BARBIE ***

 "Barbie" is undoubtedly one of the most enjoyable films I've seen this year and yet it's also the most infuriating. Highly imaginative, (it's got the best pre-credit sequence in years), and laugh-out-loud funny it's got ideas to burn and therein lies the problem. Director and co-writer, (with partner Noah Baumbach), Greta Gerwig has set out to make the ultimate feminist tract dressed up in the brightest of pinks as a satire and while it works perfectly well as a satire full of self-conscious digs at its very creation, (we are constantly being reminded this is a movie called "Barbie" that we're watching), it's as a tract that it's in danger of sinking. That it doesn't is very much to Gerwig's credit; she's much too smart to really ruin her product and there is an awful lot here to enjoy.

The thin plot has Barbie and Ken leaving Barbieland for the real world so Barbie can repair some sort of hole in the spectrum or some such nonsense that has allowed 'real' feelings (of a negative kind) to slip in and, naturally, since this is a film about dolls coming to life, it's decidedly silly and if had stayed silly it might have been inconsequential fun but Gerwig and Baumbach wants this to be 'consequential' fun, a laugh-a-minute message movie. Unfortunately one message doesn't appear to be enough; there were times I felt I was being battered to death by a giant message-wielding Barbie and by the time Will Ferrell's CEO of Mattel has left the real world for Barbieland the laughs had begun to dry up.

Perhaps if someone had snipped about 20 minutes from the running time and dropped a few of the film's sermons this might have been the classic it was clearly aiming to be; that said, there are a lot of plusses here. It looks fantastic, the best gags are as good as anything Gerwig or Baumbach have given us in the past and best of all, it's got a couple of living dolls worthy of the name.

Margot Robbie was born to play Barbie, (there's even an in-joke about her in the movie), and, of course, she's wonderful and yet the film isn't hers. Barbie really belongs to Ryan Gosling who might become the first actor to be Oscar-nominated for playing a doll and given that the film is structured to make him a mouthpiece for its creators he brings an uncanny degree of feeling to the role and his performance is up there with his very best. As for Gerwig, maybe now that she's got her inner Barbie out of her system she might finally settle down to make comedies that are funny and meaningful and leave the sermons at home. We already know how good she can be.