David R. Walker

Posts Tagged ‘Simu Liu’

Barbie

Director: Greta Gerwig

Cast: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Emma Mackey, Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, Will Ferrell, Helen Mirren, Rhea Pearlman, Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir

Running Time: 1 hour 54 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Toys as a consumer product are self reflexively explored with wit and sarcasm by Ladybird and Little Women director Greta Gerwig in the highly anticipated fantasy film Barbie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as the dolls Barbie and Ken, who combined have multiple blonde moments.

It all starts off beautifully in the valley of the dolls aka Barbieland where like Pleasantville everything is perfect until Ken tries to reach the end of the wave and hits a dead-end and when Barbie’s doll like features start diminishing quickly including her high heel step and thoughts of death start seeping into her consciousness.

On consultation with weird Barbie wonderfully portrayed by Kate McKinnon, Barbie ventures off Barbieland through a portal which connects her to Los Angeles specifically the headquarters of Mattel, the manufacturers of Barbie where she confronts corporate doublespeak and patriarchy masquerading as profit.

Once in Los Angeles, Barbie is lost and confused whereas Ken, on the other hand revels in the patriarchy and rushes back to Barbieland to plot a revolution with the other Ken dolls, notably starring a range of male actors from Kingsley Ben-Adir to Simu Liu. Ken even discovers a liking for trucks and horses while Barbie discovers a fearless corporate secretary Gloria superbly played by Ugly Betty star America Ferrara, who unlocks the secret of Barbie’s beautiful transformation.

Ryan Gosling is superb as Ken, carefully crafting a narrative arc for his character from naivety to tyranny and then back to nostalgia. Gosling deserves an Oscar nomination for his role as Ken, from the jiving dance numbers to the villainous revenge he plots against the Barbies played by numerous actresses including Emma Mackey (Eiffel, Emily, Death on the Nile) and Issa Rae.

Despite all the hype and publicity, Barbie is not a sweet children’s film for small little girls, but a scathing allegorical tale on the nature of capitalism and how the gender roles have been structured to suit profit over flexibility, often pushing women out of the workplace in favour of men. Writer and director Greta Gerwig does the full range of jibes against her male counterparts from toxic masculinity to man explaining and from suffrage to male preening, questioning specifically assigned gender roles. In this respect her casting of the hottest star in the world Ryan Gosling is spot on as Ken and his performance elevates Barbie from a vivacious almost perfect land to a treacherous battle of the sexes whereby both Barbie and Ken have to discover their own identities.

Barbie is a candy coloured condemnation of the social roles assigned to men and women and how little children are socialized into specific gender roles through toys manufactured by shady multi-million dollar corporations. While Margot Robbie looks like Barbie, it is really her supporting cast that does the heavy lifting particularly America Ferrera as a contemporary woman juggling a career and raising a difficult daughter.

Where Gerwig falters in Barbie is that a toy is a difficult subject matter to adapt into a big screen unlike a novel such as Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. Her directorial faults include crass excess and some really silly scenes especially those with Will Ferrell.

Barbie is a fun enjoyable fantasy but it is a film that takes itself too seriously in parts and not seriously enough as a sustainable narrative. Fortunately Ryan Gosling is talented enough to make Barbie’s counterpart, vain and idiotic. However, Kenough is not sufficient to stop the Barbie force.

Barbie gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is elevated by excellent supporting performances and fabulous kaleidoscopic costumes by double Oscar winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran (Little Women, Anna Karenina).

See it for the costumes, the dance moves and the music particularly the retro disco scene at the Barbie house party.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

Director: Destin Daniel Cretton

Cast: Simu Liu, Awkwafina, Tony Chui-Wai Leung, Ben Kingsley, Meng’er Zhang, Michelle Yeoh, Mark Ruffalo, Florian Munteanu

Film rating: 7 out of 10

Running time: 2 hours and 12 minutes

The Glass Castle director Destin Daniel Cretton certainly landed a massive task in directing the Oriental fantasy film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings assembling a mostly Chinese cast with Chinese Canadian actor Simu Liu in the lead role as Shang Chi and comedian, rapper and Golden Globe winner Akwafina (The Farewell) as his sidekick Katy.

While Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings starts off promisingly with some thrilling action sequences on the streets of San Francisco followed by an equally brilliant fight sequence in an abandoned skyscraper in Macao in China, the rest of the CGI laden fantasy epic just eventually unravels into a simulacrum of the Tales of Narnia mixed with some strange dragon sequences which clearly resemble the final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Then there is the problematic appearance of Oscar winner Ben Kingsley (Gandhi) popping up in such a crazy heavily laden special effects film. Does Ben Kingsley really need the money or did Marvel pay him an extraordinary fee to appear in this confusing martial arts fantasy epic which tries desperately to tag along to the more mainstream Avengers films? One wonders.

After the brilliance of Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, despite making an absolute fortune at the overseas box office, is not as well written or directed or even constituted as an action adventure fantasy.

This Marvel venture is certainly entertaining but at 2 hours and 12 minutes, the middle section of the film drags continuously as does the epic dragon battle sequence at the end which is a rehash of other similar Marvel films and nothing unique.

Despite the film industry being in turmoil since the global Pandemic, it is good to know that Marvel is trying to cover all their bases in terms of target markets but seriously Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings could have been so much better and taken inspiration from such superb martial arts films as director Ang Lee’s Oscar winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon especially considering it lured Bond star Michelle Yeoh (Tomorrow Never Dies) to appear in this film too.

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is entertaining and has already made its box office takings but as a film, this could have been absolutely brilliant but then again Marvel are just cashing in on the current cinematic trend and appealing to that massive target market in China which has the world’s largest cinema going population outside of India.

This action adventure fantasy gets a film rating of 7 out of 10. It’s fun but not amazing. Catch it in cinemas or on a streaming site in the future.