Go see 'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer' in theaters — doubleheader or not is your call

Transcript

TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. The fact that Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" and Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" are both in theaters today has generated a lot of buzz and memes about the phenomenon known as Barbenheimer. Based on advance ticket sales, thousands of moviegoers have already booked an opening weekend double bill. Our film critic Justin Chang says that whether you watch them back-to-back or on different days, both "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" are well worth a theater-going experience.

JUSTIN CHANG, BYLINE: Like a lot of people, I chuckled at the Barbenheimer memes that have flooded the internet in recent weeks. Even though counterprogramming is hardly a new thing, it's not every day that an exuberant comedy about a Mattel doll come to life goes head-to-head with a brooding drama about the father of the atomic bomb. Naturally, there was a lot of sexist speculation that men would prefer to see "Oppenheimer" while women would be the dominant audience for "Barbie." But that's the kind of gender stereotype the "Barbie" movie itself seeks to turn on its head. The director, Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote the script with Noah Baumbach, begins her story in Barbie Land, a pink-tastic (ph) paradise that's home to countless walking, talking, life-sized Barbie dolls. They're a diverse group in terms of race and profession. Issa Rae plays President Barbie, Hari Nef plays Doctor Barbie, and Margot Robbie is perfectly cast as our heroine, stereotypical Barbie. They all just call each other Barbie, though, just as almost every man here answers to Ken, including the one played by Robbie's hilariously self-mocking co-star, Ryan Gosling. The Barbies run Barbie Land, and the Kens vie for their love and attention, as in this scene in which Gosling's Ken tries to ingratiate himself with Robbie's Barbie.

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RYAN GOSLING: (As Ken) Hey, Barbie.

MARGOT ROBBIE: (As Barbie) Yeah.

GOSLING: (As Ken) Can I come to your house tonight?

ROBBIE: (As Barbie) Sure. I don't have anything big planned - just a giant blowout party with all the Barbies and planned choreography and a bespoke song. You should stop by.

GOSLING: (As Ken) So cool.

ROBBIE: (As Barbie) Yeah. OK, bye.

GOSLING: (As Ken) Bye.

CHANG: The plot kicks in when Barbie starts feeling not quite herself, and strange thoughts of death intrude on her upbeat day-to-day. She winds up on a mysterious journey to the real world, with Ken stowing away in the backseat of her pink Corvette. Arriving in LA, Barbie befriends a Mattel employee played by a winning America Ferrera and discovers that Barbie dolls are far from unanimously beloved in the real world. She also learns that, unlike in Barbie Land, women here have a much harder time getting the rights and respect they deserve. This comes as a particular revelation to Ken, who becomes a poster boy for the patriarchy overnight in one of the story's slyer twists.

Gerwig brought a terrific energy to her earlier movies, like "Lady Bird," and here she keeps the comedy and the action moving at a speedy clip. Between all the chase scenes and pratfalls, dance numbers and beachfront serenades, the movie tries to have an honest debate about whether Barbie has, in the words of one angry real-world teenager, set the feminist movement back years. Celebrating and critiquing a corporate brand is a tricky needle to thread, and I'm not sure "Barbie" in the end pulls it off. Even so, Robbie's captivating and sincere performance wins you over. She's the center of gravity at the heart of this movie's merry comic tornado.

Beyond their shared release date, "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" both have a level of conceptual ambition we don't always see in Hollywood movies. In "Oppenheimer," which runs a taut and fast-moving three hours, the director, Christopher Nolan, has made a brilliantly unorthodox portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who oversaw the Manhattan Project that led to the creation of the atomic bomb. As usual, Nolan doesn't make things easy, shuttling between time frames and perspectives, shooting in color and black and white and immersing us in a stew of names and government acronyms, plus much talk of quantum physics. But the movie is extraordinarily gripping, and it's remarkable to watch as Oppenheimer, played by a superbly restrained Cillian Murphy, comes into focus.

In adapting Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's Oppenheimer biography, "American Prometheus," Nolan comes at his subject from every angle. We get a sense of Oppenheimer's wide-ranging intellect, his Jewish heritage, his left-wing politics, his marriage, his womanizing and his enigmatic charm. His ability to bring so many things and people together will make him uniquely suited to direct something as logistically daunting as the Manhattan Project, even if he's unprepared for the consequences.

"Oppenheimer" is somehow both an immersive character study and a teeming ensemble piece with vivid work even in small roles from Florence Pugh, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh and many others. Matt Damon is gruffly amusing as Colonel Leslie Groves, who hires Oppenheimer for the project, and Emily Blunt is electric as Oppenheimer's fiercely independent-minded wife, Kitty. But the most forceful performance comes from Robert Downey Jr. as former Atomic Energy Commission chair Lewis Strauss, who plays a key role in the 1954 hearings that will strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance and make him a pariah. After the war, Oppenheimer spoke out against nuclear proliferation, though he notably never expressed regret for the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the Oppenheimer we see in Nolan's movie is ravaged by guilt and horror at what he's unleashed. He realizes that the threat of global annihilation, far from having been defeated, may have only been postponed.

MOSLEY: Justin Chang is the film critic for the LA Times. He reviewed "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer," both opening today in theaters. On Monday's show, Colson Whitehead. After writing two Pulitzer Prize-winning novels, "The Underground Railroad" and "The Nickel Boys," he started writing crime novels set in Harlem. His new one, "Crook Manifesto," is an entertaining read about crime at every level, from small-time crooks to revolutionaries, cops, politicians and Harlem's elite. I hope you can join us.

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MOSLEY: To keep up with what's on the show and to get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @NPRFreshAir. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Roberta Shorrock. Our technical director and engineer's Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support from Joyce Lieberman, Julian Herzfeld and Tina Kalakay. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Susan Nyakundi. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. For Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.

(SOUNDBITE OF BOOKER T. & THE M.G.'S' "BOOT-LEG") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.