Introduction
After the world is tired of having to play with baby dolls, forcing little girls to assume the role of mothers, Barbie dolls were created by a company named Mattel. The dolls all had different occupations and could be whatever they wanted to be. Years after, it is a pretty normal day in Barbieland where the Barbies and Kens live.
Barbie wakes up and goes about her day until she suddenly wonders about Death. She starts malfunctioning soon after and her feet turn flat. She starts having bad breath among other things. The other Barbies ask her to see Weird Barbie.
Weird Barbie’s purpose
Barbie learns that Weird Barbie became like that after the little girl who played with her ruined her by playing too hard. Now, Weird Barbie takes care of the other Barbies to make sure that they don’t malfunction like she did. Barbie tells Weird Barbie about the things going on with her.
Weird Barbie believes that it’s all because of a glitch in the continuum between the Real World and Barbieland. Barbie learns that the real world and Barbieland are connected and that something has gone wrong in the real world, causing Barbie to malfunction in Barbieland.
She asks Barbie to go to the real world and look for the girl that plays with her and messed her up. Weird Barbie believes that the little girl playing with her was probably in a bad place, mentally. She wants Barbie to try and cheer the girl up.
Barbie is not too pleased by the idea and is unwilling to go but Weird Barbie forces her to take a trip to the Real World. Barbie bids all the other Barbies farewell when Other Ken riles Ken up, forcing him to sneak into Barbie’s car and ride with him to the real world.
The Real World
Barbie learns that the real world is not all that great and the Barbie dolls had done nothing to revolutionize the world as the Barbies believed. She is catcalled by men and harassed, where Barbie realises that the real world is male-dominated, unlike Barbieland where all positions of power are taken by women.
Barbie punches a man that smacks her on the butt and gets arrested. Barbie and Ken decide to change their outfits and end up stealing new ones from a shop and are arrested again. The cops alter Mattel – the company responsible for making Barbie and Ken – letting them know that two of their dolls had gone rogue and are in the real world.
The person answering the call is Aaron, a low-level employee who has never gone “all the way up” where the big guns like the CEO, CFO and other important people are. On his way to the top, he meets the Barbie designer, Gloria, who is drawing her new samples for the upcoming Barbie box. He takes the elevator and goes all the way up and bursts into a meeting with the CEO, Mr Mattel.
In the meantime, Barbie asks Ken to leave her alone for a while as she tries to concentrate on herself and find the little girl who played with her. Barbie sees a vision of how the little girl was stopped from playing with the doll after she had grown up. Barbie gets emotional after seeing how the little girl was being forced to do things that she did not like.
Ken goes around the real world and learns that men have a very high status there. He sees how all the positions of power are taken by men and how women are subservient to men, unlike in Barbieland. Barbie calls out to Ken and asks him to accompany her to the high school where she’s going to look for the little girl that played with her.
Barbie meet Sasha
Barbie makes it to the school she saw in her vision and meets the little girl that played with her. The girl is a tween named Sasha who is mean to Barbie. She accuses the Barbie dolls of setting the Feminist movement back by 50 years and that the dolls that were created for girls to play with are the prime cause of women having body dysmorphia among other mental and physical issues. Barbie is hurt and tries to defend herself but Sasha calls her a fascist, breaking her heart.
At the same time, Ken goes looking for books about horses but ends up finding a lot of books about Patriarchy in the school library. He is impressed by Patriarchy and goes out into the real world, looking for a job. He learns that having a job in the real world means that he would need a qualification, one that he lacks. He decides to start his own patriarchal society in Barbieland.
Meanwhile, Aaron tells Mr Mattel about Barbie and Ken causing chaos after coming into the real world. Mr Mattel believes that Barbie is acting out just like the Skipper doll did. Mr Mattel sends out his men to capture Barbie and bring her back. Gloria eavesdrops on the conversation and learns what’s going on. He believes that Ken is not important enough for the company and it’s okay if he’s not brought back.
Barbie at Mattel
Mattel’s men find Barbie crying on the street after her interaction with Sasha. They tell her that they’re going to take her to the Mattel headquarters. Ken is interacting with a woman and is shocked to see how highly women regard men in the real world. Instead of going to Mattel with Barbie, Ken decides to go back to Barbieland on his own.
At the same time, Gloria is at school to pick up her daughter, Sasha, and decides to follow after the Mattel cars in order to see what was going on with Barbie. Barbie arrives at Mattel and meets Mr Mattel. She learns that the original creator of Barbie, a woman was never in the building and that company had been run by men.
Mr Mattel tries to convince Barbie to get inside the box willingly but she manages to escape the room after lying to use the restroom. Barbie sneaks out and after an elaborate chase, she finds herself in a woman’s house.
Barbie meets Ruth
Barbie talks to the old woman who calls herself Ruth. She reassures Barbie that she was perfectly good as she was and that there was no need for her to be the stereotypically perfect Barbie she was designed to be. Barbie gets emotional during her chat with Ruth and bids the old woman farewell after she hears the men chasing after her.
Outside the Mattel office, Gloria and Sasha are in their car when Barbie shows up. Gloria offers to help Barbie and manages to out-chase the men following them. Barbie learns that it was Gloria who was playing with the doll and ends up having second thoughts about what a Barbie with an existential crisis would look like.
She realises that she malfunctioned because Gloria was having a tough time. Barbie realises that it was the mother’s memories she was having and not Sasha’s and that mother had caused Barbie to malfunction. She apologises to Sasha for what’s happening to the real world because of the Barbie dolls.
Barbie goes to Kendom
Barbie decides to go back to Barbieland while Gloria and Sasha join in to help Barbie. After arriving at Barbieland, Barbie sees how Ken had taken over her house and the entire Barbieland had been turned into “Kendom” after Patriarchy had taken over this world. Barbie learns that all the other Barbies had been brainwashed by the Kens into being subservient to them.
The dolls had forgotten who they were and their own identities as doctors, Nobel Prize winners, Presidents and more as they started tending to the Ken dolls and their needs. Barbie tries to talk to Ken about it but he claims that it was Gloria’s fault for changing their normal life by giving Barbie thoughts about Death.
Meanwhile, the Mattel men decide to follow after Barbie to see what was going on in Barbieland. Mr Mattel claims that the Barbie doll generated their company a lot of revenue and it was essential for her to be okay. The men tell Mr Mattel that the Ken had potential to appreciate their stocks in due time but he claims that it is the Barbie dolls that the little girls dreamed of and she was pretty important for the company.
In the meantime, there is trouble in Barbieland when Barbie had a mental breakdown. She claims that she will just sit and wait for things to go back to normal. Gloria and Sasha try to knock some sense into her but Barbie is very depressed. Gloria and Sasha are on their way back to the Real World when Gloria claims that it was necessary for them to sort things out in Barbieland because it was all her fault. She turns back around and goes back to help Barbie.
The Deprogramming of Barbies
Gloria and Sasha take Barbie and a few other Barbies to Weird Barbie’s house. There, they decide to help save the other Barbies by distracting the Kens. A few Barbies along with Alan, Ken’s underappreciated buddy, start the deprogramming of the Barbies by distracting the Kens with a decoy.
Once distracted, the Barbies are taken away and Gloria talks to them about Female Empowerment in order to bring them out of the trance that the Kens had put them. Once all the Barbies had been deprogrammed, they decided to turn their charm on in order to trap their respective Kens.
Barbie goes to Ken’s house and apologises for not seeing him as her potential partner. She tells him that she was ready to date him and Ken is happy. He sings Barbie a 4-hour-long song as do the other Kens with their respective Barbies. However, just as the Kens were convinced that Barbies were into them, the Barbies move on to sit with a different Ken to make them jealous.
Kens clash
The Kens split into two different teams and fight each other at the Beach. Mr Mattel and his men enter Barbieland just in time during the Ken clash where all the Kens try to fake-kill each other. Ken breaks out into song and finally comes to realise that he was Ken, a sole entity and not just an accompaniment of Barbie.
In the meantime, the Barbieland elections take place in the absence of the Kens. President Barbie rules in favour of the Barbies, claiming that the Barbie government could not have been overruled by the Kens because of their absence. The Kens finally go back to Kendom and see that it had been turned back to Barbieland.
Ken’s emotional breakdown
Ken gets upset and starts crying because of how he was a failed doll. Barbie tries to console him and the two talk about how Barbie never saw Ken as a partner and it was always “girl’s night” every night for Barbie. Barbie apologises for taking Ken for granted and asks him to create an identity for himself by discovering who he really was.
Mr Mattel, who was overhearing the discussion claims that he understands the burden Ken was holding on to but claims that there is nothing he could do about the situation of the dolls.
The Ordinary Barbie
Gloria suggests that there should be an ordinary Barbie that resembles an everyday woman who doesn’t have any big dreams or expectations like taking over the world. She believes that the new Barbie could resonate with every woman and change the perception of people in the real world and how they look at dolls as objects of stereotypical beauty.
Mr Mattel and the other men decide to go with the idea and close the portal between the two worlds. However, Sasha asks for Barbie to be given her own ending. Barbie cannot decide what she wants to do with her life because all she ever knew was waking up and having a perfect day that ended with a blowout party.
Gloria asks Mr Mattel to give Barbie her happy ending and her own story but Mr Mattel claims that he could not do anything about it.
Mrs Ruth Mattel – the Creator of Barbie
Mrs Ruth Mattel shows up and tells Barbie that she was the creator of the Barbie doll. The petite old woman had died years ago and her industry had been taken over by men. Ruth claims that Barbie was named after her daughter – Barbara.
She claims that Barbie should go on a path of self-discovery to make her see what she would want to do with her life. Barbie goes back in time to see the history of women and realises that she no longer wants to live as an idea that comes out of someone else’s mind.
Conclusion
Barbie tells Ruth that she did not want to be just a doll and wanted to be a human. She asks for Ruth’s permission but the woman tells her that she could was no one to permit Barbie to become a human. Barbie decides that she wanted to be the person making the ideas and decides to go into the real world.
All the Barbies and Kens bid Barbie as farewell as she goes into the real world. Gloria and her husband drop Barbie off on her first normal day as a normal everyday woman. Barbie goes into the real world and the first thing she does is go to her gynaecologist like any other woman would.
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