Despite all the ways the film pokes fun at the male Mattel doll’s supposed unimportance, the star of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, by all accounts, seems to be Ken. Or maybe, more accurately, it’s Ryan Gosling, who the internet has rediscovered their affinity—and namely, horniness—for after his five-year break from movies. (We don’t acknowledge The Gray Man.)
Thanks to several musical sequences in Barbie, including an ’80s-style power ballad called “I’m Just Ken” and a hysterical rendition of Matchbox Twenty’s “Push,” fans of the Canadian heartthrob get to fall in love with his musical talents all over again too. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime role that feels decades in the making, given all the ways singing (and even dancing) has been woven throughout his career.
[Light spoilers for Barbie follow.]
As a member of the notably star-studded The All-New Mickey Mouse Club and a frontman of a spooky rock band at one point, Gosling’s musical history is heavily documented. However, his vocal chops have largely felt like an ace he’s kept up his sleeve as an actor, as opposed to something he’s constantly waving around. (He’s no Anne Hathaway or Hugh Jackman, per se.) But we have seen them in movies before, like Blue Valentine and Lars and The Real Girl.
But even in what would presumably be the biggest showcase of his vocal ability, the Oscar-winning musical La La Land, Gosling sings in a pretty muted, nonchalant voice—as the role may very well have required. Overall, he doesn’t really display much in the film beyond his willingness to partake in such a whimsical project and his ability to stay on tune. Funnily enough, during the 2016 awards season, Twitter users began to circulate a clip of Gosling performing Jodeci’s “Cry For You” on The Mickey Mouse Club, alongside the all-male group and his co-star Justin Timberlake, as proof of the sort of range and soulfulness his voice could deliver. He had obviously given us other examples of his chops since that clip, even if they weren’t cited.
Thankfully, Barbie is a lot bigger, flashier, and campier than La La Land. Therefore, the film’s musical moments require Gosling to belt his heart out in an equally earnest and comic fashion as opposed to playing it cool. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he admitted that he needed to tap into his former Disney Mouseketeer self to embody the role. “At a certain point, I thought I left that kid behind,” Gosling said. “And I needed his help to make this movie. So I had to go back and make peace with him and ask for his help.”
Throughout Barbie and specifically during “I’m Just Ken,” which Gosling apparently requested to perform, it’s hard not to see that exuberant inner-child that’s been suppressed by his preference for weighty dramatic projects in recent years. (This is very much the energy of a man who was the only boy in his childhood dance crew and performed in an Elvis Presley cover band as a kid.) Listening to him sing through auto-tune, it’s also hard not to envision an alternative universe where Gosling was the Mouseketeer selected as a member of *NSYNC. What could’ve been!
If there wasn’t already plenty of awards buzz for Gosling, “I’m Just Ken” gives viewers a singular moment from his performance to walk away with. By the time he sings the number in the third act of Barbie, however, it feels like he’s already pushed the doleful character to his comedic limits. (Don’t be fooled by Barbie’s anti-Ken marketing. His arc is much more than being his significant other’s accessory.)
BARBIE
Warner Bros. Pictures
Likewise, the film sees Ken go from Barbie’s voluntary sub and a second-class citizen in Barbie Land, along with the rest of the Kens, to her oppressor. Ken joins Barbie on an emergency trip to the real world after her perfect PVC body starts malfunctioning. There, he enjoys the fruits of the patriarchy for the first time and brings this system back to Barbie Land, where he and the rest of the Kens adopt stereotypical bro-y behaviors.
One of them is pulling out a guitar and boring their respective Barbies to death with a Matchbox Twenty cover. (According to the laughter at my screening, many women have had this excruciating experience.) Ultimately, the Ken-triarchy doesn’t prevail, and the platinum-blonde doll is catapulted back into a mostly meaningless life, defined by his love for Barbie and Beach.
So he breaks into “I’m Just Ken,” a power ballad that I will admit is missing a lot of, well, power. (Mark Ronson, albeit a masterful arranger, cannot write a catchy pop hook, I’m sorry!) There’s a funny lyric in the chorus where Ken asks, “Is it my destiny to live and die a life of blonde fragility?” But unfortunately, it’s not the type of ditty you’ll have stuck in your head after leaving the theater. Regardless, the sequence is still hysterical and impressive in magnitude. At one point, all the Kens perform the song in the cotton candy-colored expanse, embodying Gene Kelly in all-black during the dream ballet with Cyd Charisse in Singin’ in The Rain.
Time will tell if awards bodies and, particularly, Academy voters will be as dazzled by Gosling’s performance or “I’m Just Ken” as the internet already is. If the latter gets an Oscar nomination, we can only hope Gosling will perform on the broadcast this time instead of handing it off to John Legend.
