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Despite the hate, the opening weekend smashed records, raking in a whopping $155 million in the first three days of domestic ticket sales, according to the data aggregator ComScore . It was also the biggest domestic opening for a non-superhero film or sequel and it was the biggest North American debut for a female director.

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“An alienating dangerous and perverse film,” one poster read.

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"Barbie," director and co-writer Greta Gerwig ’s summer splash, is a dazzling achievement, both technically and in tone. It’s a visual feast that succeeds as both a gleeful escape and a battle cry. So crammed with impeccable attention to detail is "Barbie” that you couldn’t possibly catch it all in a single sitting; you’d have to devote an entire viewing just to the accessories, for example. The costume design (led by two-time Oscar winner Jacqueline Durran ) and production design (led by six-time Oscar nominee Sarah Greenwood ) are constantly clever and colorful, befitting the ever-evolving icon, and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (a three-time Oscar nominee) gives everything a glossy gleam. It’s not just that Gerwig & Co. have recreated a bunch of Barbies from throughout her decades-long history, outfitted them with a variety of clothing and hairstyles, and placed them in pristine dream houses. It’s that they’ve brought these figures to life with infectious energy and a knowing wink.

“Barbie” can be hysterically funny, with giant laugh-out-loud moments generously scattered throughout. They come from the insularity of an idyllic, pink-hued realm and the physical comedy of fish-out-of-water moments and choice pop culture references as the outside world increasingly encroaches. But because the marketing campaign has been so clever and so ubiquitous, you may discover that you’ve already seen a fair amount of the movie’s inspired moments, such as the “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” homage and Ken’s self-pitying ‘80s power ballad. Such is the anticipation industrial complex.

And so you probably already know the basic plot: Barbie ( Margot Robbie ), the most popular of all the Barbies in Barbieland, begins experiencing an existential crisis. She must travel to the human world in order to understand herself and discover her true purpose. Her kinda-sorta boyfriend, Ken ( Ryan Gosling ), comes along for the ride because his own existence depends on Barbie acknowledging him. Both discover harsh truths—and make new friends –along the road to enlightenment. This bleeding of stark reality into an obsessively engineered fantasy calls to mind the revelations of “ The Truman Show ” and “The LEGO Movie,” but through a wry prism that’s specifically Gerwig’s.

This is a movie that acknowledges Barbie’s unrealistic physical proportions—and the kinds of very real body issues they can cause in young girls—while also celebrating her role as a feminist icon. After all, there was an astronaut Barbie doll (1965) before there was an actual woman in NASA’s astronaut corps (1978), an achievement “Barbie” commemorates by showing two suited-up women high-fiving each other among the stars, with Robbie’s Earth-bound Barbie saluting them with a sunny, “Yay, space!” This is also a movie in which Mattel (the doll’s manufacturer) and Warner Bros. (the film’s distributor) at least create the appearance that they’re in on the surprisingly pointed jokes at their expense. Mattel headquarters features a spacious, top-floor conference room populated solely by men with a heart-shaped, “ Dr. Strangelove ”-inspired lamp hovering over the table, yet Will Ferrell ’s CEO insists his company’s “gender-neutral bathrooms up the wazoo” are evidence of diversity. It's a neat trick.

As the film's star, Margot Robbie finds just the right balance between satire and sincerity. She’s the perfect casting choice; it’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the role. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed stunner completely looks the part, of course, but she also radiates the kind of unflagging, exaggerated optimism required for this heightened, candy-coated world. Later, as Barbie’s understanding expands, Robbie masterfully handles the more complicated dialogue by Gerwig and her co-writer and frequent collaborator, filmmaker Noah Baumbach . From a blinding smile to a single tear and every emotion in between, Robbie finds the ideal energy and tone throughout. Her performance is a joy to behold.

And yet, Ryan Gosling is a consistent scene-stealer as he revels in Ken’s himbo frailty. He goes from Barbie’s needy beau to a swaggering, macho doofus as he throws himself headlong into how he thinks a real man should behave. (Viewers familiar with Los Angeles geography will particularly get a kick out of the places that provide his inspiration.) Gosling sells his square-jawed character’s earnestness and gets to tap into his “All New Mickey Mouse Club” musical theater roots simultaneously. He’s a total hoot.

Within the film’s enormous ensemble—where the women are all Barbies and the men are all Kens, with a couple of exceptions—there are several standouts. They include a gonzo Kate McKinnon as the so-called “Weird Barbie” who places Robbie’s character on her path; Issa Rae as the no-nonsense President Barbie; Alexandra Shipp as a kind and capable Doctor Barbie; Simu Liu as the trash-talking Ken who torments Gosling’s Ken; and America Ferrera in a crucial role as a Mattel employee. And we can’t forget Michael Cera as the one Allan, bumbling awkwardly in a sea of hunky Kens—although everyone else forgets Allan.

But while “Barbie” is wildly ambitious in an exciting way, it’s also frustratingly uneven at times. After coming on strong with wave after wave of zippy hilarity, the film drags in the middle as it presents its more serious themes. It’s impossible not to admire how Gerwig is taking a big swing with heady notions during the mindless blockbuster season, but she offers so many that the movie sometimes stops in its propulsive tracks to explain itself to us—and then explain those points again and again. The breezy, satirical edge she established off the top was actually a more effective method of conveying her ideas about the perils of toxic masculinity and entitlement and the power of female confidence and collaboration.

One character delivers a lengthy, third-act speech about the conundrum of being a woman and the contradictory standards to which society holds us. The middle-aged mom in me was nodding throughout in agreement, feeling seen and understood, as if this person knew me and was speaking directly to me. But the longtime film critic in me found this moment a preachy momentum killer—too heavy-handed, too on-the-nose, despite its many insights.

Still, if such a crowd-pleasing extravaganza can also offer some fodder for thoughtful conversations afterward, it’s accomplished several goals simultaneously. It’s like sneaking spinach into your kid’s brownies—or, in this case, blondies.

Available in theaters on July 21st.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Barbie (2023)

Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language.

114 minutes

Margot Robbie as Barbie

Ryan Gosling as Ken

America Ferrera as Gloria

Will Ferrell as Mattel CEO

Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie

Ariana Greenblatt as Sasha

Issa Rae as President Barbie

Rhea Perlman as Ruth Handler

Hari Nef as Doctor Barbie

Emma Mackey as Physicist Barbie

Alexandra Shipp as Writer Barbie

Michael Cera as Allan

Helen Mirren as Narrator

Simu Liu as Ken

Dua Lipa as Mermaid Barbie

John Cena as Kenmaid

Kingsley Ben-Adir as Ken

Scott Evans as Ken

Jamie Demetriou as Mattel Executive

Greta Gerwig
Noah Baumbach

Cinematographer

Rodrigo Prieto
Alexandre Desplat
Mark Ronson

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Barbie First Reviews: Hysterically Funny, Perfectly Cast, and Affectionately Crafted

Critics say greta gerwig's send-up of the iconic doll is a thoughtfully self-aware, laugh-out-loud comedy that benefits from a flawless margot robbie and a scene-stealing ryan gosling..

TAGGED AS: Comedy , First Reviews , movies

Here’s what critics are saying about Barbie :

Is the movie funny?

“ Barbie can be hysterically funny, with giant laugh-out-loud moments generously scattered throughout.” – Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com

“Often funny, occasionally very funny, but sometimes also somehow demure and inhibited, as if the urge to be funny can only be mean and satirical.” – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

“The entire screenplay is packed with winking one-liners, the kind that reward a rewatch.” – Devan Coggan, Entertainment Weekly

“One of the funniest comedies of the year.” – Ross Bonaime, Collider

Will fans of Greta Gerwig’s other movies enjoy Barbie?

“In some ways, Barbie builds on themes Gerwig explored in Lady Bird and Little Women .” – Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter

“ Barbie balances the incredibly pointed specificity of the jokes and relatability of Lady Bird , with the celebration of women and the ability to show a new angle of something we thought we knew like we saw with Gerwig’s take on Little Women .” – Ross Bonaime, Collider

“Never doubt Gerwig.” – Devan Coggan, Entertainment Weekly

(Photo by ©Warner Bros. Pictures)

How is the script?

“It’s almost shocking how much this duo gets away with in this script, and in certain moments, like a major speech by America Ferrera’s Gloria, who works at Mattel, it’s beautiful that some of these scenes can exist in a big-budget summer film like this.” – Ross Bonaime, Collider

“One character delivers a lengthy, third-act speech about the conundrum of being a woman and the contradictory standards to which society holds us… [and it’s] a preachy momentum killer — too heavy-handed, too on-the-nose, despite its many insights. ” – Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com

“The moments that aren’t just laughing at and with the crowd, however, are shoved into long, important monologues that, with each recitation, dull the impact of their message.” – Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter

Does it stick the landing?

“The second half of Barbie bogs down a bit.” – Michael Philips, Chicago Tribune

”It’s frustratingly uneven at times. After coming on strong with wave after wave of zippy hilarity, the film drags in the middle as it presents its more serious themes.” – Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com

How does it look?

“It’s a visual feast.” – Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com

“Highest honors to production designer Sarah Greenwood, costume designer Jacqueline Durran and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto.” – Michael Philips, Chicago Tribune

How is Margot Robbie as Barbie?

“She’s the perfect casting choice; it’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the role… Her performance is a joy to behold.” – Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com

“She gives an impressively transformative performance, moving her arms and joints like they’re actually made of plastic.” – Devan Coggan, Entertainment Weekly

“Anything Gerwig and Baumbach’s verbally dexterous script requires, from Barbie’s first teardrop to the final punchline, Robbie handles with unerring precision.” – Michael Philips, Chicago Tribune

“Robbie is simply incredible in the title role… She has often excelled in these types of roles where we see the power a woman truly has in her environment, but there might not be a better example of that than in Barbie .” – Ross Bonaime, Collider

What about Ryan Gosling’s Ken?

“For an actor who’s spent much of his career brooding moodily, here, he finally gets to tap into his inner Mousketeer.” – Devan Coggan, Entertainment Weekly

“Ryan Gosling is a consistent scene-stealer… He’s a total hoot.” – Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com

“Ken allows Gosling to go broad in a way that we’ve never seen him go before, and the result is charming, bizarre, and one of the most hysterical performances of the year.” – Ross Bonaime, Collider

Does it feel like a toy commercial?

“It’s Gerwig’s care and attention to detail that gives Barbie an actual point of view, elevating it beyond every other cynical, IP-driven cash grab.” – Devan Coggan, Entertainment Weekly

“ Barbie could’ve just been a commercial, but Gerwig makes this life of plastic into something truly fantastic.” – Ross Bonaime, Collider

“This movie is perhaps a giant two-hour commercial for a product, although no more so than The Lego Movie , yet Barbie doesn’t go for the comedy jugular anywhere near as gleefully as that.” – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

“The muddied politics and flat emotional landing of Barbie are signs that the picture ultimately serves a brand.” – Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter

Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in Barbie (2023)

Are there any big problems?

“If the film has a flaw, it’s that Barbie and Ken are so delightful that their real-world counterparts feel dull by comparison.” – Devan Coggan, Entertainment Weekly

“The only segment of Barbie that doesn’t work as well as it maybe should is the addition of Mattel into this narrative.” – Ross Bonaime, Collider

“Because the marketing campaign has been so clever and so ubiquitous, you may discover that you’ve already seen a fair amount of the movie’s inspired moments.” – Christy Lemire, RogerEbert.com

Who is the movie ultimately for?

“ Barbie works hard to entertain both 11-year-old girls and the parents who’ll bring them to the theater.” – Devan Coggan, Entertainment Weekly

“ Barbie doesn’t have that tiring air of trying to be everything to everybody. With luck, and a big opening, it might actually find the audience it deserves just by being its curious, creative, buoyant self.” – Michael Philips, Chicago Tribune

Barbie opens in theaters everywhere on July 21, 2023.

Thumbnail image by ©Warner Bros. Pictures

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‘Barbie’ Review: Out of the Box and On the Road

She’s in the driver’s seat, headed for uncharted territory (flat feet!). But there are limits to how much dimension even Greta Gerwig can give this branded material.

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Margot Robbie, dressed in head-to-toe pink, drives a pink convertible with Ryan Gosling, also in pink, in the back seat. They’re driving through the desert, with a sign reading Barbie Land behind them.

By Manohla Dargis

Can a doll with an ingratiating smile, impossible curves and boobs ready for liftoff be a feminist icon? That’s a question that swirls through Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” a live-action, you-go-girl fantasia about the world’s most famous doll. For more than half a century, Barbie has been, by turns, celebrated as a font of girlhood pleasure and play, and rebuked as an instrument of toxic gender norms and consumerist ideals of femininity. If Barbie has been a culture-war hot spot for about as long as it’s been on the shelves, it’s because the doll perfectly encapsulates changing ideas about girls and women: our Barbies, ourselves.

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Gerwig carves a comic pathway into these representational thickets partly by means of mythology. In outline, the movie offers a savvy, updated riff on the Greek myth of Pygmalion, which has inspired myriad stories about men and the women they invent. In the original, a male sculptor creates and falls in love with a beautiful statue; in George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion” and in the Lerner-Loewe musical “My Fair Lady,” she’s a Cockney flower girl. In “Barbie,” by contrast, it’s the imaginations of the girls and women who play with the doll that give it something like life, a fitting shift for a movie that takes sisterhood as a starting point.

These imaginers first and foremost include Gerwig herself. The movie opens with a prelude that parodies the “dawn of man” sequence in “2001: A Space Odyssey” (with girls, not ape-men), and then shifts to Barbie Land, a kaleidoscopic wonderland. There, Gerwig sets the scene and tone with Barbie (Margot Robbie) — who calls herself stereotypical Barbie — soon floating out of her Dreamhouse, as if she were being lifted by a giant invisible hand. It’s a witty auteurist flourish. The Mattel brand looms large here, but Gerwig, whose directorial command is so fluent she seems born to filmmaking, is announcing that she’s in control.

‘Barbie’ | Anatomy of a Scene

Greta gerwig, the co-writer and director of “barbie,” narrates this musical sequence, including ryan gosling’s performance of the song “i’m just ken.”.

“My name is Greta Gerwig, and I am the co-writer and director of ‘Barbie.’” “(SINGING) I’m just Ken. Anywhere else, I’d be a ten.” “The thing that I can say most about this sequence is that this was the thing that I most knew what I wanted it to be, and no one else knew what I wanted it to be. Every time I look at this, it’s just the ridiculousness of how we did it, which is they’re obviously arriving on these pedalos on a beach that has no water. It’s a solid mass with these waves that are sculptures. And I had everyone in this scene pretend to be moving in slow motion except for Ryan, who’s singing. And I think I got four takes into it, and I thought, this just — is this so ridiculous that I’m doing pretend slow motion? But then I thought, I think I just have to commit. Now I’ve done it. There’s nothing else I can do. My stunt coordinator, Roy Taylor, who’s a brilliant, brilliant person, and he worked with my choreographer, Jenny White, because I wanted all the fighting to be somewhere between dancing and a kind of vaudevillian ridiculousness of a Buster Keaton or a Charlie Chaplin. I love that kind of physical comedy. So you see men tangoing in the background in addition to fighting. Because they’re Kens, they’re children. It all sort of goes together.” “Ah!” “Ah! Ah!” “Then we have our Barbies, who are sort of watching with their pink boilersuits, which I think Jacqueline Durran, who is the costume designer, she did the pink boilersuits because I wore boilersuits every day. And she was like, I’ve decided what the Barbies will wear when they’re taking back Barbieland. And I cried when I saw it because I was like, oh, it’s a tribute to me. So much of this sequence is the song that Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt wrote, which was not in the script. But I did ask them because they were writing the song that became Dua Lipa’s ‘Dance the Night.’ I said we need a Ken song, and I think it goes in the battle. And then they wrote this song from the perspective of Ken. And then I said, Ryan, are you up for singing this? And he said yes, ultimately. But initially, I don’t know. I think he was like, you never said anything about this at the beginning. But I think they sent me 30 seconds of an idea for the song, that I just loved. And then I was like, Can you make it 11 minutes long? Because I want it to go through this whole sequence. And then this part, this dream ballet part, Sarah Greenwood, who is a production designer, and Katie Spencer built this stage to echo the dream ballet stage from ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ because I love that movie. And that has one of the best dream ballets of all time because they have a dream ballet that is inside of another dream ballet, which, I think, when people are like, will anyone understand this? I was like, yes. There is a context for this. They’ll grasp it. And every Ken, every Barbie, is a dancer the whole time. And then I chose all the actors, too, because they were good dancers. Jenny White, who was my choreographer, she and I looked at a lot of different musicals, different dream ballets. But Busby Berkeley was a huge reference.” “(SINGING) I’m just Ken. Anywhere else, I’d be a ten.” “I kind of love that ‘we’re putting on a show’ element of this movie, which is very connected to theater and also the pleasure of making something in a childlike way. And we started with dance rehearsals, and I think it was a good way to put everybody in that mindset of it’s not about perfection. It’s about this joy. And they obviously embodied that. In a way, you want the audience to walk out and say, I’d like to go make something. I want to go play. I want to go set something up. I want to do a performance. And that’s how I felt when I watched a lot of movies when I was a kid, or theater. I instantly was like, I’m going to organize my own version of ‘Starlight Express’ right now.” “(SINGING) Nobody else Nobody else I’m just Ken.”

Written by Gerwig and her partner, Noah Baumbach, the movie introduces Barbie on yet another perfect day in Barbie Land, in which dolls played by humans exist in what resembles a toyland gated community. There, framed by a painted mountain range, Barbie and a diverse group of other Barbies rule, living in homes with few exterior walls. With their flat roofs, clean lines and pink décor — a spherical TV, Eero Saarinen-style tulip table and chairs — the overarching look evokes the era when Barbie first hit the market. It’s very Palm Springs circa 1960, an aesthetic that could be called bubble-gum midcentury modern.

Gerwig has fun in Barbie Land, and in her role as a friendly playmate, she works hard to ensure you do too. She takes you for a leisurely spin, cranks the tunes, stages some old-school, Hollywood-style musical numbers and brings in those eternal sidekicks, the Kens (with a scene-stealing Ryan Gosling chief among them). The production design (Sarah Greenwood) and costumes (Jacqueline Durran) offer ticklish pleasure but also underscore this place’s artificiality. Barbie, et al., are of our world and not, existing in a plasticky paradise that proves less hospitable when she begins having un-Barbie thoughts and experiences: She thinks of death, and then her feet, which are molded to fit high heels, go flat.

This change to Barbie’s body is played for laughs — the other Barbies are horrified — but it’s crucial to the plot and to Gerwig’s intentions. Once Barbie’s feet touch the ground, she seeks advice from a misfit version of the doll (the invaluable Kate McKinnon), who prescribes Birkenstocks and a trip to the real world. Soon, Barbie — with Ken riding shotgun — journeys into something like reality; that they land in Los Angeles reads like a puckish joke. There, Barbie is astonished to discover sexism, and Ken is delighted to discover patriarchy, contrapuntal revelations that generate further comedy and something like enlightenment.

Gerwig handles the transition between realms smoothly, but even in this bouncy, happy movie, reality proves a bummer. It’s amusing when Barbie points out a billboard filled with women, mistaking them for the Supreme Court because that’s what the court looks like in Barbie Land, just with more pink. She learns how wrong she was, which is to Gerwig’s point. But the weight of our world, emblematized at least for this viewer by the real Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade , proves unbearably heavy. However politically sharp, the gag is an unpleasant reminder of all the profoundly unfunny ways in which this world, with its visible and invisible hands, tries to control women, putting them into little boxes.

Mattel has long tried to reconcile Barbie with the real world. The toy’s origins lie with Ruth Handler, a founder of Mattel who wanted to make a doll for girls like her daughter, Barbara. Handler found her inspiration in Europe with an adult-looking German doll called Bild Lilli that Mattel reconfigured. Some buyers pushed back: “The idea of a doll with breasts was not received well,” Handler said in a 1994 Lilith magazine interview.

Barbie’s breasts and the rest of her continued to generate criticism, including from physicians who treat body dysmorphia . In recent years, Mattel has tried to make the doll more culturally relevant, adding careers and not just new merch to its product portfolio. “When a girl plays with Barbie she imagines everything she can become,” a 2015 Mattel ad promised during a period of sluggish sales. Its Fashionistas line introduced new facial shapes, eye colors and skin tones, followed by petite, curvy and tall versions, a diversity that has paid off . In 2019, Mattel announced that this Barbie movie was going forward with Robbie as the star.

As a performer, Robbie always pops onscreen, and her turn here as a classic blond bombshell who has more going on than that sexist stereotype suggests is charming and subtly phased; you can see the light turn on gradually behind her eyes. Like America Ferrera’s sympathetic Mattel employee, Robbie warms the movie, expanding and deepening its emotions. That’s particularly necessary because Ken’s comic obtuseness and arc — as well as Gosling’s deadpan and boy-band dance moves — recurrently draw attention away from the actress and her character. However narratively motivated, this upstaging of Barbie effectively suggests that only the Kens of the world need their consciousness raised.

The real world may initially bewilder Barbie, but she figures it out. That’s just what you’d expect given that Mattel partnered with Warner Bros. for this movie and is banking big on it . For her part, Gerwig figures it out by vibing on joy, tapping into nostalgia, showcasing her large cast (Will Ferrell, Issa Rae, Simu Liu, Dua Lipa, Helen Mirren, Michael Cera, etc.) and, for the most part, dodging the thorny contradictions and the criticisms that cling to the doll. And while Gerwig does slip in a few glints of critique — as when a teenage girl accuses Barbie of promoting consumerism, shortly before she pals up with our heroine — these feel more like mere winks at the adults in the audience than anything else.

Like “Air,” Ben Affleck’s recent movie about how Nike signed Michael Jordan, as well as other entertainments tethered to their consumer subjects, “Barbie” can only push so hard. These movies can’t damage the goods, though I’m not sure most viewers would want that; our brands, ourselves, after all. That said, Gerwig does much within the material’s inherently commercial parameters, though it isn’t until the finale — capped by a sharply funny, philosophically expansive last line — that you see the “Barbie” that could have been. Gerwig’s talents are one of this movie’s pleasures, and I expect that they’ll be wholly on display in her next one — I just hope that this time it will be a house of her own wildest dreams.

Barbie Rated PG-13 for playful fighting and peril. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. In theaters.

Audio produced by Kate Winslett .

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic of The Times, which she joined in 2004. She has an M.A. in cinema studies from New York University, and her work has been anthologized in several books. More about Manohla Dargis

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‘Barbie’ May Be the Most Subversive Blockbuster of the 21st Century

By David Fear

It’s tough to sell a decades-old doll and actively make you question why you’d still buy a toy that comes with so much baggage. (Metaphorically speaking, of course — literal baggage sold separately.) The makers of Barbie know this. They know that you know that it’s an attempt by Mattel to turn their flagship blonde bombshell into a bona fide intellectual property, coming to a multiplex near you courtesy of Warner Bros. And they’re also well aware that the announcement that Greta Gerwig would be co-writing and directing this movie about everyone’s favorite tiny, leggy bearer of impossible beauty standards suddenly transformed it from “dual corporate cash-in” to “dual corporate cash-in with a very high probability of wit, irony, and someone quoting Betty Friedan and/or Rebecca Walker.”

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Every morning, Barbie (Robbie) wakes up in her beautiful, open-faced mansion, waves to the legion of other Barbies in their beautiful, open-faced Barbieland mansions, and greets the day with a smile. Early afternoons are reserved for listening to President Barbie ( Issa Rae ) make executive decisions, or watching a Barbie journalist win a Barbie Pulitzer, or cheering a Barbie Supreme Court that lays down the law for the good of all Barbiekind. Late afternoons are for going to the beach, where Ken (Gosling) endlessly competes for Barbie’s affections against Ken (Simu Liu) and Ken (Kingsley Ben-Adir), among other Kens. Nighttime is for extravagantly choreographed disco-dance parties , DJ-ed by none other than Barbie (Hari Nef), and — much to Ken’s dismay — all-girl sleepovers. Eventually, the cardboard backdrop will rotate from moon to sun, and it’s time for yet another day in utopia.

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Once in our world, Barbie will encounter sexual harassment, gender inequity, the benefits of crying, the CEO of Mattel ( Will Ferrell ) and the mother (America Ferrara) and daughter (Ariana Greenblatt) who’ve introduced such morbid thoughts into her brain. Ken will discover horses, Hummer SUVs, and toxic masculinity . She returns with her new human friends to Barbieland in a state of dazed enlightenment. He comes back as a full-blown Kencel, spreading a gospel of full-frontal dude-ity.

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Critical thinking isn’t mind corruption, of course. Nor is pointing out that you can love something and recognize that it’s flawed or has become inflammatory over time, then striving to fix it. It’s definitely not a bad thing to turn a potential franchise, whether built on a line of dolls or not, into something that refuses to dumb itself down or pander to the lowest common denominator. And the victory that is Gerwig, Robbie, and Gosling — along with a supporting cast and crew that revel in the idea of joining a benefic Barbie party — slipping in heady notions about sexualization, capitalism, social devolution, human rights and self-empowerment, under the guise of a lucrative, brand-extending trip down memory lane? That’s enough to make you giddy. We weren’t kidding about the “subversive” part above; ditto the “blockbuster.” A big movie can still have big ideas in 2023. Even a Barbie movie. Especially a Barbie movie.

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‘Barbie’ Review: Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling Compete for Control of High-Concept Living Doll Comedy

Greta Gerwig loads plenty of food for thought in a hot pink pop fantasia, poking fun at patriarchy and corporate parent Mattel in her treatment of the iconic “girls can do anything” doll.

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Check out the brain on Barbie ! Sure, she’s just a doll, but that doesn’t mean she has to be an airhead. Therein lies “Lady Bird” director Greta Gerwig ’s inspired, 21st-century solution to bringing one of America’s most iconic playthings to life on the big screen. Combine that with the casting of Margot Robbie in the title role, and “Barbie” is already starting out on the right, perfectly arched foot. So what if this high-concept comedy falls a bit flat in the final stretch?

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Barbie Land, as it’s called, is an inherently hilarious alternate reality modeled on the dream that Mattel has been selling American girls since the doll was introduced in 1959. It looks a lot like the one they’ve seen in countless commercials, where flamingo-bright Barbie Dreamhouses inspire envy as a diverse collection of perky, positive-minded dolls smile and wave at one another (represented here by such avatars as Alexandra Shipp and Dua Lipa, Issa Rae and Ritu Aryu, Hari Nef and Sharon Rooney). It’s a wild pop-art space, all but exploding with supersaturated color, where the doll heads appear lower contrast and backlit, obliging us to squint to make out the actors’ faces.

You half-expect to see a giant hand reach in from the sky to interact with these lifelike toys, but that’s not how it works. Instead, Gerwig enlists Helen Mirren as narrator to lay out the rules, pausing now and then to spotlight specific costumes, interject vintage TV spots or cast shade on discontinued products — such as Growing Up Skipper, with her inflatable bust; pregnant Midge; or questionable-taste offerings like Sugar Daddy and Tanner, a flocked dog that poops plastic pellets.

Although Robbie’s blond-haired, fair-skinned Stereotypical Barbie seems to possess some abstract notion of herself as a toy, there’s a major disconnect between inventor Ruth Handler’s best intentions and the state of things in the Real World (where the movie spends roughly half its time): “Thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved,” Mirren sarcastically summarizes. One evening, in the middle of a dance party, Stereotypical Barbie blurts out, “You guys ever think about dying?” The next morning, she’s horrified to find her feet have flattened and a patch of cellulite has appeared. What could be threatening her near-perfect physique?

The answer lies in the Real World, where Barbie and Ken (Gosling’s Ken, not the ones played by Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, John Cena and others) steer her pink Corvette, emerging at Venice Beach wearing matching fluorescent Hot Skatin’ ensembles. Yes, “Barbie” is one of those movies, like “The Smurfs” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” where imaginary characters cross over to modern-day America — just infinitely more clever. Instead of using the premise as a setup for slapstick, Gerwig shows Barbie defending herself when some random guy slaps her butt, getting a knuckle sandwich in return.

At the same time Barbie is experiencing her rude awakening, Ken’s busy filling his empty head with all the possibilities that “patriarchy” entails. In Barbie Land, Ken’s job is a deliberately ill-defined afterthought (basically, just “beach”), whereas in the Real World, dudes rule — an idea he takes back to Barbie Land with pointedly absurd results, brainwashing all the women into behaving like obedient housewives. The film’s draggier second half gets both silly and unabashedly strident, as Stereotypical Barbie seeks help from Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), a damaged-goods doll with singed hair and messed-up makeup who serves as this girly-girl world’s Morpheus-like sage.

It’s upsetting (in a useful way) to see Barbie confronted with the overnight impact of rampant patriarchy, a concept that has rarely looked more off-putting than the frat-boy fantasy caricatured here. Think of it as the misogynist alternative marketed by old-school beer commercials, the polar opposite of Mattel’s mid-’80s “We girls can do anything. Right, Barbie?” campaign. While the Barbies plot to take back the government, Gerwig gives all the Ken dolls an over-the-top musical number, “I’m Just Ken,” which is so amusingly self-involved it risks subverting the very point the movie’s trying to make. If “Barbie” is all about centering and celebrating women, why let Ken steal the show?

Gosling is a good sport to play the slightly predatory, sartorially helpless pretty boy, as the spray-tanned ex-Mouseketeer parodies his popular “hey girl” persona, flexing both his muscles and a range of facial expressions all but lacking from his recent work. If Robbie’s Barbie sets an impossibly high bar for young women, then Gosling’s Ken reps an equally formidable male model, with his chiseled abs and cheekbones.

That factor hasn’t escaped Gerwig, who sets out to disrupt such unattainable aesthetic standards, calling out ways the doll’s idealized design can harm self-esteem and encourage eating disorders. She crams most of that critique into a single motormouthed monologue, which drew cheers at the premiere and which, on closer inspection, contains not a single controversial idea. In the end, the trouble with “Barbie” isn’t that it goes too far, but that it stops short, building to a conceptual scene between Barbie and her Creator (Rhea Perlman) that inadvertently underscores one of the movie’s few failings: It’s an intellectual experience, not an emotional one, grounded largely in audience nostalgia.

It’s kind of perfect that “Barbie” is opening opposite Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” since Gerwig’s girl-power blockbuster offers a neon-pink form of inception all its own, planting positive examples of female potential for future generations. Meanwhile, by showing a sense of humor about the brand’s past stumbles, it gives us permission to challenge what Barbie represents — not at all what you’d expect from a feature-length toy commercial.

Reviewed at Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, July 9, 2023. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 114 MIN.

Production: A Warner Bros. Pictures release and presentation of a Heyday Films, LuckyChap Entertainment, NB/GG Pictures, Mattel production. Producers: David Heyman, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, Robbie Brenner. Executive producers: Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach, Ynon Kreiz, Richard Dickson, Michael Sharp, Josey McNamara, Courtenay Valenti, Toby Emmerich, Cate Adams.
Crew: Director: Great Gerwig. Screenplay: Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach, based on Barbie by Mattel. Camera: Greig Fraser. Editor: Rodrigo Prieto. Music: Nick Houy.
With: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, Will Ferrell, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt, Ana Cruz Kayne, Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, Alexandra Shipp, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, Ncuti Gatwa, Scott Evans, Jamie Demetriou, Connor Swindells, Sharon Rooney, Nicola Coughlan, Ritu Arya, Dua Lipa, Helen Mirren

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Margot Robbie, as Barbie, in a world of pink.

Barbie review – a riotous, candy-coloured feminist fable

Barbie takes a ride from her dream house to reality as Little Women writer-director Greta Gerwig takes another cultural icon and lovingly subverts it

W riter-director Greta Gerwig’s cinematic reinvention of Mattel’s most (in)famous toy comes on like a sugar-rush mashup of Pixar’s Toy Story 2 , Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio , the cult live-action feature Josie and the Pussycats and the Roger Ebert-scripted exploitation romp Beyond the Valley of the Dolls . It’s a riotously entertaining candy-coloured feminist fable that manages simultaneously to celebrate, satirise and deconstruct its happy-plastic subject. Audiences will be delighted. Mattel should be ecstatic.

After a heavily trailered 2001 -parody opening, we move to a pastel pink haven in which, “thanks to Barbie , all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved”. This is Barbieland – a fantasy world in which big-haired dolls can be anything (lawyers, doctors, physicists, presidents), thereby inspiring equivalent feminine achievement out there in the “real world”. (“We fixed everything so all women in the real world are happy and powerful!”)

Like a dreamy version of the nightmarish Being John Malkovich , everyone here is Barbie. Except the men, who are just Ken. Or Allan (a hapless Michael Cera ). But mainly just Ken – an appendage without an appendage. At the centre of all this self-referential fluff is producer-star Margot Robbie’s “Stereotypical Barbie” – a role so perfect that when Helen Mirren’s narrator makes a sardonic gag about the casting, no one minds. So it comes as a surprise when this habitually smiley creature finds herself haunted by thoughts of sadness, anxiety and death. Worse still, she develops flat feet and (whisper it!) cellulite – two horsemen of the Barbie apocalypse.

A visit to Kate McKinnon’s “Weird Barbie” (“she was played with too hard ”) reveals that a wormhole has opened between this world and the next. Now, like Amy Adams in Enchanted , our fairytale heroine must take a ride to reality, accompanied by Stowaway Ken (Ryan Gosling), who promptly discovers The Patriarchy, in which men (and horses) are in charge!

Ryan Gosling’s ‘deliciously vacuous’ Ken.

Meanwhile at Mattel HQ, Will Ferrell is reprising his Lego Movie role as the adult quasher of childish dreams, demanding that Barbie get “back in the box”. But by now, Barbie has met gothy teen Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), who tells her that “you’ve been making women feel bad about themselves since you were invented”, adding; “You set the feminist movement back 50 years, you fascist!” Far from saving the world, Barbie seems to have helped create a dystopia in which “men look at me like an object” and “everyone hates women!”.

There’s something of the rebellious spirit of Todd Haynes’s 1988 cult classic Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story about Gerwig’s deceptively upbeat blockbuster. Haynes’s zero-budget underground masterpiece (which has never had an official release) used increasingly disfigured Barbie dolls to tell the tragic story of a talented musician whose life was overshadowed by anorexia. Yet in Gerwig’s multiplex-friendly spectacular, this spectre of unrealisable expectation is slyly reconfigured into a weirdly liberating parable about being whatever (size, profession, attitude) you want to be – whether Ken and The Patriarchy like it or not.

There are jokes about the red pill from The Matrix , the snow globe from Citizen Kane , the male “meaning” of Coppola’s The Godfather , and fanboyish emotional overinvestment in Zack Snyder’s director’s cut of Justice League . Yet Barbie is never anything less than inclusive – meaning that young(ish) fans raised on such animated staples as Barbie in the Nutcracker and Barbie of Swan Lake will find as much to cheer about as wizened old critics looking for smart film references. Like her terrific 2019 adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women , Gerwig’s latest has no intention of ditching its source material’s core audience, even while allowing those with more snooty cinephile tastes to excuse their enjoyment of her film by comparing it with canonical works.

A smart script, co-written with Noah Baumbach , reminds us of Mattel’s constant attempts to reinvent their product (Earring Magic Ken;Palm Beach Sugar Daddy; inflatable breasts Skipper – yes, really ) and their embarrassed discontinuation of models that incurred consumer/retailer ire. It all culminates in an entertainingly feisty dismantling of male power (“He took your home; he brainwashed your friends; he wants to control the government”), pepped up by Gosling’s deliciously vacuous apex-Ken performance and carried shoulder-high by Robbie, without whom this audacious flim-flam could well have fallen flat on its face. A moving cameo by Rhea Perlman as the creator of all this madness lends a touch of heartfelt pathos. But it’s Robbie and Gerwig (along with the production designers and songwriters) who make this fizz, ensuring that everything is awesome, even when it isn’t.

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Barbie review: Welcome to Greta Gerwig's fiercely funny, feminist Dreamhouse

The Barbie movie could’ve been another forgettable, IP-driven cash grab. Instead, the director of Little Women and Lady Bird has crafted a neon pink delight.

Devan Coggan (rhymes with seven slogan) is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly. Most of her personality is just John Mulaney quotes and Lord of the Rings references.

When Warner Bros. announced plans to launch a Barbie movie, the entire premise sounded a bit like a game of Hollywood Mad Libs gone wrong: Quick, name a beloved indie director ( Greta Gerwig !), an unadapted piece of intellectual property (Barbie dolls!), and an adjective (neon pink!). Every new piece of information that trickled out on the (lengthy) press tour seemed stranger than the last. Gerwig ( Lady Bird , Little Women ) cited 2001: A Space Odyssey and Gene Kelly musicals as her biggest inspirations. Elaborate dance numbers were teased. Ryan Gosling gave a lot of quotes about something called " Kenergy ." What actually was this movie, and could it possibly live up to all that hot pink buzz?

The verdict? Never doubt Gerwig. The Oscar-nominated filmmaker has crafted a fierce, funny, and deeply feminist adventure that dares you to laugh and cry, even if you're made of plastic. It's certainly the only summer blockbuster to pair insightful criticisms of the wage gap with goofy gags about Kens threatening to "beach" each other off.

The film (in theaters this Friday) whisks viewers away to Barbie Land, a candy-colored toy box wonderland of endless sunshine. It's there that our titular heroine ( Margot Robbie ) spends her days, each just as magical and neon as the one before. There are always other Barbies to party with — including Doctor Barbie ( Hari Nef ), President Barbie ( Issa Rae ), and Mermaid Barbie ( Dua Lipa ) — as well as an endless supply of devoted Kens, led by Gosling's frequently shirtless boy-toy. It's a plastic paradise for Robbie's Stereotypical Barbie, the type of doll that immediately comes to mind when you think of Barbie.

But something's gone wrong. Her Malibu Dreamhouse malfunctions; her mind is clouded by un-Barbie-like thoughts of death; and her perfectly arched feet now fall flat on the floor. So, our heroine sets out to seek some answers from Barbie Land's pseudo mystic, Weird Barbie ( Kate McKinnon ), who says a rift has opened up between their world and the real world, and she must brave the long trek to Los Angeles to find the human playing with her doll to remedy the situation. You bet her ever-loyal Ken (Gosling) is coming along for the ride.

Once Barbie and Ken begin roller-blading around L.A., however, they both realize that they've essentially entered a mirror dimension. Where are the female presidents, the CEOs, the astronauts? Barbie was supposed to empower young girls to dream big, but she hasn't had the feminist effect she anticipated — and in fact, she might have made things worse. Gerwig tackles the doll's complicated legacy head on, exploring how Barbie's reputation here isn't one of leadership or creativity but of corporatized objectification. Barbie herself is horrified, facing crude comments and misogyny for the first time in her (plastic) life. But to Ken, this newfound idea of patriarchy is intoxicating, and he quickly enters a spiral of masculinity, luxuriating in trucks, cowboy hats, and the addictive thrill of power.

Gosling has already scored praise for his earnest himbo performance, and in truth, he steals the show. For an actor who's spent much of his career brooding moodily (see: Blade Runner 2049 , Drive , First Man ), here, he finally gets to tap into his inner Mouseketeer , dramatically draping himself at Barbie's feet or breaking into a shirtless power ballad called "I'm Just Ken." His Ken has very little going on inside his brain, but his heart is brimming with emotion: love and admiration for Barbie, a longing for masculine validation, and a wide-eyed curiosity about the world around him.

Robbie still remains the real star of Barbie . Physically, the blonde Australian actress already looks like she stepped out of a Mattel box (something the film itself plays on during one particular gag), but she gives an impressively transformative performance, moving her arms and joints like they're actually made of plastic. Robbie has brought a manic physicality to previous films including Babylon and Birds of Prey , but she now embraces physical comedy to the max. (At one point, she face-plants on the floor, limbs askew like a toy dropped by a toddler.) As Barbie begins to discover more about the real world, Robbie's performance gradually shifts to become more human. One of the most moving moments comes about halfway through the film, as Barbie perches quietly on a park bench, silently observing the humans around her.

If the film has a flaw, it's that Barbie and Ken are so delightful that their real-world counterparts feel dull by comparison. America Ferrera and Ariana Greenblatt play a frazzled mother and her sardonic teen daughter, who've drifted apart over time. Ferrera fills her days at her boring Mattel office job by doodling alternative Barbies, ones that are plagued by cellulite or haunted by thoughts of death. Her feminist daughter is dismissive of everything Barbie represents, dressing down Robbie with a pointed sneer. Ferrera admirably delivers one of the film's biggest emotional speeches, but surprisingly, the human characters never feel quite as lived-in as their plastic doll companions.

Still, Barbie works hard to entertain both 11-year-old girls and the parents who'll bring them to the theater. Gerwig co-wrote the script with her partner and longtime collaborator Noah Baumbach , and the entire screenplay is packed with winking one-liners, the kind that reward a rewatch. The fear is that Hollywood will learn the wrong message from Barbie, rushing to green-light films about every toy gathering dust on a kid's playroom floor. (What's next, The Funko Pop Movie? Furby: Fully Loaded? We already have a Bobbleheads movie , so maybe we're already there.) But it's Gerwig's care and attention to detail that gives Barbie an actual point of view , elevating it beyond every other cynical, IP-driven cash grab. Turns out that life in plastic really can be fantastic. Grade: A-

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Movie Review: She’s Perfect Barbie. He’s Scene-Stealing Ken. Their life in plastic looks fantastic

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ryan Gosling, left, and Margot Robbie in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

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This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Margot Robbie in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Kingsley Ben-Adir, from left, Ryan Gosling and Ncuti Gatwa in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP).

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Kate McKinnon in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows, from left, Emma Mackey, Simu Liu, Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and Kingsley Ben-Adir in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Issa Rae, from left, Scott Evans, Simu Liu, Emma Mackey and Ncuti Gatwa in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Margot Robbie, from left, Alexandra Shipp, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt and America Ferrera in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Simu Liu in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

For someone who’s 11.5 inches tall and weighs under 8 ounces, poor Barbie’s had to carry an awfully heavy load over the years on that slender, plastic back of hers.

Welcomed as a trailblazer in 1959 — An adult doll! With actual breasts! — she was nonetheless branded an anti-feminist a decade later when women’s rights marchers chanted “I Am Not a Barbie Doll,” referring to her unrealistic body type (and perhaps ignoring the fact that she was single, a homeowner and a career woman).

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Margot Robbie in a scene from "Barbie." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

As years went by, Barbie had her hits (adopting a more inclusive body type, running for president) and misses (exclaiming “Math class is TOUGH!” — ouch). Through it all, this lightning rod in tiny pink heels remained uniquely talented at reinventing herself.

Which is why it makes sense that now, writer-director Greta Gerwig takes Barbie in more than one direction – in every direction, really – in her brash, clever, idea-packed (if ultimately TOO packed) and most of all, eye-poppingly lovely “Barbie,” the brand’s first live action movie.

Is it a celebratory homage to Barbie and her history? Yes. Also a cutting critique, and biting satire? Yes, too. The film is co-produced by Mattel, and they must have felt skittish about some elements — perhaps not Will Ferrell’s reliably buffoonish Mattel CEO, but a far more serious scene where a young girl accuses Barbie of making girls feel bad about themselves. The movie’s also about gender dynamics, mothers and daughters, insidious sexism ... and more.

But the neatest trick is how “Barbie,” starring a pitch-perfect Margot Robbie — and after a minute you’ll never be able to imagine anyone else doing it — can simultaneously and smoothly both mock and admire its source material. Gerwig deftly threads that needle, even if the film sags in its second half under the weight of its many ideas and some less-than-developed character arcs.

In any case, boy — or should we say, girl — life in plastic looks fantastic.

A head-spinning opening credits sequence begins with a Barbie history lesson, narrated by Helen Mirren. Then it’s off to Barbie Land, where Barbie lives in her flamingo-pink Dreamhouse, surrounded by other Barbies in theirs.

Other Barbies? Well, we know how many Barbie versions exist on store shelves, and Gerwig and her writing (and life) partner Noah Baumbach take this one step further: If they’re all Barbies, that means “Barbie” is all of THEM. There’s no one Barbie — although Robbie, who plays Stereotypical Barbie (and also produced the film), is the focal point.

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Margot Robbie, from left, Alexandra Shipp, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt and America Ferrera in a scene from "Barbie." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

And every day’s perfect for Stereotypical Barbie, who wakes in her heart-shaped bed, waves to neighbor Barbies, and heads to the shower, which is dry (there’s no actual water, wind, sun or gravity in Barbie Land.) Her day’s outfit awaits, perhaps a Chanel number, protected by shiny plastic as in a Barbie box. Then she swoops down her hot pink slide to the pool-with-no-water. The sky above is painted blue, the mountains purple. Gerwig was inspired by old soundstage musicals. Architectural Digest even did a piece on the house.

Equally stunning is “Beach” — a place, and also the name of Ken’s career. (Sorry Ken, we should have mentioned you before the 11th paragraph, but we had so much to say about Barbie). The beach is also apparently where Ken lives, because, have you ever heard of Ken’s house? In any case, a very blond Ryan Gosling gleefully chews the scenery — or, inhales it — and is never better than when conveying Ken’s forced enthusiasm with an edge of desperation plus a sprinkle of menace. Also, when dancing.

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Kingsley Ben-Adir, from left, Ryan Gosling and Ncuti Gatwa in a scene from "Barbie." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP).

Speaking of dancing, one night at Barbie’s “giant blowout party,” she suddenly starts thinking about … death. The next morning she has bad breath, and OMG, her famously arched feet go flat! Also gravity happens, so she falls off her house.

After consulting with Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon — who else?) Barbie heads to LA to solve a tear in the boundary between Real World and Barbie Land, singing the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine,” her signature road song. (The film’s high-powered soundtrack features Dua Lipa, Nicki Minaj, HAIM, Lizzo, Billie Eilish, and many others.) There, she and Ken encounter a world with a wrinkle: Men have the upper hand. No all-female Supreme Court here! Hmm, thinks Ken.

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Kate McKinnon in a scene from "Barbie." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

On the run from Mattel, Barbie encounters Gloria (America Ferrera), mother of tween Sasha, who has mixed feelings about Barbie, not to mention Mom. In her spare time, Gloria sketches ideas for new Barbies — as in Thoughts of Impending Death Barbie (not to be confused with Depression Barbie.) Gloria helps rescue Barbie and also proves of crucial help when they later discover that Ken and the other Kens — Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir and others — are up to no good.

There’s so much more, and we’re over our word limit — which may just be the feeling Gerwig had when trying to fit her ideas under two hours. And all her actors: It would’ve been great to see more Issa Rae as President Barbie, Emerald Fennell as pregnant, discontinued Midge, and Michael Cera as Allan-who-can-wear-Ken’s-clothes. In any case, the snappy pace starts to lag.

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows, from left, Emma Mackey, Simu Liu, Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and Kingsley Ben-Adir in a scene from "Barbie." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

Not to discount Ferrera’s eloquent monologue, in which Gloria educates newly conscious Barbie about the landmines women face trying to navigate social rules that don’t seem to apply to men, like how to be a mom and also a professional, the need to be “thin” but call it “healthy,” and other things.

And if, Gloria concludes, all this is true for a doll just trying to represent a woman ... what does that mean for the rest of us? Which is, perhaps, the essential Barbie dilemma — she’s always been judged by rather impossible standards.

Nevertheless, she persists. All 11.5 inches of her. And now she’s Movie Star Barbie.

“Barbie,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release, has been rated PG-13 “for suggestive references and brief language.” Running time: 114 minutes. Three stars out of four.

MPAA definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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I Can’t Get Kenough Of These Barbie Posters Created From 1-Star Reviews By Pissed Off Men

Laura Masia

But like with any film, there will always be people who aren’t fans. In Barbie ‘s case, there really are some people, mainly men, who are not impressed by the feminist stylings of Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie . In fact, they feel so strongly about their opinions that they decided to log on to the movie review social media site Letterboxd to leave some one-star reviews on the film. Thankfully, one Twitter (now rebranded as X) user @TechnicallyRon decided to immortalise these shitty opinions forever in the perfect way – making their reviews into Barbie movie posters.

“A pink acid trip that feels like being slapped by lots of confusingly attractive people,” one user wrote like that’s actually a bad thing.

“They won’t be happy until we’re all gay,” said another, and they’re absolutely correct. The plan is in motion as we speak.

Another wrote: “The feminist agenda will kill us all.” Hard disagree on that one, champ, but I presume that it took all three brain cells working together really hard to come out with that statement after watching a film about dolls.

“An alienating, dangerous and perverse film,” a fourth Letterboxd user wrote alongside their one-star rating. Something tells me this fourth person sadly related with the Ken’s agenda a little too much. I have so many questions I want to ask them. Do you feel marginalised as a man? Do you have a soft spot for Matchbox 20’s anthem “Push”? Do you have a weird anthropomorphic relationship with horses?

Unlike my snide little comments, @TechnicallyRon decided to take the high road, elegantly taking the piss at these reviews. Let’s have a closer look at his handiwork, shall we?

Aren’t they beautiful? I’ve got to be honest, these lines would work on me. I’d see a film with the tagline, “They won’t be happy until we are all gay,” in a fkn heartbeat.

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Barbie is a visually dazzling comedy whose meta humor is smartly complemented by subversive storytelling.

Clever, funny, and poignant, Barbie is an entertaining movie with a great overall message.

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Barbie Review: An Uproarious, Existential Adventure And One Of The Best Of The Year

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movie being reviewed here wouldn't exist.

Greta Gerwig is officially 3/3 with directorial features and despite the highly-recognizable IP at the center of "Barbie," absolutely no other director could have pulled off the hat trick of delivering an extravagant celebration of golden age musicals , intellectual musings on gender theory, and a moving embrace of femininity quite like her. Co-written with Noah Baumbach, "Barbie" takes a glittery pink heel to the throat of anyone that dared to think Gerwig would deliver anything less than greatness, and encompasses the complicated and wonderful legacy of an American institution with over 60 years of history.

The absurdly stacked cast of "Barbie" is utilized well, with Hari Nef, Alexandra Shipp, Kate McKinnon, and Issa Rae so dialed into their characters it's hard not to smile the moment they step on screen. Rae, in particular, was responsible for the loudest laugh during our press screening and already has my vote for her President Barbie reelection campaign. Michael Cera's inclusion as Ken's Buddy Allan is also a delight, and I can only hope this leads to a Ceraissance (once the strikes are over, of course).

My hopes for "Barbie" were as high, and we at /Film even named the film our most anticipated of the year . Well, I'm pleased as pink punch to say that "Barbie" exceeds all expectations, and with all the love to "Lady Bird" and "Little Women," is Gerwig's best film yet.

Ryan Gosling's Kenergy cannot be contained

While Margot Robbie is certainly the star of the show, "Barbie" follows the time-honored tradition of her various media appearances by cranking up the Kenergy tenfold. Ryan Gosling is a consistently solid performer, but his commitment to Ken is unlike anything else he's ever done. In lesser hands, Ken would become a one-note punchline in a fringe vest, but with Gosling beneath the fur coat and bleach-blonde hair, he's a deeply complex and sympathetic figure struggling to navigate the prison of masculinity. The reason "Barbie" works is because everyone on screen plays their characters with the utmost sincerity, and watching Gosling's emotional journey as pop culture's most famous second-fiddle male figure is nothing short of brilliant.

Gerwig's film will most certainly be hailed as a feminist film — which it undeniably is — but the feminism is not limited to women's empowerment and the quest for equitable treatment. The patriarchy hurts everyone, including men, and Ken is the perfect vehicle to discuss why declaring one gender identity over others to be "the best," only leads to pain and confusion. Gosling treats the plight of Ken with such a passionate, thoughtful touch, it's no wonder Gerwig wrote the film with him in mind. Anyone who said he was "too old" to play Ken needs to sit in the corner and chew Barbie shoes for such a laughably childish opinion.

I say this with no exaggeration — this is an Oscar-caliber performance. Of course, we live in an unjust world, the very place that "Barbie" is dedicated to dismantling, which means too many uptight snobs will fail to recognize the remarkable performance before them. There is not an actor alive on Earth who could have delivered what Gosling brought to the screen and if Warner Bros. hasn't already greenlit the "Ken's Mojo Dojo Casa House" sequel, they're even bigger fools than they already are for not outsing their CEO by now .

If you love Barbie, this movie is for you

I'd be remiss not to point out the mind-melting attention to detail interwoven throughout the film, as Gerwig perfectly captures the uncanny delight of imaginative play that comes with Barbie. The Dreamhouses and Barbieland are a candy-coated feast for the eyes, the production design is an absolute masterclass in world-building, and Jacqueline Durran's recreations of some of Barbie's most iconic fashions will certainly require a new display shelf in her home come awards season.

Every second in Barbieland takes the fantastical dreams of childhood play and makes them tangible. There were moments when I could actively feel my brain regressing back to being an 8-year-old girl playing out scenarios in my hand-me-down Dreamhouse, and I let out an audible gasp loaded with wonder when the Barbie ambulance unfolded and became a mini-clinic. Lest we forget, Barbie was doing "Transformers" toy tech long before the robots in disguise.

Gerwig's love of Barbie is evident not only in its look but also in its appreciation of Barbie's history and lore. Kate McKinnon's "Weird Barbie" is representative of all of the dolls that were played with a little too hard, and her Weirdhouse has become a sanctuary for the canceled dolls of Barbie past. I won't spoil which infamous dolls make an appearance but know that Weird Barbie is the new owner of Tanner the pooping dog. If you know, you know.

But it's the addition of Rhea Perlman's character, who I will not spoil for you in this review, that brought me to tears. I cried a lot during this film, but Perlman's addition brings the film to new heights. It's a character appearance that will be lost on a lot of viewers but mean the world to those whose lives have been shaped by Barbie. It's the most obvious sign that this was not Gerwig "selling out" in making a massive, IP-based blockbuster. It's a "thank you" wrapped in a hot pink embrace.

If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you

The secret weapon of "Barbie" is Gerwig's approach to the rightful criticisms of Mattel's most iconic creation (suck it, Hot Wheels), and the unapologetic acknowledgment that life in plastic is not fantastic to a lot of people. Capitalism, consumerism, gender politics, unattainable beauty standards, pressures of femininity, navigating a patriarchal society, socialized gender roles, bimboification, and even mental health issues inspired by simply existing in our backward-ass society are all addressed — through the lens of Barbie in Barbieland as well as Barbie's impact on the real world. Calling it now, there are going to be a lot of critics who will include some sort of line about being "shocked" with how much they enjoyed "Barbie," in an attempt to keep their masculinity or #NotLikeMostGirls reputations intact within an industry that demonizes and discredits anyone who appreciates something so undeniably feminine.

Margot Robbie's performance is breathtaking but impossible to discuss without spoiling. Just know that the same journey many women have taken to come to terms with their feelings about Barbie, Robbie's Barbie must do for herself. When she cries, we cry.

I will not deny the negative connotations many people have with the existence of Barbie, and Gerwig's script validates anyone who has ever felt lesser-than or unfairly judged for not being more like her. But it's also a film that challenges the naysayers to refocus their disdain and remember who the real enemy is. Barbie is not the cause of anti-feminist sentiment. Barbie is not responsible for the unrealistic expectations put upon women. Barbie is as much a pawn in the patriarchal nightmare game of American society as real women are, and "Barbie" is a reminder that pitting women against each other is the easiest distraction technique in the book ... which is why Gerwig subverts that very notion in the film's climax.

Barbie is everything, and so are you

Greta Gerwig did the impossible with "Barbie," marrying both the confetti-bright sensibilities of the plastic toy that has been a vital friend to many for over half a century and a sharp screenplay that inspires existential ruminations on gender politics and self-love. Moments of laugh-out-loud hilarity are sandwiched between therapeutic affirmations, and America Ferrera's third-act monologue is the rightful heir to Gillian Flynn's "Cool Girl" monologue from "Gone Girl." There's also a meta-America Ferrera Disney Channel Original Movie joke in the final moments that I was very clearly the only person in the theater who got, but it was a beautiful full-circle moment for the heart of the film. "Barbie" may play a little too on the nose for some viewers, but taking into consideration the obstacle course of production notes Gerwig likely had to juggle between WB and Mattel, it's a miracle this film was made at all.

I can only speak for myself, but my expectations for "Barbie" were high, and this film is beyond my wildest imagination. Life inside of a box is no way to be, and Gerwig's film screams out with proud feminine vocal fry what so many of us have been saying for years — women can be anything and do anything. Barbie isn't a requirement or an expectation, she's a tool for our own aspirations. Perfection isn't attainable for anyone, not even Barbie, because her power only exists within the confines of what we give her, and we certainly aren't perfect ourselves.

"Barbie" is an absolute marvel hiding within the plastic pink confines of Barbie, making it a phenomenal reflection of the iconic doll that serves as source material. Gerwig clearly knew the preconceived notions folks would have about the film going into it because they're the same ones lobbied against the doll. Fortunately, she put her best pointed foot forward and delivered one of the best films of the year

/Film Rating: 9 out of 10

"Barbie" arrives in theaters on July 21, 2023.

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Barbie: First reactions single out Ryan Gosling as ‘scene-stealer’ deserving of an Oscar

Movie had its star-studded premiere in la on sunday night, article bookmarked.

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The pink carpet was rolled out last night (9 July) in Los Angeles for the world premiere of the Barbie movie, and the first reactions from critics have hit social media.

Made by indie film prodigy Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, Barbie has received overwhelmingly positive early reviews after a screening attended by stars including Nicki Minaj and Dua Lipa.

ScreenRant writer Joseph Deckelmeier called the film “funny, bombastic and very smart”, adding: “Greta Gerwig aims for the fences and hits a home run.”

It is ComicBook.com writer Jamie Jirak’s “favourite film of the year”. She wrote: “Greta Gerwig somehow exceeded my expectations. She tackles the positives and negatives of Barbie so beautifully. Give Ryan Gosling an Oscar nomination, I’m dead serious!”

Gosling was singled out for praise by numerous people, with “Pay or Wait” host Sharronda Williams calling the actor a “scene stealer delivering most of the laughs”.

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Warner Bros defends ‘childlike’ Barbie movie map after Vietnam bans film
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This Week Media editor Eze Baum said: “ Barbie is a triumph. A pitch-perfect script backed by great performances – particularly from Ryan Gosling – turns what could be a simple studio comedy into a sharp commentary on our society that makes its nuance palatable for those that may not take it at face value. GG is 3/3.”

Variety ’s social media editor Katcy Stephan wrote: “Greta Gerwig delivers a nuanced commentary on what it means to be a woman in a whimsical, wonderful and laugh-out-loud funny romp. The entire cast shines, especially Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in roles they were clearly born to play.”

Collider ’s Perri Nemiroff, meanwhile, enjoyed the costume and production design in the movie, but wasn’t quite as convinced on story. “I think the film serves Margot Robbie’s Barbie and her journey especially well,” she wrote, “but there are other characters experiencing important arcs that needed more screen time to really dig into and explore to the fullest.”

Warner Bros was last week forced to defend a doodle of a map in the Barbie movie , after the film was banned in Vietnam.

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One scene in the film includes a map showing what appears to be the “nine dash line”.

The line is a representation of China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, which Vietnam says violates its sovereignty.

China and Vietnam have long been in a stand-off over the region, while Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia all make claims to parts of the sea.

According to local Vietnamese outlets, the drawing is deemed an “illegal image” and has therefore prompted the national ban.

Barbie is due for release in the UK on 21 July.

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10 movie franchises where the first film is the best one.

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10 Movie Franchises That Became Too Big For Their Own Good

10 movie franchises with completely broken canon, 8 movie franchises that deserved a better legacy.

The Pirates of the Caribbean sequels rely too much on Jack Sparrow's character, leading to a decline in quality.
The Matrix sequels struggle to match the groundbreaking first movie, lacking in depth and originality.
Die Hard's premise is exhausted in subsequent movies, losing intrigue over time.

It is a common occurrence in Hollywood that the first movie in a major franchise is well-established as the best. Filmmakers hope that they can produce a movie sequel that is better than the original , but this is no small feat. As the franchise loses steam, they sometimes resort to cheaper or video-release sequels that the major review sites don’t even bother to score.

In many cases, the first movie in the franchise is the best because the premise was only ever suited to one movie; as soon as it reaches a sequel, everything falls apart. However, other stories possibly could have held up a successful blockbuster franchise, but one botched sequel kicked off a bad trend that the filmmakers could never recover from. However, there is one last scenario: The relevant movie franchise has no bad movies , but the first one is just a little bit better than the ones that came after it.

Franchises including the MCU, Fast & Furious, and Jurassic World have become too big, making it impossible to top the spectacle of previous movies.

10 Jurassic Park

The jurassic park sequels forget what made the first one good..

Jurassic Park could have constituted an excellent extended story because there are many different avenues to explore the message of not tampering with nature. This formula probably would have eventually grown stale, but it still had some mileage after the first movie. The Lost World: Jurassic Park manages to do something with this theme in how the dinosaurs have thrived since being left alone on the island.

The first sequel suffered from the loss of Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler , but its biggest problems were in being the follow-up to a Hollywood milestone of storytelling and special effects. On the other hand, Jurassic Park III has a completely ludicrous plot that not even Sam Neil can save. The Jurassic Park sequels could have been good, but they still didn’t need to happen — and neither did the Jurassic World trilogy, which has its own set of problems .

Scream's quality is relatively consistent, but the first movie is still the best.

The novelty of the shamelessly meta movie mocking all the tropes of the horror genre is the strongest on its first run, although Scream 2 does an excellent job of building upon it.

While the best Scream movies still trend toward the early days of the franchise, the series has done remarkably well in upholding the original movie's style. There are doubtlessly some weak points, like the disappointing conclusion to the original trilogy and the first, failed attempt to bring the franchise back in the 2010s. However, Scream made a surprising comeback in 2022 with some great new cast members working well with the legacy actors.

Yet the first Scream is still incrementally the best of the series. The novelty of the shamelessly meta movie mocking all the tropes of the horror genre is the strongest on its first run, although Scream 2 does an excellent job of building upon it. The Scream franchise is an excellent example of the struggle sequels face in following a landmark movie, which may always be considered the best simply because of the cultural impact it made with its release.

Every movie after the first Jaws is a joke.

Steven Spielberg set the bar for horrors and thrillers with his tale of a rampaging shark at a Cape Cod beach. The first movie has plenty of great performances, iconic lines, and, of course, its famous haunting score. The second movie asks the audience to suspend its disbelief further when another shark hell-bent on destruction attacks the same beach. While Jaws 2 lost Spielberg, it at least benefits from the return of Roy Scheider.

However, there was no hope for Jaws 3-D or Jaws: The Revenge , which each present increasingly implausible shark attack scenarios with none of the original's excellent writing or directing to prop them up. A rotating cast of genuinely good actors, including Dennis Quaid, Lea Thompson, and Michael Caine, were drawn in by the title's fame but were not enough to turn things around. Jaws at least had the common sense to have quit in the 1980s when it was clear the franchise was beyond salvaging.

Each Taken movie is worse than the last.

Most rankings of the Taken movies can tell everyone who hasn't seen them that the quality steadily dropped with each new installment. Despite achieving generally average reviews, the first Taken managed to become a staple action movie that influenced many which came after it. The same cannot be said for Taken 2 and Taken 3 , which devolve into meaningless action and destruction.

The Taken sequels try to put new spins on the initial premise. Liam Neeson's Bryan Mills is the one who is kidnapped in Taken 2 before he is thrust into a new adventure to protect his family. Taken 3 then introduces a new storyline of Mills being framed for murder and having to clear his name while continuing to protect his daughter. Neither was as well-received as the first. Taken was lucky to have become as popular as it did, and producing any sequels was risking ruining the movie's reputation.

6 Halloween

Halloween is an endless streak of failed movies after the milestone first installment..

The Halloween franchise has a shocking number of sequels and reboots when the ratings would say that none since the original have been worthwhile. The exception is the surprise hit of 2018's Halloween , with a long stretch of bad movies in between. The fact that creator John Carpenter never planned to make a sequel says a lot about why the franchise has been such a mess since the 1970s. After becoming the benchmark slasher that would inspire countless other horror movies, Halloween spiraled into chaos.

Essentially, filmmakers have tried and failed to restart the Halloween franchise several times. The first movie without Michael Myers was a disaster, while the starting points of new planned trilogies also flopped. The 2018 Halloween achieves something reminiscent of the original with a much simpler story focusing on Laurie and her family trying to survive the killer, earning the best reviews the series had seen in 40 years. However, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends signaled a return to reliably bad sequels.

Movie franchises such as The Terminator, Alien, and Halloween's canons are beyond salvageable, with too many continuity issues to ever be reconciled.

5 How To Train Your Dragon

How to train your dragon's amazing sequels aren't quite as good as the first movie..

The How to Train Your Dragon sequels are not bad, certainly not in the sense of some franchises where everything after the first movie was a downhill spiral. How to Train Your Dragon 2 and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World claim some amazing moments that simply could not have happened in the first movie due to the necessity of a years-long relationship between the main characters. However, the first How to Train Your Dragon still has the strongest story of the trilogy, combined with the first-time effect of the breathtaking design and music.

The How to Train Your Dragon sequels feature two completely generic villains whose biggest contribution to the story is catalyzing character development and epic battles. The plot points of Hiccup’s mother’s secret double life and the Light Fury are somewhat contrived for relationship drama. The first movie’s storyline with no real villain, only the prejudices and misconceptions of the main characters, is the most powerful of the series.

The Crow's sequels are shockingly bad compared to the first movie.

The quality gap between the original The Crow movie and its sequels is astounding. Adapted from James O'Barr's graphic novel, The Crow came out within two years of Scream and is just as much of a quintessential 90s horror movie. The Crow achieved dazzling reviews due to its beautifully dark tone and the stunning performance of lead actor Brandon Lee. However, The Crow also has a thematic depth that helps it rise above meaningless violence and jump scares.

Meanwhile, all of The Crow’s sequels received reviews as stunningly bad as the first movie’s were good. Some surprising casting choices were brought on at different points, including Terminator 2’s Edward Furlong, but the terrible acting and writing cannot be reasoned with. Now, a The Crow reboot is coming soon. This perhaps demonstrates a determination to make a better legacy for The Crow , when the first movie is such an outstanding contribution to cinema.

Die Hard's premise was exhausted before it was abandoned.

Die Hard's quality dipped and rose again, with multiple surprising comebacks. However, the slew of “Die Hard on/with a (blank)” movies that are in no way as good as Die Hard demonstrates how it is also a concept that loses some of its impact simply because of repetition. The first Die Hard sequel in particular was confronted with this very problem — John McClane even says himself that the odds of an average police officer finding himself in the same situation twice are laughable. Bruce Willis' performance is the only thing that saves the movie.

However, Die Hard with a Vengeance came back strong thanks to the new buddy-cop dynamic and the incomparable on-screen chemistry between Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. It is widely considered the best sequel of the franchise, although not the best movie overall, an honor that still goes to the genre-defining first installment. Live Free or Die Hard was well-received, while A Good Day to Die Hard abandons the very premise of Die Hard by making John too prone to violence.

2 The Matrix

The matrix movies become empty after the first installment..

The Matrix sequels are good enough if all one wants is a complete trilogy of adventures, but they are bland movies on their own.

The Matrix remains the undisputed best Matrix movie , with the following two movies being too disappointing and the legacy sequel too divisive to have ever stood a chance. The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions also faced the insurmountable challenge of living up to a groundbreaking movie that functions as a standalone. Screenwriter John August aptly described the problem with the first two Matrix sequels as the filmmakers “playing obscurity for depth” (via denofgeek.com ).

While The Matrix is known for revolutionary action sequences that made waves in the genre, the ones of the next two movies are largely generic if not criticized outright — except for the famous freeway chase. The characters throw out a lot of philosophical diatribes that mean absolutely nothing, and the story ends with Trinity’s terrible death and a weird cliffhanger. The Matrix sequels are good enough if all one wants is a complete trilogy of adventures, but they are bland movies on their own.

Often the legacy of a great movie franchise can be tarnished over the years, with substandard sequels diminishing the overall impact of the series.

1 Pirates Of The Caribbean

The pirates of the caribbean sequels are too dependent on jack sparrow..

All the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels make the mistake of thinking that Jack Sparrow is a character who can support the story in his own right. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is a cut-and-paste action-adventure story, with an antagonist worthy of the classic Disney villains, and just enough supernatural for intrigue. On top of it all is Johnny Depp as the strangely brilliant Jack, who doesn’t have to do much besides survive every battle and deliver witty one-liners.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest doesn’t completely ruin Jack’s characterization, because his primary goal is still survival. However, each subsequent movie dives further into his past, ruining the mystery of his character, while incorporating increasingly convoluted supernatural subplots. Like with many other movie franchises, the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels can in no way match the perfect simplicity of the movie that started it all.

Source: denofgeek.com

COMMENTS

'Barbie' one-star reviews from 'furious men' become viral meme
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Advertisement. "Barbie" can be hysterically funny, with giant laugh-out-loud moments generously scattered throughout. They come from the insularity of an idyllic, pink-hued realm and the physical comedy of fish-out-of-water moments and choice pop culture references as the outside world increasingly encroaches.
Barbie First Reviews: Hysterically Funny, Perfectly Cast, and
Will fans of Greta Gerwig's other movies enjoy Barbie? "In some ways, Barbie builds on themes Gerwig explored in Lady Bird and Little Women."- Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter "Barbie balances the incredibly pointed specificity of the jokes and relatability of Lady Bird, with the celebration of women and the ability to show a new angle of something we thought we knew like we saw ...
'Barbie' Review: Out of the Box and On the Road
Gerwig's talents are one of this movie's pleasures, and I expect that they'll be wholly on display in her next one — I just hope that this time it will be a house of her own wildest dreams ...
'Barbie' Review: The Most Subversive Blockbuster of the 21st Century?
Barbie definitely makes good on that promise, which still doesn't quite prepare you for what feels like the most subversive blockbuster of the 21st century to date. This is a saga of self ...
'Barbie' Review: Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling Excel
'Barbie' Review: Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling Compete for Control of High-Concept Living Doll Comedy Greta Gerwig loads plenty of food for thought in a hot pink pop fantasia, poking fun at ...
'Barbie' one-star reviews from 'furious men' become ...
Poking fun at the haters, someone on Twitter (rebranded as X) scrolled through online comments of the movie to find one-star reviews and turned them into hilarious faux-branded memes. "I took 1 ...
Barbie review
It's a riotously entertaining candy-coloured feminist fable that manages simultaneously to celebrate, satirise and deconstruct its happy-plastic subject. Audiences will be delighted. Mattel ...
Barbie review: Greta Gerwig's fiercely funny, feminist Dreamhouse
review: Welcome to Greta Gerwig's fiercely funny, feminist Dreamhouse. The Barbie movie could've been another forgettable, IP-driven cash grab. Instead, the director of Little Women and Lady ...
Barbie is a near-miraculous achievement
It's why films and television shows get turned into "content", and why writers and actors end up exploited and demeaned. Barbie, in its own sly, silly way, gets to the very heart of why ...
Movie Review: She's Perfect Barbie. He's Scene-Stealing Ken. Their life
And now she's Movie Star Barbie. This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Margot Robbie in a scene from "Barbie." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP) "Barbie," a Warner Bros. Pictures release, has been rated PG-13 "for suggestive references and brief language."
Barbie (2023)
Before making Barbie (2023), Greta Gerwig single-handedly directed two films: Lady Bird (2017) and Little Women (2019). Both were about girls on the precipice of adolescence, both had nuanced and layered portrayals of mother-daughter relationships, both combined imaginative visuals with clever dialogue. Both were very, very good.
'Barbie' review: Is the most hyped movie of the year any good?
By Peter Howell Movie Critic. 3 stars. The great joke of "Barbie," Greta Gerwig's winking satire of existential angst and patriarchal politics, is that plasticity represents perfection while ...
This Dude Is Turning 1-Star Barbie Reviews Into Movie Posters
July 26, 2023. There's no doubt that Barbie has absolutely slayed with audiences around the world. During its first weekend on the big screen, the film racked up a whopping $34 million at the ...
Barbie
Barbie. Watch Barbie with a subscription on Max, rent on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy on Fandango at Home, Prime Video. Barbie is a visually dazzling comedy whose meta humor is smartly ...
Barbie Review: An Uproarious, Existential Adventure And One Of ...
The absurdly stacked cast of "Barbie" is utilized well, with Hari Nef, Alexandra Shipp, Kate McKinnon, and Issa Rae so dialed into their characters it's hard not to smile the moment they step on ...
The first reactions to the Barbie movie are in
Barbie: First reactions single out Ryan Gosling as 'scene-stealer' deserving of an Oscar. Movie had its star-studded premiere in LA on Sunday night
Barbie Review: Greta Gerwig Combines Wonder & Wisdom In Pitch Perfect
Barbie debuts in theaters Friday, July 21. It is 114 minutes long and rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language. Everything about Barbie is crafted with both mass appeal and personal insight, much like the doll, resulting in a movie that knows how to please.
'Barbie' review: Plastic, fantastic and one of the year's best films
Ryan Gosling as Ken in the 'Barbie' movie. Everything about "Barbie" is meticulous and measured. The use of music is brilliant: an obnoxious Matchbox 20 hit, an earnest Indigo Girls tune. A new ...
10 Reasons The Barbie Movie's Reviews Are So Great
2 Barbie Is A Clever & Biting Satire. Issa Rae in Barbie. Mireia Mullor is one of many critics who have been won over by Barbie 's clever satire (via Digital Spy ). The critic writes, " Life in plastic is fantastic indeed: Barbie is a sharp, hilarious and joy-contagious satire of gender roles.
Barbie (2023)
Barbie: Directed by Greta Gerwig. With Margot Robbie, Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp. Barbie and Ken are having the time of their lives in the colorful and seemingly perfect world of Barbie Land. However, when they get a chance to go to the real world, they soon discover the joys and perils of living among humans.
Barbie (film)
Barbie is a 2023 fantasy comedy film directed by Greta Gerwig from a screenplay she wrote with Noah Baumbach.Based on the eponymous fashion dolls by Mattel, it is the first live-action Barbie film after numerous animated films and specials.It stars Margot Robbie as the title character and Ryan Gosling as Ken, and follows them on a journey of self-discovery through both Barbieland and the real ...
10 Best Barbie Movies, Ranked
Only a rewatch will help fans decide for themselves. Rent on Apple TV. 'Barbie & the Diamond Castle' (2008) Director: Gino Nichele. Close. One of Barbie's best odes to the power of friendship ...
10 Movie Franchises Where The First Film Is The Best One
It is a common occurrence in Hollywood that the first movie in a major franchise is well-established as the best. Filmmakers hope that they can produce a movie sequel that is better than the original, but this is no small feat.As the franchise loses steam, they sometimes resort to cheaper or video-release sequels that the major review sites don't even bother to score.

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