The Golden Globes confirm it: Barbie was a bad film, and a marketing masterpiece

America Ferrera, Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie at the 81st Golden Globe Awards (Photo: Michael Buckner/Golden Globes 2024)

The Golden Globes has long been a rackety event, with judges regularly making baffling decisions that risk undermining its authority to the point of irrelevance. Yet, last night, they finally got something right, by cutting Barbie down to size.

The film had been nominated for nine awards, including Best Picture: Musical or Comedy, Best Director for Greta Gerwig and acting nods for its stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.

But in the end, it failed to pick up the expected raft of accolades and its rival Oppenheimer, released on the same day last July, sweeping the ceremony with five. Don’t think I’m a heartless wretch, but I did let out a small cheer upon hearing that Barbie had faltered, because I found the film to be boring, unfunny and over-hyped.

I was dreading the moment it might win Best Screenplay over the incredible Anatomy of a Fall (which I went to see at the cinema yesterday for a second time), a thriller so compelling and clever that it doesn’t deserve to be in the same realm as Barbie. The latter film cleaning up would have only given more credence to the effusive reviews, and to the prevailing idea that if you don’t find Barbie a hilarious, subversive take on the patriarchy, you must either hate women, or be really uptight.

In reality, Barbie simply wasn’t very clever – which is fine – but it also wasn’t entertaining. Even with an all-star cast, a screenwriter as good as Greta Gerwig (Little Women, Ladybird, Mistress America). As I wrote in a fit of annoyance after leaving the cinema, Barbie “is simply a 114-minute toy advert for Mattel. A good advert, but a bad film.”

Yet, the big award that Barbie did win last night, makes complete sense. It won the first-ever Golden Globe for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, or in other words: The Award for Film Which Made Huge Amounts Of Money And Had An Incredible And Relentless Marketing Campaign.

The film had a marketing budget of a reported $150m [£116m], and it made $1.4 billion (£1.2 billion) worldwide. Pretty much everyone went to see Barbie, because how could you not, when you’re living in a Barbie world?

Margot Robbie with the Golden Globe for Barbie (Photo: Christopher Polk/Golden Globes 2024)

Barbie was the cinematic event of 2023, and we all saw the groups of friends turning up to the cinema decked out in magenta, the themed cocktails, the eye-catching posters, the Ken “beach” memes, the fact that you could book a real life Barbie dream-house through Airbnb, the adverts for a Barbie-themed cruise, and fashion brands jumping on the Barbie bandwagon.

“We would like to dedicate this to every single person on the planet who dressed up and went to the greatest place on earth: the movie theatres,” said Robbie, as she accepted the gong. Is it a cynical award? Yes. But it points to the fact that Barbie was a marketing masterpiece, and that people had a great time being part of the fun.

So good was the Barbie marketing campaign that in years to come we will likely remember that summer of pink more than that “more successful” movie about the guy who invented the atomic bomb. And the Globes’ new award signals a shift in what makes us consider a film “valuable”. It doesn’t matter whether Barbie was well-made or enjoyable, because people were influenced by the frenzy and went to the cinema anyway.

There is merit in that – we all want cinemas to survive, though I wish what was shown on the big screen had been less of a dud. But in the end, the Golden Globes confirmed one thing – it’s the hype around Barbie we will remember, even if the film itself was totally forgettable.