Let Us Salute the Unsung Hero of Barbie

Allan is a vibe, as long as “having no vibe� counts as a vibe. He is the parentheses in the sentence of life. Photo: Warner Bros.

This article was originally published on July 22. We are recirculating it now timed to Barbie’s streaming debut on Max. Be sure to also read Alison Willmore’s review of the film, our profile of the woman who rescued it from development hell, and Allison P. Davis’ close-read analysis of what Greta Gerwig is trying to tell us.

By now you’ve probably heard or concluded for yourself that Ryan Gosling is incredible in Barbie. And he is. He wears a headband evocative of Johnny Lawrence; crushes his power-ballad theme song, “I’m Just Ken�; and radiates with the Ken-ergy he spoke of so often during the Barbie press tour.

But we are not here to talk about Gosling or any of the other Kens in this movie. We are here to celebrate Allan.

Like all the Mattel-inspired characters in Greta Gerwig’s toy de force, Allan is based on a real doll — a real, extremely forgettable doll. First released in 1964 and touted as “Ken’s buddy� who can fit into all of Ken’s clothes, Allan has been described over the years as a discontinued flop, gay-coded, and maybe some other adjectives that I can’t be bothered to come up with, because this is Allan we’re talking about here and who has the time?

Taken off the market after about two years, a follow-up Allan was introduced in the 1990s, but his name was spelled Alan, and that obviously is not the same guy. That one has a mullet and looks like he just walked off set after crushing his guest appearance on an episode of Full House. No, as Barbie emphasizes, there is only one Allan (two L’s), and it’s the one who was introduced in the 1960s with a rainbow-striped shirt, a conspicuous air of awkwardness, and a personality that is, even now, TBD.

Allan is a vibe, if having no vibe counts as a vibe. He is the parentheses in the sentence of life. If Allan were an emoji, he would definitely be this one: 😶.

While Ken’s personality is beach, Allan’s personality is empty sandbox. If Ken smells like a combination of Axe body spray, fragile masculinity, and boy sweat — and I believe, deep in my soul, that he does — Allan smells like non-spoiled 2 percent milk. Wait, non-spoiled milk doesn’t really smell like anything. Exactly.

Helen Mirren, the narrator of Barbie, notes there are no multiples of Allan. There is “just Allan.� And there may be no actor better equipped to capture Just Allanness than Michael Cera, one of the most gifted deadpan deliverers of the modern era.

While he obviously didn’t achieve the True Allan Singularity until playing this role, there were shades of Allan lurking in many of Cera’s previous performances.

Allan’s personality is Cera walking with his head down after Ann dumps George-Michael on Arrested Development.

Allan-energy (Allanergy?) can be found in every absurdist PA announcement Cera used to make on Childrens Hospital. (“Attention, staff: There has to be more to life than this.� God, that’s so Allan.)

Allan’s paradoxical low-key panic matches the tone in Cera’s voice in Superbad when he asks upon looking at a fake ID that says McLovin, “Who are you, Seal?�

While Allan’s thing is that he’s basically a blank space, he does develop his own mystique as the movie progresses, a trick Cera also pulled off in what many (okay, probably just me) consider his greatest role: Wally Brando in Twin Peaks: The Return. Wally briefly pops up in the David Lynch television sequel to say philosophical things that make no damn sense while looking like Marlon Brando in The Wild One. He is a non sequitur of a human being, and yet he possesses a certain dignity. This is also true of Allan: He does not fit into life’s preestablished boxes, and that is his power. For different reasons, you could say the same thing about Barbie, actually.

Allan definitely does not mesh with the other Kens. How could he? He is called Allan, a name that, when spoken out loud, sort of sounds like an attempt to clear the phlegm from your throat. While Gosling and his competitive cohorts can do backflips, Rollerblade, and smoothly glide into disco dance moves, Allan is less coordinated. One of the funniest gags in the movie involves Allan attempting to extricate himself from a gated-off seating area; as the main action continues in the foreground, there’s Allan, in the background, trying to stand on a café chair so he can climb over a not-particularly-tall barrier and completely failing at the task. I don’t know if there’s a kickball league in Barbie Land. But if there is, Allan is always picked dead last.

To his credit, Allan becomes the Barbies’ only male ally once Gosling’s Ken brings the patriarchy to Barbie Land, flipping gender dynamics so that a bunch of insecure men who insist on singing shitty Matchbox Twenty songs are in charge of everything. Allan hates it, so he stows away with real-world inhabitants Gloria (America Ferrera) and her daughter, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), as they attempt to leave Barbie Land and head back to L.A.

The farther they get from Barbie Land, the more Allan’s capabilities become clear. When they encounter a road crew blocking off their route, Allan goes full Scott Pilgrim on each of the construction workers until the path is clear … at which point Gloria and Sasha decide they have to go back to Barbie Land. Which is exactly the sort of thing that happens to someone like Allan, whose casual display of force is completely unappreciated.

But by the end of Barbie, Allan seems a bit more comfortable with his own identity. He’s not a poser; he’s not pretending to be anyone he’s not. He’s just Allan and that’s okay. Actually, it’s great. Allan becomes one of the best parts of Barbie because he, and Cera, are not trying too hard. They are effortlessly, hilariously unremarkable.

Even if Allan the doll has been largely overlooked by history and the Mattel-manufactured residents of Barbie Land don’t take him seriously, there is still only one Allan. He’s more than “Ken’s buddy.� And I don’t believe for a second that he can fit into Ken’s clothes because Allan isn’t like anyone else. He’s his own, perfectly milquetoast man.