Halloween and The Thing director John Carpenter shares a strong verdict over Barbie.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he admitted that certain aspects of Greta Gerwig’s groundbreaking billion-dollar film went “right over” his head. However, he praised lead actress Margot Robbie as fantastic.
Carpenter said, “I can’t believe I watched ‘Barbie.’ It’s just not my generation. I had nothing to do with Barbie dolls. I didn’t know who Allan was. I mean, I can sum it up. She says, ‘I don’t have a vagina,’ and then at the end, ‘I’m going to go to a gynecologist!’ That’s the movie to me.”
He added, “I mean, there’s a patriarchy business in there, but I missed that whole thing. Right over my head. But I think she’s fabulous, Margot Robbie.”
Barbie was part of the summer blockbuster double feature Barbenheimer alongside Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, both of which opened on July 21.
Filmmaker Gregg Araki expresses frustration with the prevalence of questions about the film during interviews. He particularly criticizes the use of such inquiries as “clickbait,” emphasizing how the focus on whether other filmmakers like Barbie has become a pervasive and repetitive theme.
In a recent conversation with Interview Magazine, he said, “It’s like fucking clickbait about you liking ‘Barbie.’ […] It’s like, ‘Rick Linklater loved ‘Barbie.’ He saw it three times.’ I was like, ‘Really, this is your story? You’re talking to fucking Rick Linklater and you want to talk about “Barbie”?’ […] It’s fucking award season, so here comes the fucking tidal wave of 10,000 fucking movies that all want your attention. And it’s actually the critics’ lives every fucking day, so there’s this level of weariness.”
