Barbenheimer Double Feature Review

I confess I subjected myself to the Barbenheimer social experiment and survived to tell the tale. These are two radically different movies to be sure, but both have one thing in common: they are well told. Barbie is directed by Greta Gerwig and follows Margot Robbie as the stereotypical Barbie who suffers an existential crisis that leads her to question her world and her existence. The result is a movie that is paradoxical in tone as it is as silly and irreverent as it is emotionally nuanced. Oppenheimer is directed by Christoper Nolan and follows Cillian Murphy as Robert J. Oppenheimer in his quest to develop the Atomic Bomb during World War Two. For a three-hour drama that isn’t an action film it moves surprisingly fast and is charged with crackling dialogue, breathtaking cinematography, and psychologically wrenching moments. 

Returning to Barbieland, Margot Robbie excels as this seemingly one-note character who underneath has all kinds of depth. She is paired with her Ken (Ryan Gosling) for this adventure as she ventures into the real world to find the girl she belongs to and to fix what’s wrong between the two of them. The fish-out-of-water humor works well here, and Will Ferrell as the CEO of Mattel is an inspired choice. The dynamic between Gosling and Robbie is a unique and entertaining one playing off the quirky character traits of these particular characters. Ken is very insecure and only finds value in himself when tied to the idea of a relationship between him and Barbie and Barbie has to discover that she is meant to be more than what she is. This film has a lot to say about feminism or just being a woman vs. a man in our societal culture today. 

As for Oppenheimer, this is a picture that is a true story grounded in incredibly high stakes. Christopher Nolan’s command of the cinematic language has been proven over a storied career including films such as Interstellar, Inception, and The Dark Knight Trilogy. He knows how to makes us care about the characters onscreen while at the same time keeping us at the edge of our seats with ticking time clocks and other suspense elements.

The supporting players around Cillian Murphy are all state of the art. Robert Downey Jr. is a chameleon here playing a very different role from that of Tony Stark in the MCU as here he is politician Strauss, a man with an agenda that is more than it seems. Matt Damon plays General Leslie Groves who recruits Oppenheimer for the Manhattan Project. Damon brings his usual sense of charisma while at the same time invokes a harsher quality than his usual characters truly inhabiting the man of Groves. Florence Pugh excels as Jean Tatlock, a troubled woman that Oppenheimer romances. I will say though that the love scenes between them were shocking and very R-rated. They could have illustrated the same point and done it in a PG-13-esque fashion but what's done is done. On the other side of that coin, you have Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife, yet another troubled woman who walks through fire with Oppenheimer in this movie. The culmination of what ends up happening to Oppenheimer and the revelation about what his contribution to society means for our present-day world in nuclear deterrence is painted in a bit of a bleak yet true light with all the awesomeness of Christoper Nolan’s cinematic prowess. 

So, in conclusion the Barbenheimer film experience was certainly an interesting one. Two very different genre films providing engaging experiences. One film is silly and introspective, the other suspenseful and terrifying all at the same time. I can in good conscience recommend you go out and see both. After all Tom Cruise did, then again so did a lot of other people based on the Herculean box office results of these two films thus far.