There are plenty of great moments packed into this nearly 4-minute video. Intercut scenes show the utterly stacked musical lineup that made the song come together, from Wolfgang Van Halen and Slash on guitar (no, really) to Foo Fighters’ Josh Freese (whose bleach-blonde hair has already made some fans confuse him for Gosling in a quick video clip) on drums, per Entertainment Weekly. At one point, Gerwig claps her hand over her mouth in surprised delight when Gosling rips off his fur coat to reveal the outfit underneath. At another, the Kens arrive on the beach via boats that turn out to be moving on a tiny track towards the cameras. Behind them, crew members throw tennis balls at them as the fight sequence heats up.
“I’m Just Ken” is a perfectly melodramatic ballad about the Kens trying to live their truth while trapped in the patriarchy they’ve created, but it’s also an excuse for the movie to go full-blown classic Hollywood. The black shirt-clad dance sequence between Gosling’s Ken and Simu Liu’s calls to mind both “Grease” and the stage-set musical movie extravaganzas of the 1930s. The music video focuses a lot on this scene, showing nearly an entire run-through of Gosling’s choreography practice — first opposite a stand-in dancer, and later with scene-stealer Ncuti Gatwa and fellow Ken Scott Evans, who both give him a little smooch on the cheek. Take that, horse patriarchy!
If you haven’t caught it yet, “Barbie” is still in theaters.