He was a good sport in the audience, playing along even when host Jimmy Kimmel cracked that he wanted to go camping with him “and not tell our wives.” He acted out a genuinely funny fake feud with Emily Blunt over Barbenheimer (sample joke: “They called it Barbenheimer, not Oppenbarbie because you were riding on our coattails all year.”) And, most of all, he delivered an instantly iconic performance of “I’m Just Ken.”

Before his appearance was announced, lots of people speculated that he wouldn’t perform the Oscar-nominated song because he was too big a star to be relegated to “musical talent.” Others feared that the song was just too silly for a cool guy like Gosling to perform in public.

This demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of who Gosling is. What makes him so wonderful is that he is gleefully, unabashedly, exquisitely goofy. He’s been goofy on SNL (his Papyrus digital short is a classic). He’s was goofy in The Nice Guys (a great film, if you haven’t seen it). He was simultaneously goofy and heartbreaking in Barbie. And he was gloriously goofy on stage last night. Advice to men who fear being goofy: It just made him more powerful.

It wasn’t just that Gosling was fully committed to the song—belting it out while wearing a bedazzled bubble gum pink suit, all while channeling Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It was that it was a production. At one point, they did a Busby Berkeley-style overhead camera shot with complicated choreo. Gosling’s fellow Kens showed up, including Simu Lu and Kingsley Ben-Adir. He pranced into the audience, giving director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie their chance to sing and bop along. Hottie musical producer Mark Ronson was on stage, and then Guns ‘N’ Roses guitarist Slash showed up, too, just for good measure.

I mean, why shouldn’t they do elaborate numbers like this at the Oscars? Why should the Tonys have all the fun? (As one wag quipped on X, formerly Twitter: “If you liked ‘I’m Just Ken,’ wait til you find out about Broadway musicals.”) (Unfortunately, I can’t find the original tweet, so that’s a paraphrase.)

So yes, the Kenergy was strong at last night’s Oscars, but it was overall an excellent show, with a few minor quibbles. Below, I give you a few of the highlights and lowlights.

Best Joke of the Monologue: “This night is full of enormous talent and untold potential, but so was Madame Web, so who knows?”

Best Bit from the Monologue: Kimmel “pulling a Biden” by forcing the room to applaud for the injustice of Greta Gerwig’s Best Director snub and then pointing out that they were the ones who didn’t vote for her.

Best Performance That Wasn’t “I’m Just Ken”: Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” How that young woman can create such heartbreaking intimacy on such a grand stage is beyond me. She’s a generational talent.

Most Wasted Opportunity: Having John Cena give an award for “Best Costumes” while naked. It was an inspired bit—and he had me giggling on my couch. But man, this was the year that Barry Keoghan made nudity his thing. My man dropped trou a lot. First in his controversial film, Saltburn, and then in a Vanity Fair animated cover. It would have been EPIC if Keoghan had been the night’s DNG (Designated Naked Guy).

Best Award Intro That Wasn’t Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt: John Mulaney is just a confident comedian. And it takes his kind of confidence—and comic chops—to do a non-sequitur riff on Field of Dreams while announcing Best Sound. Many thought he was auditioning to be next year’s host. Suffice it to say, he passed.

Worst Fashion Trend: The floating straps seen on Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh were…odd. As I said on X, formerly Twitter: “It looks like a ghost is removing their dresses.” It didn’t help that Blunt’s dress had a strange, um, crotch design. 

Best Dressed Woman: Zendaya absolutely stunned in an antique rose silk gown by Georgio Armani Prive. Yes, it helps when you LOOK LIKE ZENDAYA. But she was utter perfection.

Best Dressed Man: When it comes to awards-show fashion, every man is playing checkers and Colman Domingo is playing chess.

Most Unwelcome Product Placement: Was I hallucinating, or did an ad for Don Julio break out in the middle of the broadcast?

Best Upset: Zone of Interest winning for its uncanny haunting sound design was an unexpected—and inspired—choice.

Funniest Line in An Acceptance Speech: Robert Downey Jr.’s “I’d like to thank my terrible childhood.”

Most Adorable Winner: When The Last Repair Shop took home the award for Documentary Short, they brought out one of the film’s subjects: 12-year-old violinist Porché Brinker, who looked like a fairy tale princess in a pale blue taffeta dress.

Second Most Adorable Winner(s): The crew from Godzilla Minus One, who nabbed an upset award for Best Visual Effects, all while clutching Godzilla toys. What they lacked in English-language proficiency, they more than made up for in giddy, contagious enthusiasm.

Most Adorable Audience Member: They lied to us and said that Messi, the talented Border Collie from Anatomy of a Fall, wasn’t going to make the Oscars due to important dog park business (or somethin’). But it was a fake-out! Messi was there, wearing a fetching bow-tie (get it?) and effortlessly stealing the show.

Worst Dismount: Best Picture is the emotional climax of the night…except for when it isn’t. Al Pacino came out to deliver the award and he was a bit, shall we say, shambolic. He neglected to read out the 10 nominees, hastily tearing open the envelope and saying, with a slightly quizzical look on his face, “And my eyes see Oppenheimer.” It took a full 5 seconds for people to realize that Oppenheimer had actually won, which is an eternity on live TV. No, it wasn’t quite the La La Land/Moonlight fiasco, but they didn’t exactly stick the landing.

Worst Trend: The In Memoriam segment is always a bummer, and not just because it reminds us of all the great talent lost in a given year. People clap at awkward moments, as though one person’s death is more applause-worthy than another’s. And the Academy invariably leaves someone notable out. But the solution to this problem is not to run a quick, scrolling list of the dearly departed after the main segment. It felt more like a diss than a tribute, akin to the original Gilligan’s Island theme song referring to the Professor and Mary Anne as “and the rest.” Don’t do it again!

Best Gift From the Comedy Gods: When Jimmy Kimmel, known for his “Mean Tweets” segment on his late-night talk show, began reading one of his bad reviews on social media—sample quote: “His opening was that of a less than average person trying to be something which he is not”—it just seemed like the host was just doing a riff on that segment. Then he got to the punchline: “Make America Great Again.” Yes, the anonymous social media critic was, in fact, former president Donald Trump. “Thank you for watching, President Trump,” the comedian quipped. “I’m surprised you’re still up. Isn’t it past your jail time?” Oh, buuuurn.

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On the other hand, it has felt a bit like a slow march to the inevitable this season, hasn’t it? There are locks every year, but thanks to the juggernaut that is Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (an excellent and largely deserving film!), there are more than usual this year. I’d love to tell you to expect the unexpected, or prepare for upsets galore, or gird your loins, or whatever—but I can’t lie to you like that. Most of these categories are in the bag.

With that said, here are my (not that) bold predictions for the major categories.

BEST PICTURE
American Fiction
Anatomy of a Fall
Barbie
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Past Lives
Poor Things
The Zone of Interest

Who will win: Oppenheimer
How sure am I? I’d bet the farm, if I had one.
Who could win: No other film might win. Don’t blame the messenger.

BEST DIRECTOR
Jonathan Glazer, The Zone of Interest
Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Justine Triet, Anatomy of a Fall

Who will win: Christopher Nolan
How sure am I? What’s surer than sure?
Who could win: Just for giggles, I’ll give Lanthimos a two-percent chance.

BEST ACTOR
Bradley Cooper, Maestro
Colman Domingo, Rustin
Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction

Who will win: Cillian Murphy
How sure am I? I’d go all in, but maybe leave a bit of emergency cash in a lock box.
Who could win: Paul Giamatti has a chance, in the Dumb and Dumber, “So you’re saying there’s a chance?” sense of the phrase. But a chance all the same.

BEST ACTRESS
Annette Bening, Nyad
Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Fall
Carey Mulligan, Maestro
Emma Stone, Poor Things

Who will win: Lily Gladstone
How sure am I? Pretty, pretty sure.
Who could win: Emma Stone could clearly take this. It’s been neck and neck between these two great actresses all awards season, but Gladstone definitely has the mo’.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things

Who will win: Robert Downey Jr.
How sure am I? Like, Michael Phelps at the Beijing Olympics sure.
Who could win: People are beginning to recognize how great Mark Ruffalo was in Poor Things. But…naaa.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer
Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple
America Ferrera, Barbie
Jodie Foster, Nyad
Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

Who will win: Da’Vine Joy Randolph”
How sure am I? If I had a second farm, I’d bet that one, too.
Who could win: Honestly, no one. But for the sake of argument, Emily Blunt.

Okay, that’s the end of the categories I’m totally sure of. I’ll throw in a few more predictions that I’m relatively confident in below:

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: American Fiction

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Anatomy of a Fall

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: Oppenheimer

BEST SONG: “What Was I Made For?”, Barbie

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE: Spider Man: Across the Spider-Verse

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: 20 Days in Mariupol

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: The Zone of Interest

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

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On the one hand, the film was nominated for Best Picture (yay!). Additionally, Ryan Gosling was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his funny (and oddly touching) depiction of Ken and, in a bit of a surprise, America Ferrera, who gave that memorable speech about the double standards women must navigate in this life, was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. All told, Barbie managed eight nominations, including two for Best Song and one for Production Design.

But there were two rather glaring omissions. Greta Gerwig, the woman who directed and co-wrote the film (with her husband, Noah Baumbach), was not nominated for Best Director. And Margot Robbie, who gave a pitch-perfect turn as Barbie, was snubbed in the Best Actress category.

Reaction on X (formerly Twitter) was fast and furious—as reactions on X tend to be.

“Ryan getting a nomination but Margot [not getting one] just proves the plot of Barbie,” wrote user @phobicgay, echoing the sentiment of many online.

“So the plot of Barbie 2 is going to start with today?” quipped Elie Mystal, justice reporter at The Nation.

“Greta Gerwig being snubbed at the Oscars despite Barbie being the only $1 billion movie solely directed by a woman feels very sus to me…” said user @zacidk.

Even Gosling himself weighed in, releasing a statement in which he expressed his gratitude for the nomination, but added how sad he was that his colleagues weren’t similarly honored. “To say I’m disappointed…would be an understatement,” Gosling wrote.

So what gives? Were Gerwig and Robbie snubbed? And is the patriarchy to blame?

The answer, unsurprisingly, is that it’s complicated.

Let’s start with Robbie’s “snub” first. One thing you have to know about the Oscars is that it’s very hard for a comedic performance to land in one of those two “Best Lead” categories. This has to do with a flawed belief that dramatic acting is the only true form of acting and comedic performances are somehow unworthy of Oscar’s highest honors.

It’s a ridiculous notion, one that should be lambasted as much as possible, but it’s pretty entrenched in Oscar’s DNA. Supporting acting awards are where comedy performances can occasionally (albeit rarely) sneak in—see Melissa McCarthy’s nod for Bridesmaids or Robert Downey Jr.’s for Tropic Thunder. Which might explain why Gosling and Ferrera got nominated, but not Robbie. (Also, tellingly, Ferrera gives a pretty straight performance in that film. She’s giving us emotional realism, not broad, physical comedy.)

Gerwig’s “snub” is a little more complicated. Many have noted that Justine Triet—a woman—was nominated for Best Director for Anatomy of a Fall (my second favorite film of the year)—and since she got the nod it proves that THE ACADEMY CAN’T BE SEXIST!

I think that’s a bit facile. Here’s my take on Gerwig’s omission: I think if she were a man, say Gary Gerwig, who had taken a completely amorphous concept—a film about G.I. Joe acknowledging his own role in the patriarchy, for example—and turned it into the cinematic event of the year, a certain mythology would’ve formed around him. The Great Man Theory would’ve taken root and Gary Gerwig would be seen as an auteur of the highest order, a mastermind, a colossus. Obviously, I can’t say for sure that Gary Gerwig would’ve gotten nominated for G.I. Joe, but I have a hunch he might have.

On the other hand, directors of comedic films have often fallen into the same trap that actors have. Their work, no matter how masterful, is seen as trivial compared to those who make films about atomic bombs and the Holocaust.

So, in short, I’d say that those who believe Gerwig and crew were wrongly snubbed and those who say “jeez, not everything is about the patriarchy!” are both right.

Long live nuance.

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From there, we jump cut to Barbieland, a matriarchal society filled with Barbies of all sorts—President Barbie and Supreme Court justice Barbie and Nobel Prize-winning Barbie. The Barbies have arched toes and feet that never touch the ground, all the better to wear stiletto heels. They don’t so much move as glide through Barbieland, as though being steered by the invisible hand of a young girl. Kens are around, too, with no discernible purpose beyond competing for the attention of the Barbies. It’s there that we meet Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), whose favorite Ken (Ryan Gosling)—he of rock hard abs, cartoonishly blond hair, and a fondness for wearing headbands like he’s a member of Cobra Kai—says his job is “beach.”(Not lifeguard or surfer, mind you. Just beach.) We also meet “Just Allan” (Michael Cera), a bit scrawny compared to the Kens, who has no idea how he got there. (He is, of course, based on an actual doll. The film is nothing if not historically accurate.)

Robbie, who excels at playing wide-eyed naifs, is predictably wonderful here—never losing Barbie’s touching sweetness even as she learns some harsh realities about the real world. But the real secret weapon is Gosling, who leans into the over-the-top goofiness of his peacocking and dim character. It’s a master class in finding truth in broad comedy.

One day, after a typical “best day ever!” of riding her dream car, not kissing Ken (although their faces nearly touch), and frolicking with her fellow Barbies, Stereotypical Barbie suddenly blurts out: “Do you guys ever think about death?”

Record scratch.

Barbie nervously laughs it off and the party continues.

The next morning, she wakes up with…bad breath! Her perfect (waterless) shower feels cold. Her (fake) waffle is burnt. And, horror of horrors, her feet are flat!

She visits with a Barbie guru of sorts, “Weird Barbie”—so named because her girl cut her hair in a choppy, asymmetrical style, put her in weird clothes, painted her face like a clown, and pulled on her so hard her legs are permanently splayed. (Weird Barbie owners basically rule.) As she can no longer join the ranks of Barbieland, Weird Barbie instead dispels advice from a hill, joined by some discontinued Barbies, including pregnant Barbie, “Midge,” and “Growing Up Skipper” whose—wait for it—breasts grow when you rotate her arm. (Gerwig and her writing and life partner Noah Baumbach have loads of fun with the very rich text of Barbie history. Did you know there was once a Sugar Daddy Ken?)

Weird Barbie tells Barbie that there’s been a glitch in the matrix, or some such thing—her human must be thinking of death and sad things and this somehow has translated to her. Her only hope is to enter the “real world” and ease the pain of her owner.

Scared but determined, Barbie hops into her Dream Car and speeds off. As she triumphantly sings Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine”—a bit of a sly joke as it’s not just a female anthem, it’s a lesbian one—Ken’s voice chimes in with her. He’s hidden in the back of the car and he’s going with her, whether she likes it or not.

From there, the art department has a field day as Barbie and Ken travel through a candy-colored dream world—in a convertible, in a rowboat, and eventually on canary yellow rollerblades—until they land in the real world (well, real-ish, at least) of Venice Beach.

Almost instantly, Barbie feels something different. The gaze of men is not benign but vaguely threatening. Ken shrugs, he doesn’t pick up on any menace in the way women are looking at him.

So yes, Barbie and Ken are about to discover that the real world is the opposite of Barbieland. Men wield more of the power. The women are more like, well, the Kens.

Ken goes off to learn more about this world—he seems to think lots of horses are involved—while Barbie tries to find her depressed girl. It’s more complicated than that. There was a girl, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) who had a Barbie, but she outgrew her. She’s in a rebellious phase—scowling at her mother, Gloria (America Ferrera), dressing in baggy clothes, sounding off against corporate greed and the patriarchy. You better believe she wants nothing to do with Barbie now. It was, in fact, Gloria, dissatisfied with her life as an executive assistant at Mattel and feeling unloved by her daughter, who was playing with Barbie again. Her imagination had run a bit wild and she was idly sketching new Barbie concepts: Existential Crisis Barbie and Cellulite Barbie.

Barbie and Ken (but mostly Barbie) are being chased by the dark-clad suits of Mattel, including the CEO (Will Ferrell), who fears that Barbie in the real world will unleash chaos.

Barbie does manage to get back to Barbieland, this time with Gloria and Sasha in tow, only to discover that everything has changed. It’s now something called Ken-dom and instead of a Barbie Dream House there’s Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House. (He doesn’t care if it’s redundant. He likes saying it.) Worse still, the Barbies have been brainwashed and seem to have forgotten that they’re all smart, capable, and independent women. And the final indignity? “Closer to Fine” has been replaced by Matchbox Twenty’s insipid and aggressive “Push” (sample lyric: “I wanna push you around; well I will, well I will”) as the official Ken-dom anthem.

Will Barbie be able to save Barbieland from the patriarchy? Will she and Ken ever really kiss? Will Gloria and Sasha make up? The correct answer is: Who cares when we’re having this much fun?

That said, I do wish the film had tread a bit more lightly in terms of its messaging. There’s one too many speeches about trampling the patriarchy and the maddening double standards that come with being a woman. It’s particularly unnecessary because Barbie already does show us these things—cleverly, slyly, and creatively. I wish Gerwig had felt confident enough in her subtext to leave out the actual text.

The final question: Does Barbie seem like an ad for Barbie? Or, more specifically, how much control does it seem like Mattel exerted over the finished product? I give it pretty high marks on that front. Yes, it celebrates the new evolved version of Barbie. (Over the years, Barbie went from being a feminist nightmare that created an impossible body standard for impressionable young girls to a doll that at least tried to instill girls with confidence by showing different body types and professional achievement.) The Barbies of Barbieland are living in a feminist utopia and believe they’ve accurately reflected the real world. On the other hand, those executives at Mattel? All men. Even if that’s only partly true, it’s pretty damning. And there’s a scene where Sasha tells Barbie off, calling her a corporate tool and a fascist. Not sure that’s part of the Mattel employee handbook. Finally, the film ends with a spectacularly funny and unexpected line suggesting that while Gerwig and co. may not have had total creative control, they had lots of it.

Mostly, Barbie is laugh-out-loud funny and a sheer delight. I’ll be watching it again for sure—but I might fast forward over some of the speechy parts.

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