't need it.

6:58 But right right, the Kens, the whole play on the Ken's and the different Barbies is excellent, but I'm sorry the Allen Allen. Now this is where you might not understand. And I have no reference. I don't know, Oh I do Alan. I think Alan was. I would be wrong, but I feel like he was Ken's cousin or Ken's friend. But we had an Allan doll okay, and Alan was like the second you know, kind of like second class Ken. Yeah, because this movie they talk about Alan, who's played by Michael Sarah and then uh, there's mother Barbie, Like was there Skipper Kipper? Ye? Yes again stuff that yeah Skipper, absolutely, but they were always like less than Ken and Barbie, you know what I mean, Like Ken and Barbie were the ultimate, and there was always any like new characters that they would bring in would be a secondary character or okay, do not as good looking, but yeah, like Skipper, I think she had brown hair and she was a little bit quirky versus Barbie, who's this perfect? Okay, So there's a little lot of nuances that unless you really knew the nineties eight the late eighties early nineties dolls, yeah might kind of miss you know. Okay, so you so you probably you probably saw a lot of Easter eggs. Oh yeah, I wouldn't have

8:28 seen. So Okay, Well that's that's cool. That's that's good. Was brilliant casting. He was fantastic in it. I absolutely loved his his role. Um. So Greta Gerwig, you know she's she's kind of known as one of the indie darlings. Um, this is like the big commercial blockbuster movie hits like her first time out with it. Uh, she's right, she's directing this. She writes that she co writes this with Noah bomboch Um, which I found, um surprising. And I gotta tell you the movie itself. I know we got spoiler free here, Jenna. I went into this not expecting the movie that it was a little bit of a there's some there's some I mean honestly, there's some deep there's some deep story. There's a deeper story here. It's a very deep um it went dark in certain places. Yeah, but um, a very feminism um patriarchal versus matriarchal, um. Lots of very deep rooted issues that are clearly there's an agenda, is what I'm saying. Like I would, Yeah, I mean obviously, you know you can. I think you can see it even from the trailer, like there there is a message about female empowerment, right, but it and it and it works in this film, And honestly, I think it works really well. I I dig it. You know it worked. It was fun. I So you know, if that's like the main theme of the film, the female empowerment, the the subplot, the comedian subplot where

10:01 you know that that deals with the patriarchy, I gotta be honest, Like they're definitely taking some some uh some shots at at and masculinity. But I gotta be honest, I was laughing. You know, those jokes land perfectly in this film. I was kind of chuckling because I was like, yeah, it's funny because it's true, you know, it's it's it's yeah, you know, and this is this is not the movie I expected, you know. I thought, Okay, it's gonna be like a movie for little girls or whatever. This is Pg. Thirteen and the and the really cool story. You know, Barbie, you know, has some issues. I guess we could say has to travel to she has to leave Barbie Land travel to the real world where she's gonna run run am uck with Mattel's CEO played by Will Farrell, who is just the right amount of Will Ferrell in this movie. I think like they sprinkled him in here and there, you know, I do. I feel like they could have done the movie without him.

11:00 Though I love my Will Ferrell, I love Farrell. It had like an elf quality to it. Um, okay, that's fair. And when I saw his name in it, I almost thought to myself, I think one of the things that makes this a fun film to see this is it's bright. It's explosive, it's very colorful. It's just it's it's eye candy. I mean, everywhere you look on the screen, there is something just amazing. Like the set design. They went out of their way on this one. I mean, if it had a little extra music in it, I would have thought I was watching like a Bas Lehman film, you know. Yeah, Yeah, absolutely loved it when they were you know, at the first forty five minutes or so of it was just so much color.

11:43 Yeah, it's a lot lots of color. And I feel like I was a kid in a candy store for the first forty five minutes. Now, I don't mean the rest of it I was bored or anything like that, but kind of adjusting yourself to the pinkness the world and certain things in the set that I'm like, Hey, I had that, I had that, I remember that, or yeah, yeah, I thought they knocked it out of the park. Set design, they knocked out the park. For music, I feel like they knocked out of the park. I'm hearing a lot of music that I normally wouldn't hear. We talk about it. Let's talk about the soundtrack for a quick second here, and Jenna. Some of these people I don't know, but like I was like, oh, I like that song, because we're talking about people like Billie Eilish. We're talking about Haye Lizzo, y um Nicki Minaj is in there Aqua. The music's great.

12:31 I gotta, I gotta be fun. The music was a lot of fun, a lot of fun. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta give it to h Ryan Gosling here though my favorite track, I'm just Ken. That song is fantastic. It is it is the fact that it was a joke and was it supposed to be part of the movie. And do you know do you know about this? No? I didn't. Oh you're gonna love that. So Mark Ronson, who does the score, made it was like a gay he wrote, he gives a song to Gretit Gerwig, who gets a kick out of it. Ryan Gossling got ahold of it and was like, this, this will help tell his story. Like Gossling is very adamant about giving giving Ken his due in this movie. Okay, so he records it. Yeah, so he and then he's like, hey, I want to record it. I want to sing it. And it becomes this this great music number in the movie. Yeah, And I was cracking up because like all of Ken's paining his heartache, you know, it's right there. He's got a really nice he's got a runs to the waist.

13:33 Yeah, this movie has a lot going for it. Um, Jenna, this is this is the big event. This is the biggest box office event. Oh my lord, probably since the Avengers. You know, it's it's being called Barbenheimer. Um yeah. And and let's you got to give the lady uh credit where credit is due, because Barbie as of this weekend, has brought in one hundred fifty five million dollars domestic one hundred eighty two million were sis. It has definitely won the weekend Oppenheimer. Now, look Oppenheimer going head to head with Barbie. I think originally a lot of people thought this is gonna go the opposite way. And Barbie and Oppenheimer is a fantastic film. We did a review with Dayton Johnson of docu Base seventy seven for that one. It did really good too. They combined these two movies did five hundred eleven million dollars worldwide. Right, that's that's amazing. And I gotta tell you the fun I was at three different theaters this weekend, and one thing I saw at all of them was a c of of pink, you know, and I'm talking like it was Jenna, it's it's girls, you know, it's it's women your age. They were all it's like girls day out. It was I saw a bus pull up at an AMC and like twenty five little five year old girls came out and they're they're sparkly pink stuff and the moms came out with them and they were all dressed up.

14:54 It's an event. And like the lobbies, the lobbies in the theater were having. It was like loud and it was like, I don't know. We sat down in Westwood and one side of there's two there's two theaters and they're across the street from each other. One side was Barbie and one side was Oppenheimer, And it was just so cool to see people going from Barbie to Oppenheimer and then back and forth. So people made a day out of it, which is kind of cool. It was, I mean, two movies that could not be further apart in theme. Wait, oh my god, they were so different. Everyone's doing everyone's doing the Barbenheimer thing. Jenna, I gotta ask you, um, when it comes to Barbie, Jenna, are you gonna say what do you what do you think? See it?

15:35 Stream it or skip it. So I have kind of a two part answer to this. If you're if you're a guy and you know nothing about Barbie, maybe stream it because there's a lot of nuances that you might not get and you might say I don't get it. You know, i'd I don't know. But if you are someone who grew up with Barbie, if you know, like the Skippers and the Allens and the Beach Barbie, the difference between Beach Barbie or Beach Ken and you know, uptown Barbie, there's a difference. If you're one of those people, I say, go see it. Go see it. It's fun, You'll enjoy it. I'll be honest. I am as Ryan Gosling would say, I am kinough to say this is a movie you should go see. I did not think I was going to enjoy this movie, but I had a blast. I say, go see it. Definitely. It's page thirteen. So it's one of those great things where the adult humor is sailing right over the kid's heads. Right.

16:33 A lot of the adults are like cracking up in the movie, and I'm like, wow, they can I can't believe they got away with that. You know, there's some there's some language and there's some imagery. I'm like, yeah, yeah, okay, little kids don't understand that, but no, but I think the color and the pink and the house, and you know, I don't get they enjoy that part. Well, Jenna, we have missed you on the podcast. Yeah, happy that you you were able to jump in and feeling for Dave on this one. Thank you for letting me come on and just gab about Barbie. It's one else am I gonna get to do that exactly as always? Uh, we'll buy the tickets, if you buy the popcorner, we'll see you next time. It's so blite. But I'll sleep alone tonight because I'm just king anywhere else I be changed. He is in my destiny to live and life for love for you.

17:36 I'm just king where he loves. She sees a frank But will it take for food to see many