Gosling’s funny performance as famed male sidekick Ken is one of the reasons Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie is getting such positive reviews. Laura Martin wonders if he could make it to the podium for the prizes.
She is perfect. The funny slogan for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie about the Mattel doll – and her hot man sidekick – is “He’s just Ken.” The slogan, which made light of the fact that Ken has been viewed as a rather meaningless adjunct ever since his creation in 1961, sparked a rush of memes when it was unveiled in April.
The reviews for Barbie have poured in, but one glaring irony has emerged: the perpetual supporting character is actually the star. Since Ryan Gosling plays the blonde-haired “stereotypical Ken” among the countless Kens in Barbie Land, no one has received more praise for the movie than Ryan Gosling.
Gosling has been receiving some of the finest reviews of his career thanks to his full-throttle change (bleached blonde hair, artificial tan, and shaved legs for his neon-rollerblading sequences), flawless comic delivery, and riotous song and dance performances. “Everyone was cast flawlessly. But Ryan Gosling really steals the show, as Kirsten Acuna noted on Insider; Beth Webb, writing for Empire Magazine, said: “Every muscular flex, hair flip, and guitar strum falls flawlessly. He will occasionally rob you of your breath.
The actor has undoubtedly invested all in the film, both on and off-screen. “I’ve got this Ken-ergy, if you will, and this is the character I was born to play. Along with a number of other amusing, pun-filled interviews he has done in the lead-up to the movie’s premiere, he told MTV News that “this Ken-ergy is alive in me now.
Changing the himbo icon
Of course, the quality of Gosling’s performance depends on the script. The story sends Margot Robbie’s “stereotypical Barbie” and Ryan Gosling’s Ken to the “Real World,” and while Barbie starts glitching in a bout of existentialism, we realise that Ken also suffers from his own insecurities and anxieties. This is where Ken has always been cast as the simple, subservient partner to Barbie. After going rogue, he learns about the patriarchy and decides to restore it in Barbie Land.
He changes from the sighing, despondent partner of old to a semi-villain, an incel-in-training, inciting his fellow Kens to uprising. He takes control of Barbie’s Dreamhouse and transforms it into a “Mojo Dojo Casa House,” renaming the territory his “Ken-dom.” All the other Barbies, aside from Robbie’s main character, are forced to serve the Kens and dispense endless “brewski beers,” and Ken starts to parade around wearing a huge mink coat and a headband, which is obviously another joke from costume designer Jacqueline Durran.
Gosling, who plays the comic counterpart to Robbie’s wide-eyed straight lady, gladly leans into his early years as a Disney Mouseketeer child star, best remembered for his hilarious performance of the soft rock song “I’m Just Ken,” written by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt. Midway through the Ken vs. Ken duel, he does a Bob Fosse-inspired dance routine with all the other Kens that is both a technical marvel and a hilarious reminder of how much Gosling is ready to invest in the character of Ken. He perfectly captures the Ken-ergy required for the role.
The fact that Gosling is an actor who is frequently cast in dark or gloomier movies—playing tormented, brooding characters in movies like Drive and A Place Beyond the Pines or men living on the outside of society and battling addiction in Blue Valentine and Half Nelson—makes his performance feel especially startling. He can handle light fare, as he expertly demonstrated in the romantic comedies Crazy Stupid Love and the musical La La Land, as well as the underappreciated comedy-thriller The Nice Guys. But he has never been this entertaining.
Has comedy received the recognition it deserves in terms of awards?
Some people are already speculating that his performance as Ken in Barbie, which is as close to flawless as you’d want an out-and-out comic performance to be, could win him an Academy Award. Give Ryan Gosling an Oscar nomination, I’m dead serious, said ComicBook.com’s Jamie Jirak on Twitter following a sneak preview last week. Lucy Ford of British GQ agreed this week, writing, “He should honestly be nominated for an Oscar.”
Is it wishful thinking to believe he might actually succeed and win? When competing against performers in emotionally charged dramas and biopics, comedic actors have historically struggled to win Oscars, with outliers like Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny and Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets. Few performers who have won awards for humorous parts have delivered performances as outrageous, exaggerated, and downright ridiculous as Ryan Gosling. It’s also possible that Academy Award voters are eager to see Barbenheimer, the box office competition between Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s nuclear bomb epic Oppenheimer, which both come out tomorrow, play out again at the awards show, with a host.
Gosling “smashed it” as Ken, according to movie critic Ellen E Jones, but she doesn’t think the Academy will agree. She tells BBC Culture, “I don’t think Ryan’s chances at the Oscars are great. “First of all, because I think the monotonous self-seriousness that surrounds these ceremonies will be the last thing to leave, even though we’re in this era of Awards show reform, which is purportedly in step with societal developments in the globe more broadly… and as a result, Gosling’s tremendously funny performance won’t be recognised. She also notes that “the optics of giving a man an award for what is so pointedly a feminist film are a bit off”.
However, Gosling has undoubtedly established himself as one of Hollywood’s most adaptable actors with Ken. He may rest comfortable that he is more than Ken-ough, to paraphrase the tagline on his pastel-colored fleece top in Barbie, Oscar or no Oscar.