Barbie’s been a fashion model, doctor, astronaut and even the President, so what more could she be?

In director Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie, opening this week, the answer is human.

Margot Robbie plays everyone’s favorite perfect plastic plaything, a stereotypical Barbie doll, who wakes up (both literally and figuratively in her Barbieland Dream House) to a new feeling, She’s uncomfortable in the very space that was made for her, and starts thinking about the unthinkable: death.

In the film, our narrator Helen Mirren explains that Barbieland is a place where every (Barbie) doll has a home, complete with all the accessories she needs to live her best life, which includes a wardrobe, a kitchen, a car and a Ken. All the other Barbies are close at hand, spending their days as doctors, writers, physicists and politicians, and their nights having “Girls’ Night,” dancing with each other and the cadre of Kens that always seem to be on the periphery of their existence.

There’s also trips to the beach, which is the one place where the Kens seem most at home (for Kens, “beach” is actually considered their full-time job.) Ryan Gosling plays Stereotypical Ken, Barbie’s boyfriend, is struggling with awareness too: he is only happy when with Barbie but when he attempts to engage her a closer relationship, Barbie rejects the notion. She’s happy with her independence and female friendships.

But suddenly, Barbie’s life has ceased being perfect. Her breath smells bad, her milk goes sour (not that she really drinks anything), and for the first time ever, she’s sporting cellulite! What’s a Barbie girl to do? The answer is consult what passes for a wise-woman in this world: Weird Barbie, played by Kate McKinnon.

Weird Barbie has been played with a little too much: she has a DIY haircut, her face has been decorated by many shades of markers, and she’s prone to lapse into the splits at odd times. But with this experience comes wisdom, and she tells Barbie that somewhere in the Real World, the person playing with her is introducing dark thoughts into Barbie’s head, which is affecting her quality of life in Barbieland. Unless Barbie wants a life of angst and wrinkles, she needs to visit the real world, meet whoever’s playing with her, and do whatever it takes to seal up the connection between the two worlds.

Barbie takes off on this journey alone, or so she thinks. Ken, who was hiding in the rear seat of Barbie’s dream car, surprises her with the news that he is going too. Soon the two find themselves in Venice Beach, wearing neon colors and rollerblading to blend in. (Only the rollerblading is helping with this.)

The real world affects Barbie and Ken very differently. Barbie imagined a female-centric world like the one she left, only to find herself objectified, even threatened by the male gaze. But for Ken, it’s a revelation: here, men rule the world.

While Barbie is off finding her human playmate, Ken is studying the patriarchy, which for him means trucks, horses, and attempting to walk his way into careers simply by virtue of being male. Barbie finds Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), and gets a blistering diatribe against Barbie’s conspicuous consumerism and the unrealistic expectation her physical perfection engenders in young girls. Stung, she runs away, only to find herself trapped: the execs at Mattel (led by Will Ferrell), the manufacturer of Barbies, want a word with her.

Ken returns to Barbieland alone, and manages to transform it into a patriarchal paradise for Kens. Barbie is rescued by Sasha’s mother Gloria (America Fererra), who works for Mattel and is the real reason that Barbie was summoned away from her former existence.

Barbie, Gloria and Sasha return to Barbieland, chased by the Mattel execs, and find themselves in a transformed world. The pink pastures of Barbieland are overrun with Kens, who are now running the place, inhabiting the Dream Houses and brainwashing all the remaining Barbies into accepting status of second class citizens. It’s up to Barbie, Sasha, Gloria, Allan, Ken’s friend (Michael Cera) and the few unbrainwashed Barbies that remain to prevent Barbieland from turning into a totalitarian Kenocracy.

Barbie the movie works on two levels. Watching it in a theater packed with almost all women, it was obvious that the nostalgia factor added to the enjoyment: everything from Barbie’s outfits, to her friends (hi, pregnant Midge!) to her movements, seemed to be designed to bring back great memories for anyone who spent time playing with Barbie and her many, many accoutrements. Robbie and Gosling are perfectly cast as Barbie and Ken, and not just for their looks, but for truly giving life to their plastic roles.

Barbie‘s story also works, because at its heart it is about a search for identity. Barbie and Ken both find themselves questioning their respective places in the world, and figuring out what they really want. Pay no attention to the man-o-sphere pearl clutchers who are tweeting that the movie is some kind of ‘smash the patriarchy’ manifesto. The sweet, sometimes silly story, written by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, is not that simple. More importantly, this movie was not made for them.

Barbie the movie, like Barbie the doll, was made to appeal to the child inside (almost) all of us. It is for those of us who want to have fun, use our imaginations, and to dream about a world where we can be whatever we wish to be. (And also to smash the patriarchy when necessary.) It’s light, it’s funny, and it’s even a bit meaningful, just as playtime should be.