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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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Film Credits

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’ 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.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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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?

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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Movie Review
This Barbie is a feminist parable fighting to be great in spite of Mattel’s input

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is often good and sometimes great, but it always feels like it’s fighting to be itself rather than the movie Warner Bros. and Mattel Films want.

By Charles Pulliam-Moore , a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

Share this story

A smiling, blond woman standing with her arms outstretched in front of a group of girls who are facing her. The woman is wearing a cowboy hat, a neckerchief, a denim vest, and jeans — all of which are hot pink.

Barbies might “just” be toys, but Barbie™ is an impossibly perfect paragon of glamorous femininity who’s had as many specialized professions over the course of her 64-year-long existence as she has bespoke outfits. There are few pieces of corporate-owned IP that are truly as Iconic (in the pre-social media sense of the word) as the doll that put Mattel on the map and taught children of all genders — but especially little girls — to long for hot pink dreamhouses. That’s why it isn’t all that surprising to see Mattel Studio’s brand protection-minded influence splashed all over Warner Bros.’ new live-action Barbie movie from writer / director Greta Gerwig.

Valuable as the Barbie brand is, it makes all the sense in the world that Mattel would want Gerwig’s feature — a playful, surreal adventure that does double duty as a deconstruction of its namesake and her technicolor, dreamlike world — to play by a set of rules meant to protect their investments. But as well meant as Mattel’s input presumably was, Gerwig clearly came with a bold vision built around the idea of deconstructing some of the more complex realities of what Barbie represents in order to tell a truly modern, feminist story.

Watching the movie, you can often feel how Mattel and Gerwig’s plans for Barbie weren’t necessarily in sync and how those differences led to compromises being made. Thankfully, that doesn’t keep the movie from being fun. But it does make it rather hard to get lost in the fantasy of it all — especially once Barbie starts going meta to poke fun at the studios behind it in a way that seems to be becoming more common .

Along with celebrating innumerable pieces of Mattel’s history, Barbie tells the story of how the most Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) in all of Barbie Land gains the tiniest bit of self-awareness one day and starts to find her growing sense of complex personhood so alarming that she sets off for the Real World to find out what the hell is going on. Like the vast majority of Barbies who call Barbie Land home, all Stereotypical Barbie knows about her own world is based on the picture-perfect, idealized experiences she and her friends are able to breeze their ways through solely using the power of their imaginations.

Things don’t just happen to Barbies. They’re very much the arbiters of their own wills who’ve worked hard to become people like President Barbie (Issa Rae), Dr. Barbie (Hari Nef), Lawyer Barbie (Sharon Rooney), and Pulitzer Prize-winning Writer Barbie (Alexandra Shipp). But life for Barbies also isn’t especially difficult or complicated, partially because they’re all dolls living in a plastic paradise. Mainly, though, it’s because Barbie Land’s an expressly woman-controlled utopia reminiscent of Steven Universe ’s Gem Homeworld , where neither misogyny nor the concept of a patriarchy exists because that’s not what Barbie™ is about.

As an unseen Helen Mirren — who seems to be playing a version of herself as Barbie ’s narrator — points out who’s who in the film’s opening act, you can see how Mattel’s willingness to let Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach’s script poke fun at Barbie™ led to some extremely good world-building.

Barbie Land isn’t just a predominantly pink pocket dimension where Life-Size -like dolls live in life-sized, yet still toy-like dream homes. It’s the embodiment of the easy-to-digest, corporate-approved feminism and female empowerment that Mattel and many other toy companies deal in. Only in Barbie Land, the idea of a predominantly female supreme court or construction sites full of nothing but hardworking women aren’t just dreams — they’re a regular part of everyday life. And all the Barbies are better for it because of how it reinforces their belief that they can do anything.

But outside of the Stereotypical Barbie-obsessed Ken whose job is to stand on the beach (Ryan Gosling), none of the other Kens (Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ncuti Gatwa, Scott Evans, and John Cena) are ever really given personalities to speak of. It’s clearly a purposeful decision meant to reinforce the idea that Ken dolls, which were invented after Barbie dolls, are the Eves to their Adams — accessory-like beings created to be companions rather than their own people. But as solid as the idea is, in practice, it has a way of making the Kens of color feel like thinly-written afterthoughts hovering around Gosling and like Barbie isn’t sure how to utilize its entire cast — a feeling that intensifies more and more as the movie progresses.

Long before Barbie even starts to have her existential crisis and seek guidance from Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), it becomes painfully clear that there was a strong desire on either Mattel or Warner Bros. parts for audiences to be spoon-fed as much of the film as possible before actually sitting down in theaters. If you’ve watched even a couple of Barbie ’s lengthier ads or the music video for Dua Lipa’s (who plays Mermaid Barbie) “Dance the Night,” you’ve seen a significant chunk of this film and its more memorable moments.

What you’ve seen less of is how often Barbie slows down to have characters repeat jokes and belabor points as if it doesn’t trust the audience to catch beats on their initial deliveries. Some of that can be attributed to the PG-13 movie trying to make sure that viewers of all ages are able to engage because as existentially heavy and slightly flirty as Barbie gets at times, it’s a movie about Barbies, which is obviously going to appeal to a bunch of literal children. But once Barbie’s in the real world being harassed by lascivious men, ruthless teen girls, and a bumbling, evil corporation that the movie goes to great lengths to make fun of, you also get the sense that more than a bit of the movie’s unevenness on the backend stems from Mattel putting its foot down about how it, too, needed to be a part of Barbie’s live-action, theatrical debut.

There’s a time and a place for corporations to try getting in on the fun of events like this by way of meta humor that acknowledges their own existence and the role they play in bringing projects like movies about Barbie dolls into being. But rather than creating the necessary conditions for those kinds of jokes to land, not need explanation, and add substance to Barbie, both Mattel and Warner Bros.’ self-insert jokes work more to remind you how the movie is ultimately a corporate-branded endeavor designed to move products.

That doesn’t keep Gerwig’s latest from being an enjoyable time spotlighting a decidedly inspired performance from Robbie. But it is going to make the rabid Barbie discourse even more exhausting than it already is when the feature hits theaters on July 21st.

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Barbie Reviews

Gerwig and Baumbach offer thoughtful commentary not only on Barbie herself and everything she represents, but also on womanhood, feminism, and growing up.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 25, 2024

Add it all up and we get an enchanting explosion of pink cotton candy fun, all of which conceals a deceptively nutritious sociopolitical core.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 19, 2024

Can we all just “Beach”?

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 6, 2024

Barbie is equal parts a feminist rallying cry, an educational film, a reaffirmation of healthy matriarchal values, a musical, a comedy, and the kind of movie that everyone, especially young men, should see.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 3, 2024

Beneath all the laughs at the expense of men and women is the sad truth that this brand of essentialism itself, of separating Barbies from Kens, of emphasizing their differences, is the thing that damages us the most.

Full Review | Apr 5, 2024

Before she hits the road, being in Barbie Land is just as pleasurable for the viewer as it is for these toys. The depiction of this world is a triumph of imaginative design and skilful craftsmanship.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 7, 2024

That Gerwig was able to essentially hijack a two-hour toy commercial (and a magnificently visualized one at that), one that cost $150 million, and deliver something approximating a progressive message, is just short of miraculous.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 25, 2024

Why was this made?

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Jan 18, 2024

Throw in Billie Eilish’s melancholic tear-jerker and an intentionally butchered pronunciation of The Godfather and the movie was bound to be an instant classic. And you, too, have the power to take your Birkenstocks out of the closet in 2024.

Full Review | Jan 13, 2024

One of the main keys to Barbie’s success is commitment to the Barbieland authenticity and Gerwig’s willingness to undercut both Barbie and Ken leads, only to build them back up again.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 1, 2024

Barbie’s highs more than make up for its shaky third act. The game cast’s commitment to the tone, dazzling visuals and spirited direction prove it’s not a bad thing visiting Barbie’s World even if it’s just a break from the real one.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 31, 2023

One of the most thought-provoking social commentaries and empowering mainstream comedies in recent years. The “I’m Just Ken” scene should be playing on a loop in the Louvre.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Dec 30, 2023

Gerwig had given no indication she (or anybody, really) could produce such a hot-pink masterpiece of goofball humor, winsome Jacques Tati alienation, and low-key patriarchy seminar.

Full Review | Dec 28, 2023

Barbie is very entertaining and despite the apparent artificiality, it questions social mandates. Throughout the film, a successful sense of humor is maintained regarding the struggle of the sexes and its cultural implications, without being offensive.

Full Review | Original Score: 8.5/10 | Dec 28, 2023

In Greta we trust.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Dec 27, 2023

With a stellar cast of actors, Barbie focuses all the energy of its first half hour on running through this insular version of things. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Dec 26, 2023

Barbie is a brand extension exercise, but it's an audacious, hilarious, and artistically crafted one, raising the bar considerably for big-budget intellectual property ventures to come.

Full Review | Dec 22, 2023

"Barbie" is to feminism as a wrench is to a cat. Extermination of rational thought is this commercial's goal. Toxic. "Barbie" is a chunky diarrhea stain on humanity. Greta Gerwig is a hack screenwriter, and a remedial filmmaker at best.

Full Review | Original Score: LESS THAN ZERO STARS | Dec 22, 2023

"Barbie" does exactly what the doll itself was intended to do. It acts as a beacon to young women telling them that they can achieve greatness and be anything they want even in a patriarchal landscape where men control the levers of power.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 21, 2023

For all the great things Robbie and Gosling are doing on a comedic level, their brilliance lies in the ability to also bring pathos to a narrative that never shies away from the complicated nature accepting another's lived experience and desires.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 8, 2023

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‘Barbie’ Review: Greta Gerwig Goes Way Outside the Box with Her Funny, Feminist Fantasia

Kate erbland, editorial director.

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But just as Kubrick’s apes eventually met by an alien monolith that utterly changed their world and worldview, Greta Gerwig ‘s little girls are about to be descended upon by a world-altering and brain-breaking new entity: a giant, one might even say monolithic, Barbie doll, in the form of a smiling Margot Robbie , kitted out like the very first Barbie doll ever made . And thus spake Barbie . That’s where Gerwig’s funny, feminist, and wildly original “Barbie” begins. It will only get bigger, weirder, smarter, and better from there. Related Stories Bahrām Beyzaie’s Surreal ‘The Stranger and the Fog’ Is Restored in 4K for 50th Anniversary — Watch Trailer Micheal Keaton ‘Didn’t Care’ That ‘Batgirl’ Was Scrapped: It Was a ‘Nice Check’

Imagine, if you can, a world split in two upon the release of the first Barbie doll in 1959. There’s the real world (known in the film as, of course, “The Real World”), and then there’s the seemingly idyllic (and very plastic) Barbie Land, which exists on the premise that the invention of Barbie (the doll) so drastically, so completely, and so positively impacted the real world that she (the doll) basically solved feminism. As far as the Barbies (and attendant Kens) who populate Barbie Land know, the Real World is a wonderful place for women (because Barbie Land very much is), and the female-forward world they happily clatter through is just a reflection of what happens in the flesh-and-blood universe.

This Barbie (like, it seems, all Barbies) has a great day every day. Her Stereotypical Ken ( a delightfully unhinged Ryan Gosling )? He only has a good day when Barbie pays attention to him, and Barbie is pretty busy. Gerwig guides us through a typical Barbie day with meticulous attention to detail (both impressive and incredibly amusing). Her Barbie Dream House? It doesn’t have windows, or working stairs, or running water. She can get wherever she wants to go by simply jumping (just like a child might move their doll, foisting them from spot to spot with little care for logic). Her hands are stiff. Her food is nonexistent. Her life is perfect. Robbie’s dedication to the gag, along with co-stars Rae, Shipp, Mackey, Hari Nef, and Nicola Coughlan is profound, and boy, does it pay off.

That truth: She must go to the Real World and mend the rip in the temporal fabric that keeps Barbie Land and the Real World distinctly different. And while Barbie, initially resistant to the fate before her, eventually takes on the challenge with verve and vigor, the questions start piling up: How different are Barbie Land and the Real World? If what happens in the Real World can impact Barbie Land, is the reverse true? And why the hell is Ken in the backseat of Barbie’s hot pink car as it cruises straight into La-La Land?

Once in the Real World, Barbie and Ken’s twinned realizations of what it’s actually like unfold at a lopsided pace. Barbie is confused by everyone’s behavior, not just the men who leer and the women who scoff, but especially that of Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a sassy teen whom she believes is her longtime owner, the very person suffering from angst so deep it ripped a hole between the Real World and Barbie Land. Gerwig and co-writer and longtime partner Noah Baumbach steadily lift the veil (or, as the case may be, rip their own temporal fabric) as Barbie is beset by the truth of the Real World (not feminist), Barbie Land (also not feminist), and her place in both.

Gerwig and Baumbach’s venture into the Real World is absolutely necessary — it unlocks the film’s thesis after besieging us with diverting fun, gives us the darling Greenblatt and her Barbie-obsessed mom Gloria (America Ferrera, who runs off with the film’s last act), and allows Will Ferrell to go nuts as the wacky (male!) CEO of Mattel. However, it’s not nearly as fun, fantastic, and entertaining as the rich world of Barbie Land — that’s the point. Thankfully, we’re back there soon enough, though it’s been hugely altered by the full force of a returning (and, dare we say it, red-pilled) Ken, who uses all his newfound male rage and patriarchal power to upend what was once a lady-powered idyll. Barbie? She’s having a bad day.

Gerwig, as ever, has assembled a stellar supporting cast. All Barbies delight, but the Kens, appropriately enough, launch a real sneak attack, especially Simu Liu and Kingsley Ben-Adir, and Michael Cera nearly makes off with the whole thing as the singular sidekick Allan. There’s also a murderer’s row of below-the-line talent: Opuses can and will be written about Sarah Greenwood’s production design and Jacqueline Durran’s costumes. “Barbie” is a lovingly crafted blockbuster with a lot on its mind, the kind of feature that will surely benefit from repeat viewings (there is so much to see, so many jokes to catch) and is still purely entertaining even in a single watch.

It’s Barbie’s world, and we’re all just living in it. How fantastic.

Warner Bros. releases “Barbie” in theaters on Friday, July 21.

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‘barbie’ review: margot robbie and ryan gosling in doll comedy from greta gerwig that delivers the fun but fudges the politics.

Barbie and Ken venture into the real world to try to save Barbieland in this fantasy adventure from the director of 'Lady Bird' and 'Little Women.'

By Lovia Gyarkye

Lovia Gyarkye

Arts & Culture Critic

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Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken and in Barbie

There isn’t exactly a God in Greta Gerwig ’s Barbie (unless you count Helen Mirren’s omniscient narrator), but the director does experiment with creation myths. Barbieland, a parallel universe populated by iterations of the Mattel doll, is her sandbox. The toy conglomerate’s vast archive, a trove of successful products, middling ideas and discontinued merch, are the tools.

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Barbie First Reactions: Witty, Impeccably Designed, Overblown Fun

Critics on social media say gerta gerwig's take on the iconic doll blends camp and social commentary and benefits from a scene-stealing ryan gosling..

TAGGED AS: Comedy , First Reactions , movies

Here’s what critics are saying about Barbie :

Does Barbie live up to the hype?

“Greta Gerwig somehow exceeded my expectations. She tackles the positives and negatives of Barbie so beautifully.” – Jamie Jirak, ComicBook.com

“ Barbie isn’t the home run I was hoping for, or that I think it needs to be given the topics it’s tackling, but it’s still a well made, bold film with a VERY strong voice and vision, one that often made me think, HOW does this movie exist? And that right there is almost always a quality in a film that will win me over.” – Perri Nemiroff, Collider

“It teeters between the camp Barbie movie we expected and a sometimes too on-the-nose social commentary of society that takes away from important subplots and character development… Overall I left wanting a bit more from the film.” – Sharronda Williams, Pay or Wait

“ Barbie is currently my favorite film of the year.” – Jamie Jirak, ComicBook.com

(Photo by ©Warner Bros.)

How are the performances?

“I was living for the dance numbers led by Simu Liu!” – Carla Renata, The Curvy Film Critic

“Ryan Gosling is a scene stealer delivering most of the laughs while Margot Robbie’s heartfelt performance will tug at your heartstrings.” – Sharronda Williams, Pay or Wait

“Give Ryan Gosling an Oscar nomination, I’m dead serious!” – Jamie Jirak, ComicBook.com

What about the script?

“As for the story, that’s where I’m a bit more mixed. I think the film serves Margot Robbie’s Barbie and her journey especially well, but there are other characters experiencing important arcs that needed more screen time to really dig into and explore to the fullest.” – Perri Nemiroff, Collider

“While I enjoyed most of the film the screenplay feels bloated at times.” – Sharronda Williams, Pay or Wait

Ana Cruz Kayne, Sharon Rooney, Alexandra Shipp, Margot Robbie, Hari Nef, and Emma Mackey in Barbie (2023)

Anything else impressive about it?

“The craftsmanship is incredible. In particular, the costume and production design includes next-level work that heavily contributes to creating the feeling that these truly are Barbies, their dream houses, and their worlds come to life.” – Perri Nemiroff, Collider

“The production and costume design is stunning.” – Sharronda Williams, Pay or Wait

“Greta Gerwig left me all in my feelings as did the production design, costumes, hair and makeup!” – Carla Renata, The Curvy Film Critic

“ Barbie is witty, heartfelt, and downright fun at times.” – Sharronda Williams, Pay or Wait

“It’s overblown fun with a feminist twist.” – Carla Renata, The Curvy Film Critic

Barbie opens in theaters everywhere on July 21, 2023.

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Review: With Robbie in pink and Gosling in mink, ‘Barbie’ (wink-wink) will make you think

A woman smiles in front of a mirror inside a pink doll house

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Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” an exuberant, sometimes exhaustingly clever piece of Mattelian neorealism, opens with an extended, heavily trailer-spoiled homage to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” We’re at a drab early moment in the history of the toy industry; for too long, little girls everywhere have had only their sad, uninspiring baby dolls to play with — until now, at this fateful dawn-of-mannequin moment. Hello, dolly! But really, hello, Barbie, played by Margot Robbie with a megawatt grin and impeccable coiffure, modeling a black-and-white swimsuit and towering over the primordial landscape on skyscraper legs. She’s a marvel of (anatomically incorrect) engineering, a citadel of plasticine perfection and, to judge by her immense popularity, a major evolutionary leap forward.

Whether or not Barbie has ever represented an advance, of course, has been fiercely debated since Ruth Handler created her in 1959. Did Barbie, with her can-do spirit and variegated career possibilities, offer young girls a positive model of be-whatever-you-want-to-be womanhood? Or did her bombshell proportions and impossible chest-to-waist ratio entrench the kinds of cruelly unforgiving beauty standards that second-wave feminism was just beginning to interrogate?

Decades later, conversations around female self-image, representation, agency and empowerment have shifted, to say the least, as have personal and public attitudes toward Barbie herself. She has been attacked and defended, dismissed as a punchline and reclaimed as a pioneer. She has diversified with the times (new races, new body types and, as always, new clothes). In recent years, she’s also experienced plummeting sales and a diminished cultural profile, which of course explains why — after countless small-screen animated Barbie movies, series and specials — she now has a live-action theatrical feature to call her own.

(l-r) Ryan Gosling as Ken and Margot Robbie as Barbie in 'Barbie.'

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Looking at her history and evolution, Barbie is clearly a strong, independent woman — the sort advocated by all four waves of feminism.

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Really, though, that explains this movie only in part. Whatever you think of “Barbie,” the mere existence of this smart, funny, conceptually playful, sartorially dazzling comic fantasy speaks to the irreverent wit and meta-critical sensibility of its director. (It also owes something, I suppose, to Mattel’s willingness to endure some modestly scathing satire in the pursuit of ever-greater profits.) Working again with her co-writer, Noah Baumbach (“Mistress America,” “Frances Ha”), Gerwig has conceived “Barbie” as a bubble-gum emulsion of silliness and sophistication, a picture that both promotes and deconstructs its own brand. It doesn’t just mean to renew the endless “Barbie: good or bad?” debate. It wants to enact that debate, to vigorously argue both positions for the better part of two fast-moving, furiously multitasking hours.

A blond woman in a striped bathing suit standing in a stark, prehistoric landscape

The case for the Barbie defense is presented by the Barbies themselves. There are a lot of them walking, talking, dancing, doing the splits and consuming nonexistent meals in the groovy pinktacular paradise that is Barbie Land, where life is a beach party by day and a dance party by night. The Barbies dwell in sisterly harmony and blissful self-fulfillment, each with her own meticulously furnished Barbie Dreamhouse and endlessly colorful wardrobe. Each one also has her role to play, whether she’s President Barbie (Issa Rae), Dr. Barbie (Hari Nef), Writer Barbie (Alexandra Shipp), Lawyer Barbie (Sharon Rooney) or even Mermaid Barbie (Dua Lipa), popping up from behind some delightfully fake-looking ocean waves. (If you’ll permit a “Barbenheimer” joke, I must point out the existence of Emma Mackey as Physicist Barbie, who presumably discovered the secrets of nuclear fuchsian.)

Tiptoeing into the spotlight on perfectly arched feet is Robbie as Stereotypical Barbie, whose self-mocking name and lead-heroine status are a handy example of Gerwig’s have-it-both-ways attitude. Although surrounded by Barbies (and Kens, but more on them later) of various shapes, sizes and colors, Stereotypical Barbie is Barbie: white, blond and svelte, in line with our earliest, most lasting impressions of the doll formally named Barbara Millicent Roberts. To say that Robbie is perfectly cast is an understatement (her surname alone could be a Barbie/Roberts portmanteau), though that very perfection underscores the movie’s problem: Can you really call out and perpetuate a stereotype at the same time? Would it have been better — more daring, and also more interesting — to tell the story from a less classically molded Barbie’s perspective?

Perhaps that possibility will be taken up in future visits to what is already being mapped out as a full-blown Mattel cinematic universe. For now, this early adventure generates more than enough goodwill to sustain your curiosity and suspend, or at least temporarily overwhelm, your reservations. Drawing on the breathless narrative velocity and sly comic mischief she showed in her sparkling recent adaptation of “Little Women,” Gerwig maintains a delirious but remarkably coherent onslaught of gags, twists, ideas, non sequiturs (Michael Cera! Matchbox 20!) and scholarly bits of Barbie arcana — all of it swirling like a merry comic tornado around the serene center of gravity that is Robbie’s captivatingly sincere performance.

Three men in headbands striking a sporty pose

Like Amy Adams as a fish-out-of-water Disney princess in “Enchanted,” Robbie takes an archetype long dismissed as an airheaded caricature and, moment by deeply felt moment, teases and fleshes her out. With her radiant smiles and goofy-graceful physicality, she inhabits Barbie’s glamour and entitlement as effortlessly as she inhabits her hot-pink bell bottoms. But she also gradually punctures those upbeat vibes with tremulous notes of vulnerability and premonitions of disaster, right around the time her Barbie notices a patch of cellulite and begins having incongruous thoughts of death.

These intimations of mortality, which I wouldn’t have minded hearing about in even gnarlier detail, suggest cracks in Barbie’s psyche, but also in Barbie Land’s very foundations. To explain further would risk giving away the strange metaphysical rules that govern Barbie Land, its fantastic-plastic inhabitants and their tricky relationship to the real world. And that real world is ultimately Barbie’s destination, a place she sets out for in search of answers, not realizing that her own attention-starved Ken has stowed away in her little pink Corvette.

Ah yes, Ken. There are several Kens in this movie, all of them amiable second-class citizen hunks of Barbie Land, played by actors including Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Scott Evans and Ncuti Gatwa. But Gosling, as the neediest, most pathetically insecure Ken of the lot, rises to delicious new levels of actorly self-mockery. Sporting a platinum dye job that never fails to match his denim cutoffs, ’90s neon workout gear, pastel-striped beachwear and luxurious mink coat (sold separately), Gosling scores the expected laughs about Ken’s fashionista vanity , ambiguous sexuality and all-around preening petulance. But what makes him more than just another smooth-chested punchline is one of Gerwig’s deftest satirical touches: As it turns out, it doesn’t take long for a dude with serious self-esteem issues to open a Pandora’s box of patriarchal oppression.

Los Angeles, CA - June 26: Actor Ryan Gosling and director Greta Gerwig, photographed in promotion of their latest film, "Barbie," at the Four Seasons hotel, in Los Angeles, CA, Monday, June 26, 2023. Gosling plays "Ken," Barbie's boyfriend, in Barbie Land and he joins her in visiting the human world. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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For toxic masculinity, though unheard of in Barbie Land, is of course alive and well in the real world, as Barbie and Ken are initially shocked to learn when they arrive on the sunny streets of Los Angeles. Here, women aren’t respected, let alone placed on polymer pedestals; they’re ogled, objectified, sidelined and worse. And to hear it from an angry teenager named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), Barbie herself deserves her share of the blame, being a tool of “sexualized capitalism” that “set the feminist movement back years.”

That’s the case for the Barbie prosecution, in a nutshell, and as you might expect, it isn’t allowed to go unchallenged. Sasha’s attack is the first of the script’s two big throw-down scenes; the second is a rousing feminist cri de coeur delivered by Sasha’s mom, Gloria (a winning America Ferrera), who’s on hand to temper her daughter’s scorn, emphasize Barbie’s enduring multigenerational appeal and remind us that, yes, you can love women and love Barbie too. It’s a hugely effective monologue, calculated for maximum applause and likely to get it. But “Barbie’s” feminism, something it wears proudly on its sequined sleeve, seldom needs such emphatic dramatic underlining to register.

The movie is at its best when it’s simply leaning into its own fast, funny, free-floating goofiness, whether it’s letting Kate McKinnon do her thing as a self-explanatory Weird Barbie, pitting multiple dancing Kens against each other in a hypnotic dream ballet, or throwing in a coconutty reference to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” I could’ve done without the filler-ish comic subplot featuring Will Ferrell as Mattel’s CEO, a mostly toothless bit of corporate ribbing that nonetheless does lead to a visually striking chase sequence through a maze of office cubicles, cleverly staged as a riff on Jacques Tati’s classic “Playtime.”

Gerwig’s wide-ranging movie love serves her well here; there’s something fitting and finally moving about the way Barbie’s journey of self-discovery takes her through a glittery funhouse of cinematic allusions. If Barbie Land can’t help but evoke the creepily self-contained utopia of “The Truman Show,” Barbie’s entire quest unfolds like a kind of reverse “Wizard of Oz,” in which she ends up leaving a trippy Technicolor dreamscape and traveling to a humdrum, grayed-out reality rather than the other way around. You might sense echoes of those films during this movie’s strange, beguiling final moments, and perhaps a callback to “2001” too. The evolution of Barbie continues.

'Barbie'

Rating: PG-13, for suggestive references and brief language Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes Playing: Starts July 21 in general release

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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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

‘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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Except, in the middle of one of their regular super-cool and totally awesome sing-alongs, Barbie blurts out, “You guys ever think about dying?” No one, least of all the shiny, happy person who said it, has any idea where that random bummer came from. The next morning, Barbie’s imaginary shower is cold. Her imaginary milk has curdled. The collective perkiness of her friends and neighbors only seems to highlight her inexplicably bad mood. Her stiletto-ready arches suddenly fall flat. And then, she comes face to face with what can only be described as the Thanos of the Barbie Cinematic Universe: cellulite.

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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, Ryan Gosling dazzle in hilariously heady toy story

In director Greta Gerwig’s playful hands, “Barbie” is a bedazzled plastic Trojan horse.

Awash in pink-drenched Dreamhouses and plucky dolls, the enjoyably goofy and enormously creative meta comedy imagines what would happen if Barbie and Ken – with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling being the chef’s kiss of toy casting – got loose in our world. What Gerwig sneakily pulls off underneath that facade, however, is sort of genius: “Barbie” (★★★½ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters and available to buy/rent on Apple TV , Vudu , Amazon and Google Play ) is really an insightful exploration of humanity, the meaning of life and the cognitive dissonance of a woman living in the patriarchy, all with a really big heart and style to spare.

Barbie Land is a super-cool place where Barbies rule and can be anything they want – from a president (Issa Rae) to a physicist (Emma Mackey) to a Nobel Prize-winning writer (Alexandra Shipp) – and as far as they're concerned, they pretty much solved equal rights and feminism. Also living in Barbie Land are the hypercompetitive Kens, though they’re rather superfluous and primarily good for cheerleading and dance-party backflips.

Is the 'Barbie' movie for kids? Here's what parents should know

Robbie plays Stereotypical Barbie – as the main character explains, “I’m the Barbie everyone thinks of when you think of Barbie” – and her days are filled with saying hi to other Barbies, tooling around in her convertible (pink, obviously) and hosting fun shindigs. (This seems a good time to point out "Barbie" is a technical marvel with its snazzy costumes and brilliant production design. Who wouldn't want to careen down a Dreamhouse slide daily?)

But oddly, thoughts of death (which she reveals in the worst of places, the dance floor!) creep into her noggin, followed by un-Barbie-like bouts with bad breath, cold showers, burned waffles, flat feet and cellulite. She visits Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) – a Barbie that’s been played with way too hard – and learns there's a "malfunction" in the connection with her person in the Real World and has to go there to put everything back to normal.

The Ken (Gosling) who’s in love with our hero Barbie – and has a load of crippling insecurities – comes along for the ride, and the situation immediately goes sideways because, well, reality isn’t a Toys R Us aisle. They get arrested (twice), Ken becomes very interested in the fact that men rule this world, and Barbie meets her makers at Mattel, where the CEO (Will Ferrell) wants to put her back in a box.

'Barbie': Margot Robbie never thought she'd have 'empathy for a doll'

Robbie's doll also takes flak from young critics for being a poster toy for consumerism and unrealistic beauty standards and gets a crash course in having emotions – like a twist on Pinocchio, Barbie realizes what it’s like to be a real girl, complete with anxiety and sobbing. Along the way, a couple of human folks, Mattel employee Gloria (a great America Ferrera) and her tween daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), get caught up in Barbie’s existential crisis.

Written by Gerwig and her partner Noah Baumbach, “Barbie” boasts a joyously wry self-awareness akin to the “Lego Movies,” taps into childhood innocence a la “Toy Story,” plus goes deep weaving in actual Barbie history. (Anyone remember pregnant Midge? The discontinued doll, played by Emerald Fennell, pops up in a running gag.) The narrative jostles between extreme silliness and heady self-reflection, with not a lot of middle ground, though Ferrera and a bunch of brainwashed Barbies are front and center for a hilarious and incisive sequence explaining contemporary gender dynamics.

Surrounded by a supporting cast including Dua Lipa and John Cena, the two leads are stellar together, especially in navigating Barbie and Ken’s complicated codependence. Robbie showcases her comedy chops but really shines in those moments when Barbie is overwhelmed by the ruckus she's inadvertently caused. And Gosling throws himself into all things Ken, wearing an increasingly ludicrous wardrobe and artfully crafting a character arc just as essential to the film’s emotional core as Robbie’s.

That old Aqua song was right: Life in plastic, it is fantastic. With a neon-drenched landscape, a heap of nostalgia and charming performances, Gerwig delivers for all the “Barbie” girls and boys.

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Barbie review: life in plastic, it’s fantastic.

The film is at once a journey of self-actualization and a testament to female solidarity.

From the early, lo-fi days of her career as something of a muse for the mumblecore movement, Greta Gerwig has been interested in messy tales of nascent adulthood. And from her partnerships with now-husband Noah Baumbach, most notably 2012’s Frances Ha , to her own solo directorial work (2017’s Lady Bird and 2019’s Little Women ), her films have continued to bear the mark of a storyteller who understands the ways that modern adults, but especially women, are burdened by the weight and expectations of responsibility.

Gerwig’s Barbie is partially inspired by psychologist and author Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia , a 1994 bestseller about how adolescent girls lose their identities while navigating a looks-obsessed, media-saturated culture. That should be enough to quell expectations of the film playing out as a show of allegiance to one of the most recognizable brands in the world. And if it doesn’t, the subversive streak of Gerwig and Baumbach’s script certainly will.

At once a journey of self-actualization and a testament to female solidarity, Gerwig’s film is here to explain how the patriarchy is an all-inclusive, regressive force. Which isn’t to say that this film, which very smartly sees girlboss feminism as a way for the patriarchy to hide itself better, is a bummer. It certainly helps that the filmmakers are getting their message across with live-action Barbie and Ken dolls. Gerwig and Baumbach make an explicit point of targeting the unrealistic expectations that the Barbie doll has set for generations of kids while also upholding its promise as an object of a young child’s most prized possession: an unabashed imagination.

Riffing on the iconic “Dawn of Man” sequence from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey , Barbie cheekily acknowledges the Mattel brand’s massive cultural footprint by beginning as something of a historical fantasy that retells the story of human evolution as a byproduct of the invention of dolls. It then introduces us to Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), who’s settled into her dream life in Barbie Land: a pristine matriarchal society that exists somewhere in our collective imagination off the coast of—where else?—Venice Beach, California.

It’s there that Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken (Ryan Gosling), trades innocuous, homoerotic banter with another Ken (Simu Liu) while at the same time doting on Barbie, whose mostly content to spend the majority of her days and nights hanging out with her unequivocally supportive best friends, among them President Barbie (Issa Rae), Physicist Barbie (Emma Mackey), and Doctor Barbie (Hari Nef). And though Gosling’s Ken wishes that he received a bit more affection from his girlfriend, for him, too, life in plastic seems pretty fantastic.

Then, one day, the idyllic, semi-autonomous world of Barbie Land—smoothly designed by Sarah Greenwood to mimic the plasticity of the real-life toys, and in a mind-boggling array of bubblegum pinks and cotton-candy blues—experiences a disruption: During a dance break (shades of Vincente Minnelli), Barbie asks her friends if anyone ever thinks about dying.

The rupture of Barbie Land’s utopia takes Barbie on an Oz-like journey of reckoning that’s kicked earnestly into motion by a consultation with Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), a stretchy, clownish doll who doesn’t move right, because, as Helen Mirren’s voiceover tells us, she was played with “too much.” Turns out, Barbie’s “irrepressible thoughts of death” are due to a break in the space-time continuum, and she has to venture into the real world to fix it before she’s in danger of such ghastly things like cellulite. But Gosling’s Ken crashes her trip, and the two are gobsmacked by the realization that sexism and inequality is very much alive in our world.

Then, another disruption. While Barbie is excited to gaze upon a world of complex relationships and simmering contradictions, Ken is mostly attracted to how it’s very clearly ruled by patriarchal prerogative. Soon he takes news of this universe that’s built by and for people that look exactly like him back to the other Kens in Barbie Land, which faces the problem of being completely overrun with fascism. Barbie, meanwhile, is hunted and ogled by men across Los Angeles, as Mattel’s CEO (Will Ferrell) and his all-male executive board try to, quite literally, put her back in a box before the world discovers that she’s escaped.

After years of making a meal out of small budgets, it’s mesmerizing to see what Gerwig does with something much more substantial. Barbie deliriously draws inspiration from a wide range of cinematic sources, with references to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg , Groundhog Day , The Matrix , Toy Story , and, most hilariously, The Godfather . The breadth of these references constitutes a kind of metalanguage for Gerwig and Baumbach, through which they ask us to both respect Barbie’s place in popular culture as well consider the complex relationship society has had with the doll—that is, all of the implications of its massive cultural impact.

In a wonderfully naked moment in the film, one that articulates a certain kind of anxiety that we all have about how we make our mark in a world that expects us to be perfect, Robbie’s Barbie wonders what she’s supposed to do if she isn’t special. Gerwig and Baumbach clearly understand that at some point children throw away their Barbies, but that, by then, these dolls have already done their damage by reinforcing, among other things, gender roles.

Overeager though it may be to proclaim its progressive bona fides, the film sharply understands that the patriarchy represses not just women, but everyone and everything, right down to the environment, and that dismantling it is a liberation for all. And it argues this point through biting satire and the journey that the Barbie and Ken dolls take toward self-awareness. The latter is made especially indelible by Robbie and Gosling, both of whom seamlessly shuffle between the Chaplin-esque comedy of their plastic movements to the sincerity of the film’s pathos as Barbie and Ken travel further down the road of self-discovery.

Barbie is a parody with a morally and politically righteous core, both in dialogue with, and a necessary departure from, the world that Mattel’s Barbie stands behind. In the world of Gerwig’s film, whose detail-rich, forceful vision is the antithesis of the Barbie brand’s vague messaging and sense of trendsetting, not everything is equal. But the film makes you believe in the possibility of that equality—that it can be more than just a beautiful promise. And it does so by refining the doll’s intended message by suggesting that kids aren’t really free to imagine the possibilities of their future if they’re also being forced to conform to expectations.

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Greg Nussen

Greg Nussen is a Los Angeles-based critic and programmer, with words in Salon , Bright Lights Film Journal , Vague Visages , Knock-LA , and elsewhere.

Despite the (otherwise great) filmmakers’ efforts, this movie is and will always be, unavoidably, a doll ad. Just as the Lego movie is unavoidably a toy ad. “It doesn’t really matter what the filmmakers wound up doing with the material” should perhaps have been the text of the movie in lieu of all its pop culture self-reflexivity because, in the end, this picture will bolster sales and erect superstores and erode film and film-going, continuing the latter down the theme park/product movie path, as much as any Lego or Marvel movie has. It’s a real waste of time for filmmakers who could just be doing something else.

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Barbie review: A near-miraculous achievement from Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie

While it’s impossible for any studio film to be truly subversive, this mattel-approved comedy gets away with far more than you’d think was possible, article bookmarked.

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Barbie is one of the most inventive, immaculately crafted and surprising mainstream films in recent memory – a testament to what can be achieved within even the deepest bowels of capitalism. It’s timely, too, arriving a week after the creative forces behind these stories began striking for their right to a living wage and the ability to work without the threat of being replaced by an AI. It’s a pink-splattered manifesto to the power of irreplaceable creative labour and imagination.

While it’s impossible for any studio film to be truly subversive, especially when consumer culture has caught on to the idea that self-awareness is good for business (there’s nothing that companies love more these days than to feel like they’re in on the joke), Barbie gets away with far more than you’d think was possible. It’s a project that writer-director Greta Gerwig , co-writer (plus real-life partner and frequent collaborator) Noah Baumbach, and producer-star Margot Robbie were free to work on in relative privacy, holed up during the pandemic away from the meddlesome impulses of Warner Bros and Mattel executives.

The results are appropriately free-wheeling: There are nods to Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Jacques Tati’s Playtime , deployment of soundstage sets and dance choreography à la Hollywood’s musical Golden Age, and a mischievous streak of corporate satire that calls to mind 2001’s cult classic Josie and the Pussycats . But while the absurdity of its humour sits somewhere between It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Pee-wee’s Big Adventure , its earnest and vulnerable take on womanhood is pure Gerwig, serving as a direct continuation of her Lady Bird and Little Women .

The fact that all of this is tied to one of the most recognisable products in existence – and that any success it enjoys will undoubtedly boost Mattel’s stock prices – underlines the fact that it’s largely impossible to embrace art without embracing hypocrisy. Capitalism doesn’t always swallow art whole; occasionally it thrives in spite of it. And that’s a complexity that feels particularly on brand for a director who had her Jo March, in Little Women , declare: “I am so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it! But – I am so lonely.”

Barbie contains another Gerwig-ian speech, delivered beautifully by an ordinary (human) mum played by America Ferrera, about the hellish trap women have been forced into. Caught between girl-boss feminism and outright misogyny, women now have to be rich, thin, liberated, and eternally grateful without ever breaking a sweat – because when Barbie promised little girls that “women can be anything”, those words got twisted to mean “women should be everything”. Gerwig’s movie begins by playing a brilliant trick on its audience: Helen Mirren’s opening narration is self-congratulatory, a bit of canned PR about Barbie’s “girl power” legacy that grows increasingly tongue-in-cheek. “Thanks to Barbie,” she concludes, “all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved”.

Barbie vs Oppenheimer: Both films majorly exceed expectations as box office frontrunner emerges

We’re then introduced to our Barbie – ie “the Stereotypical Barbie” – who is chipper, confident, blonde, and, most importantly, looks like Margot Robbie. She is eternally adored by Ken ( Ryan Gosling ), whose job is “beach”. Not “lifeguard”, but “beach”. Barbie’s friends all have high-powered jobs: president (Issa Rae), author (Alexandra Shipp), physicist (Emma Mackey), doctor (Hari Nef), and lawyer (Sharon Rooney). Every morning, she steps into her shower (there’s no water), sets out her breakfast of a heart-shaped waffle with a dollop of whipped cream (she doesn’t eat), and then sets off in her pink convertible (she doesn’t walk downstairs, but merely floats). All is perfect. Then Barbie starts having irrepressible thoughts of death.

Barbie’s bid to fix that sudden, scary attack of humanity sees her visit “the Real World”, where she meets the all-male executive board of Mattel (among them Will Ferrell and a wonderfully dorky Jamie Demetriou), who think themselves qualified to determine what little girls like and need because they once had a woman CEO (or two, maybe). Meanwhile, Gerwig uses, through a hysterical farce centred around Gosling and his fellow Kens, the implicit matriarchy of Barbieland to explore how power and visibility shape a person’s self-perception. Gosling gives an all-timer of a comedic performance, one that’s part-baby, part-Zoolander, part-maniac, and 100 per cent a validation for anyone who ever liked him in 2016’s noir comedy The Nice Guys . There are (naturally) some exquisite outfits designed by Jacqueline Durran, some very funny references to discontinued Barbies (have fun reading up on the backstory behind Earring Magic Ken), and a few unexpected pops at fans of Duolingo, Top Gun , and Zack Snyder’s Justice League .

Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in Greta Gerwig’s ‘Barbie’

Barbie is joyous from minute to minute to minute. But it’s where the film ends up that really cements the near-miraculousness of Gerwig’s achievement. Very late in the movie, a conversation is had that neatly sums up one of the great illusions of capitalism – that creations exist independently from those that created them. 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 these current strikes are so necessary.

Dir: Greta Gerwig. Starring: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, Will Ferrell. 12A, 114 minutes.

‘Barbie’ is in cinemas from 21 July

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The Barbie movie finds all the fun in laughing at the men’s rights movement

It’s a takedown of toxic masculinity tied up with a pretty pink wrapper

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by Maddy Myers

Margot Robbie as Barbie, wearing a big beaming smile and a pink gingham spaghetti-strap dress, standing in front of a neon pink DreamHouse slide in the 2023 live-action movie Barbie

I grew up in a Barbie household, as well as a deeply feminist household. Along with My Little Pony, Cherry Merry Muffin , and (prized above all) my extensive collection of She-Ra action figures, my mother gave me and my sister Barbie dolls for “imaginative play,” something Mom encouraged just as much as she encouraged us to play video games — for hand-eye coordination and for our potential careers in STEM, naturally.

Our TV habits were mediated with feminism in mind, too; I watched and rewatched She-Ra: Princess of Power on VHS, but I barely knew He-Man, whom I considered as irrelevant as Ken. As I grew older and met other kids, though, I realized I had been living in Opposite Land. Everybody else knew He-Man better than She-Ra. The female-dominated world of Barbie, She-Ra, My Little Pony, and so on was a farce. The real world was made for Ken.

Heading into the press screening for Barbie , I regressed back into the beautiful, childlike misconceptions of my toy collection. I spent my drive to the movie thinking back on my love of Margot Robbie in Birds of Prey and I, Tonya , as well as my admiration for Greta Gerwig’s body of work, from Frances Ha to Little Women . Even knowing this movie would have to wrestle with Mattel’s involvement and control over the massive Barbie brand, I knew director Greta Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach would find their own way to unpack and analyze modern standards of femininity and feminist thought. I figured it’d be a little funny, a little deep, maybe a little too basic, but hopefully smarter than The Lego Movie .

I did not expect Barbie to be a movie about Ken — and more importantly, a movie Ryan Gosling steals with such glorious aplomb that I can’t even be that mad at him for it.

[ Ed. note: Minor setup spoilers ahead for Barbie .]

Barbie (Margot Robbie), in a glittery pink gown, does a line dance in front of a pair of wall-less pink plastic life-sized Barbie Dreamhouses, flanked by five Kens in all white, played by Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, Ncuti Gatwa, and Scott Evans, in the 2023 movie Barbie

Don’t get me wrong. Margot Robbie is no slouch as what the movie calls “Stereotypical Barbie” — the blond bombshell that kids in Mattel focus groups point to when presented with diverse Barbie dolls and asked, “Which one is Barbie?” Stereotypical Barbie starts the movie as a confident woman who knows exactly who she is, and doesn’t ever want anything to change. She lives in Barbieland, a fantasy realm conjured by Mattel that’s powered by the imaginations of kids who play with Barbie dolls. It’s a world ruled by Barbies, and unashamed of traditional feminine tropes. The president is a Barbie (played by Issa Rae, in a pink silk “President” sash). The Supreme Court is all Barbie. And every Nobel Prize winner in history is — you guessed it — a Barbie. Every pink-washed DreamHouse mansion in Barbieland is owned by a woman who makes her own money and spends her free time indulging in “girls’ nights” where everybody shares a glorious communal wardrobe.

Stereotypical Barbie has no reason to leave this beautiful feminine realm. She’s forced to trek into the harsh world of Reality only because somewhere, someone is playing with her while experiencing such intense existential angst that their emotions are reaching Barbieland and drilling into Barbie’s psyche. Her real-world owner is inadvertently causing her to think about death, get actual cellulite on her thighs, and even develop articulated ankles that experience all-too-real pain when she stuffs her feet into stiletto heels.

But even before the wall between Barbieland and Reality starts breaking down, it’s all too clear that this is Ken’s movie. At the film’s outset, Barbie has it all, and Robbie sells Barbieland’s bland, uncomplicated happiness with a frozen-but-satisfied smile. For Ken, though, it’s never been that simple. Barbie is happy by default, but Ken is only happy when Barbie acknowledges him. In a world where every night is girls’ night, Ken can never experience satisfaction.

Ken isn’t just frustrated about competing with all the many other Kens for Barbie’s affection — although that is an issue, with hot, comparatively youthful it boy Simu Liu playing a version of Ken who makes Gosling’s Ken sweat bullets. Ken lacks purpose in Barbieland, and he wants that to change. Without Barbie, he’s nothing — and most of the time, Ken is without Barbie. He’s an afterthought whose main role in life is holding her purse.

Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling), both wearing garish, patterned neon skating outfits and incredibly bright neon-yellow kneepads and Rollerblades, stand in front of a beach between two trees covered in graffiti and go in for a high-five in the 2023 live-action movie Barbie

Barbie starts off slow, doing the work of establishing the cutesy realm of Barbieland so there’s a clear, dark contrast when the film eventually enters Reality. But even in this opening act, Gosling swipes each scene from the sidelines, his face wracked by the near-constant heartbreak of Barbie’s lack of interest in him. As a viewer, I was far more drawn to his arc, even as I worried, Is it a bad thing that Ken is the best thing about the Barbie movie?

But Barbie stays one step ahead of that thought, because it’s all leading up to an expert commentary on how little girls will always realize, sooner or later, that the real world is run by men, and that its Kens have more power than its Barbies. And once Gosling’s Ken makes it to Reality, he realizes this too, and he goes full men’s rights activist, transitioning from Barbie’s placeholder boyfriend into one of the most fascinating antagonists in modern pop cinema.

The film’s comedic yet incisive commentary on toxic masculinity is its strongest throughline, as it infects Gosling’s Ken, and eventually all of the rest of Barbieland’s Kens and Barbies. Whenever the movie is joking about the patriarchy and the very idea of the men’s rights movement, it sings. It also literally sings, with frequent in-jokey background songs, and a sequence where all the Kens bore their respective Barbie girlfriends to tears by whipping out acoustic guitars to sing at her rather than to her. We all know what we don’t want in a man. The far more difficult point to make, it turns out, is about Barbie herself, and what she represents. Who is Barbie in 2023?

Margot Robbie’s Barbie asks that question in a lot of different ways, but the answer becomes no clearer once she visits Reality. It’s useful to capitalize Reality when describing Barbie , because unlike Splash or Enchanted , this movie does not attempt to depict a recognizable version of our human world. Reality as depicted in Barbie is as much of a caricature as Barbieland, stuffed with recognizable tropes: sexist, catcalling construction workers; fist-pumping gym bros; and well-heeled white-collar executives who helpfully explain how the patriarchy works. That works perfectly to illustrate the extreme cartoonishness of men’s rights as interpreted by Ken, but it falls a bit short when it comes to illustrating the complexities of Barbie’s identity as a doll, a global brand, and a social phenomenon, much less a character attempting to understand contemporary American womanhood.

The back of a garishly neon-painted panel van opens to reveal five people in matching powder-pink jumpsuits and nonmatching pink-rimmed sunglasses: Barbie (Margot Robbie), also Barbie (Alexandra Shipp), Allan (Michael Cera), Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), and Gloria (America Ferrera), in the live-action 2023 movie Barbie

There’s a third rail that Gerwig and Baumbach scarcely dare to touch in Barbie : body image. Barbie designers at Mattel have struggled in this arena, too, as Barbie’s nonstandard but idealized body proportions have remained controversial, even as the company has introduced several variations in recent years . (They include a “curvy” Barbie, a “petite” Barbie , and a Barbie with articulated knees who can use a wheelchair.) Yes, Barbie can have every career imaginable — she can be president , even if real-life women can’t — but can she manage to rise above a size 6?

In the Barbie movie, she certainly can. Robbie definitely doesn’t have the proportions of the original “stereotypical Barbie,” although I’d say she’s close enough. (I don’t care to look up the numerical comparison, because it would only depress me.) But this movie’s full cast of Barbies would absolutely not be able to share their outfits, which the movie never explicitly addresses or resolves. Sharon Rooney of Hulu’s My Mad Fat Diary gets to be a Barbie without her size ever being mentioned. Hari Nef , the first transgender model to sign with IMG Models, is also a Barbie. Like all the other Barbies (and unlike so many trans people), she never has to worry about anybody questioning her genitalia, because nobody in Barbieland has any genitalia whatsoever.

Barbieland is a fantasy of perfect inclusion, yet it’s also a flattened one, because even in Reality, the issues facing non-Barbie-type women never fully surface. They get a quick, pointed acknowledgement from the mouth of Gloria (America Ferrera), a put-upon Reality mom who works for Mattel and still loves Barbie in spite of all the baggage that comes with her. At one point, Gloria runs down the ever-expanding list of double standards that modern American women face, such as the pressure to be “thin,” which women must claim is because they want to be “healthy” so they don’t look vain or shallow, even though they’ll really just be judged for not being thin. None of the non-thin Barbies react to this point, because they don’t quite work in a narrative that has to simplify all the social and gender issues it raises, at least if the credits are ever going to roll.

By the same token, the nonwhite Barbies and Kens argue about “the patriarchy” among themselves upon learning about it, but they don’t ever seem to learn about racial politics, even though Simu Liu’s Ken wouldn’t have existed 13 years ago. (The first-ever Asian Ken doll was, um, “ Samurai Ken ” in 2010.) And Kate McKinnon, playing a so-called Weird Barbie who experienced an extreme haircut and makeover at the hands of an experimental child, never actually answers the question anybody would have upon seeing her gay-ass haircut and knowing the actor’s sexuality. Yet even if no one says it, Weird Barbie is clearly Gay Barbie.

Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), a Barbie in a shapeless, baggy, multicolored dress, with her hair cut at various short lengths dyed pastel pink and blue, and with scribbles on her face, lies on the ground staring at the stockinged, shoeless feet of Barbie (Margot Robbie) in the 2023 live-action movie Barbie.

Skipping over all those conversations isn’t an oversight: It’s a series of intentional decisions designed to keep an already overstuffed, heady, and cerebral film moving along at a sprightly pace. I don’t need the Barbie movie, brought to me with Mattel’s approval, to offer incisive political commentary on every issue of the day. It’s more than enough that it unravels so many of America’s masculine anxieties of the moment, and that it does its job backward and in high heels.

Barbie the doll has to be everything for everyone, and she’s never succeeded. Barbie the movie has been asked to perform the same impossible trick — and just like I still feel a sentimental attachment to Barbie, I feel an overwhelming fondness and admiration for the movie’s daring attempt to make it work. I had forgotten that I had ever even experienced the dream world Barbieland offered me as a young girl. Barbie made me remember. That alone is enough to make the whole movie sparkle with surprising, refreshing fire.

Barbie opens in theaters on July 21.

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<i>Barbie</i> Is Very Pretty But Not Very Deep

Barbie Is Very Pretty But Not Very Deep

T he fallacy of Barbie the doll is that she’s supposed to be both the woman you want to be and your friend, a molded chunk of plastic—in a brocade evening dress, or a doctor’s outfit, or even Jane Goodall’s hyper-practical safari suit—which is also supposed to inspire affection. But when you’re a child, your future self is not a friend—she’s too amorphous for that, and a little too scary. And you may have affection, or any number of conflicted feelings, for your Barbie, but the truth is that she’s always living in the moment, her moment, while you’re trying to dream your own future into being. Her zig-zagging signals aren’t a problem—they’re the whole point. She’s always a little ahead of you, which is why some love her, others hate her, and many, many fall somewhere in the vast and complex in-between.

With Barbie the movie —starring Margot Robbie, also a producer on the film—director Greta Gerwig strives to mine the complexity of Barbie the doll, while also keeping everything clever and fun, with a hot-pink exclamation point added where necessary. There are inside jokes, riffs on Gene Kelly-style choreography, and many, many one-line zingers or extended soliloquies about modern womanhood—observations about all that’s expected of us, how exhausting it all is, how impossible it is to ever measure up. Gerwig has done a great deal of advance press about the movie, assuring us that even though it’s about a plastic toy, it’s still stuffed with lots of ideas and thought and real feelings. (She and Noah Baumbach co-wrote the script.) For months now there has been loads of online chatter about how “subversive” the movie is—how it loves Barbie but also mocks her slightly, and how it makes fun of Mattel executives even though their real-life counterparts are both bankrolling the whole enterprise and hoping to make a huge profit off it. The narrative is that Gerwig has somehow pulled off a coup, by taking Mattel’s money but using it to create real art , or at least just very smart entertainment.

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Screen Rant

New barbie movie being discussed, but greta gerwig & margot robbie reportedly aren’t thrilled.

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14 Upcoming Movies Based On Mattel Toys Releasing After Barbie

New barbie movie could be even bigger than $1.4 billion hit, even without margot robbie & greta gerwig, now i understand why george lucas really didn't like the force awakens.

Mattel is reportedly in talks to partner with Illumination to bring an animated Barbie movie to life.
Director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie, who would seemingly not be involved in the project, are said to not be keen on the idea.
Given Illumination's recent track record of animated hits and Barbie 's positive reception last year, an animated Barbie movie from them seems like an obvious recipe for box office success.

A new Barbie movie is reportedly being discussed, but Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig are said to not be keen on the idea. Based on the iconic Mattel doll, Barbie, which was directed by Gerwig and features Robbie in the title role, was released last summer to critical and commercial success. The movie becoming a smash hit led to questions regarding the potential for Barbie 2 and the larger future of the screen side of the franchise.

Now, Matthew Belloni reports in his Puck newsletter that Mattel is in talks with Illumination, the company behind the Despicable Me and Minions franchises, to bring an animated take on Barbie to life . Mattel retains the animation rights for Barbie , meaning they could partner with Illumination without affecting whatever plans are in place with Warner Bros. regarding the live-action future of the franchise. According to the report, both Robbie and Gerwig are aware that Illumination talks are taking place and " aren't thrilled " about the idea.

Is An Animated Barbie Movie Inevitable?

Illumination is an obvious choice for an animated barbie universe.

Barbie (Margot Robbie) looking confused while Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) stand next to her in Barbie.

Barbie reviews were glowing from critics and audiences alike, and the film ended up becoming a box office sensation. Made on an estimated budget of $145 million, the film would ultimately gross $1.446 billion worldwide. From every angle, the film was a hit, and Mattel will certainly be taking this as a sign that the world is ready for more Barbie .

Barbie 's success was due in part to the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon, which began as a result of both Gerwig's film and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer releasing on the same day. What began as an apparent competition between the two films eventually blossomed into a celebration of both among audiences.

Barbie 2 with both Gerwig and Robbie is an obvious place to start given the positive reception to their creative vision for the character. A Ken spinoff starring Ryan Gosling , too, is another possibility. Pushing the franchise into feature film animation, however, would be an additional way to create more Barbie content potentially without messing with whatever ideas Gerwig may have in place for the live-action realm. Illumination, specifically, would also be a big get for Mattel given the company's involvement in some of the most successful animated movies in recent memory.

Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots and a Magic 8-Ball behind Margot Robbie's Barbie

Mattel Films has announced numerous developments to turn its famous toys into major motion pictures, all inspired by the massive success of Barbie.

In addition to Despicable Me and Minions , Illumination released The Super Mario Bros. Movie in 2023 , which, despite lukewarm reviews from critics, was a major hit with audiences and grossed $1.362 billion worldwide. Many of Illumination's movies, in fact, follow a similar trend, receiving middling responses from critics but striking a major chord with family audiences. Though it might be Illumination's critical track record that is giving Robbie and Gerwig pause, Mattel partnering with the company for an animated Barbie movie makes a lot of sense from a commercial perspective.

Source: Puck

Barbie is a multimedia franchise that started with the original Barbie doll created in 1959 by Ruth Handler, who would go on to be a co-founder of Mattel. Over a billion Barbie dolls have been sold since then, which spawned several TV shows, movies, video games, and other merchandise. In 2023, a Barbie movie starring Margot Robbie was released.

Mattel Reportedly Wants to Make Animated Barbie Movie After Live-Action Film's Success

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Following the success of the billion-dollar live-action Barbie movie, it appears Mattel wants to build on its acclaim with a different feature-length take on its most famous doll. A new report claims the toymaking company is considering telling Barbie's story in the animated world.

According to Puck, Mattel is engaged in talks with Illumination , the company known for franchises such as Despicable Me and Minions , about potentially making a Barbie animated movie . Mattel holds Barbie 's animation rights, allowing them to make an animated film with Illumination without affecting any plans for a potential live-action sequel with Warner Bros.

Split Image: Margot Robbie in I, Tonya, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Suicide Squad

10 Movies That Defined Margot Robbie's Career

Margot Robbie is a renowned actor best known for her performances as Barbie and as Harley Quinn, but her career is filled with defining movies.

However, the key players in the live-action Barbie movie don't seem enthused about the animated version. The report claims lead actor/producer Margot Robbie and director/co-writer Greta Gerwig know about the talks between Mattel and Illumination and "aren't thrilled" about the prospect of an animated Barbie film. Considering Robbie and Gerwig have expressed hesitancy about doing a Barbie live-action sequel despite its record-breaking success, their lack of eagerness for a possible animated version isn't surprising.

Barbie Is the Biggest Earner in Warner Bros. History

Barbie became the highest-grossing movie ever for Warner Bros . and the biggest earner of any film in 2023, making over $1.44 billion worldwide following its release last summer. Barbie 's closest competition at the box office last year was The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($1.36 million worldwide), which Illumination is attached to and has since spawned an announced sequel. Along with its commercial success, amid heavy competition from Oppenheimer and Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning , Barbie won an Academy Award and multiple Grammys.

Margot Robbie's Next Film Lands Release Date

Barbie star Margot Robbie's next movie, which also features fellow Oscar nominee Colin Farrell, officially gets a premiere date.

Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz has been teasing a potential Barbie sequel and spinoffs based on its characters since last summer, though he backtracked on his comments . Warner Bros. co-CEO Pam Abdy recently revealed talks have been happening regularly between the studio and Gerwig about a live-action sequel. Meanwhile, Gerwig didn't rule out the possibility of making a Ken spinoff movie starring Ryan Gosling. Barbie sees Robbie and Gosling star alongside America Ferrara, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Dua Lipa, Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ncuti Gatwa, John Cena, Helen Mirren, Will Ferrell and Rhea Perlman.

Along with potentially making more Barbie movies, Mattel Films is developing multiple projects bringing their popular toys and characters to life. One of them is a planned Hot Wheels film produced by J.J. Abrams , which Mattel has teased as "exciting" and "emotional." Additionally, Mattel is developing a movie about Barney, the popular purple dinosaur that's been a fixture on television for generations. The Barney film features Academy Award-winning actor Daniel Kaluuya.

Fans can stream Barbie via Max or purchase it on home video.

Source: Puck

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.

Tracking Down Klaus Barbie

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How to Watch Every Barbie Movie Online

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Anushree Arora

Official JustWatch writer

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie transported us straight to Barbieland, and reignited the Barbie fever all around the world. But, Barbie, movies have been around long before Margot Robbie stepped into the bedazzled shoes of Barbie back in 2023. Noticing the growing popularity of digital and interactive media, the toy company Mattel, partnered up with animation studios, and began producing their own animated Barbie movies, which were released on television all through the early 2000’s. Check out JustWatch’s streaming guide below to find out where to stream, buy, or rent all the Barbie movies online! This detailed guide includes all the movies listed in order of release.

Mattel launched this division with the 2001 animated-fantasy film, Barbie in the Nutcracker , which reimagined the classic tale of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, and featured music from Tchaikovsky's ballet recital, The Nutcracker. Mattel continued to follow this premise of adapting pre-existing stories and tales in the Barbie universe for a series of films including, Barbie as Rapunzel , Barbie of Swan Lake , and Barbie as the Princess and the Pauper.

The franchise eventually introduced original storylines in 2005, with the Barbie: Fairytopia franchise, which includes five direct to television feature length animated films. Simultaneously, Mattel, also introduced, The Barbie Diaries, a coming of age, animated drama film that saw Barbie and her best friends tackling the ups and downs of high-school. This film was released in 2008, and was very different from the rest of the movies which focused more on princess fairytales. Mattel reverted back to creating more fairytale-centric films for the rest of the decade.

However, the toy franchise took a strong shift in direction in 2010, when they switched from the Mattel Entertainment banner to Barbie Entertainment, and began favoring more modern-day plots and storylines. Shifting the focus away from happily ever afters, the new-age Barbie movies leaned more towards highlighting stories from Barbie’s life with her friends and family. Movies like Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse, paid more attention to music, fashion, and pop-culture, and saw a new shift in the world of Barbie movies.

Where to Watch All the Barbie Movies in Order of Release and Online

Just like Hallmark Christmas movies, Barbie movies hold a special place in the hearts of many. With nearly one new movie released every year, there are now over 40 animated Barbie movies to enjoy. Whether you're in the mood for a nostalgic re-watch or looking for a magical time with your kids, here's where you can find and watch all the animated Barbie movies online!

Barbie in the Nutcracker

"Barbie" stars as Clara in this animated retelling of the classic Christmas ballet, complete with Tchaikovsky soundtrack and ballet choreography.

Barbie as Rapunzel

Long, long ago, in a time of magic and dragons, there lived a girl named Rapunzel who had the most beautiful radiant hair the world had ever seen. But Rapunzel's life was far from wonderful. She lived as a servant to Gothel, a jealous, scheming witch who kept her hidden deep in a forbidding forest, guarded by the enormous dragon Hugo and surrounded by an enchanted glass wall. However, in a twist of fate, Rapunzel's discovery of a magic paintbrush leads her on a journey that will unravel a web of deception, bring peace to two feuding kingdoms, and ultimately lead her to love with the help of Penelope, the least intimidating of dragons!

Barbie of Swan Lake

Barbie as Odette, the young daughter of a baker, follows a unicorn into the Enchanted Forest and is transformed into a swan by an evil wizard intent on defeating the Fairy Queen.

Barbie as The Princess & the Pauper

In her first animated musical featuring seven original songs, Barbie comes to life in this modern re-telling of a classic tale of mistaken identity and the power of friendship. Based on the story by Mark Twain.

Barbie: Fairytopia

Elina is a flower fairy who discovers that her home of Magic Meadow has been overcome by a horrible malady that is killing the flowers and making the fairies unable to fly. With the help of Bibble, a puffball and a giant butterfly named Hue she attempts to find Azura, a Guardian Fairy. She's challenged along the way by the evil Laverna who wants to usurp the Enchantress, the ruler of Fairytopia.

Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus

Princess Annika escapes the clutches of the evil wizard, explores the wonders of Cloud Kingdom, and teams up with a magnificent winged horse - who turns out to be her sister, Princess Brietta - to defeat the wizard and break the spells that imprisoned her family.

Barbie Fairytopia: Mermaidia

In this animated follow-up to Fairytopia, Elina enlists the help of a mermaid, Nori, to save her friend Nalu, a merman prince who has been captured by the wicked Laverna.

Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses

King Randolph sends for his cousin, Duchess Rowena, to help turn his daughters, Princess Genevieve and her eleven sisters, into royal material. But the Duchess strips the sisters of their fun, including their favorite pastime: dancing. When all hope may be lost, the sisters discover a secret passageway to a magical land where they can dance the night away.

Barbie Fairytopia: Magic of the Rainbow

Elina goes to a fairy school to learn dancing and fairy magic. The spring of the fairy land is soon threatened by evil Laverna who intends to prevent fairies from performing the annual vital rainbow dance. Elina must stop quarreling with her fellow students and unite them to save the first bud of the spring.

Barbie as the Island Princess

Shipwrecked as a child, Rosella (Barbie) grows up on the island under the watchful eyes of her loving animal friends. The arrival of Prince Antonio leads Rosella and her furry pals to explore civilization and ultimately save the kingdom by uncovering a secret plot.

Barbie Mariposa

Elina, heroine of the Fairytopia films tells her friend Bibble the story of Flutterfield, a faraway kingdom populated by fairies with butterfly wings. Henna, the evil butterfly fairy has poisoned the queen of Flutterfield in an attempt to take over the kingdom.

Barbie and the Diamond Castle

Liana and Alexa (Barbie and Teresa) are best friends who share everything, including their love of singing. Upon meeting a girl inside a mirror, the duo embark on a journey that will put their friendship to the ultimate test.

Barbie in 'A Christmas Carol'

On Christmas Eve, Kelly is reluctant to go to a Christmas Eve ball, so Barbie tells her the story of Eden Starling, a glamorous singing diva in the Victorian England and the owner of a theatre house. However, Eden is self-centered and loves only herself. She is frequently accompanied by her snooty cat, Chuzzlewit. She does not believe in Christmas and orders all her employees to work on Christmas.

Barbie Presents: Thumbelina

Meet a tiny girl named Thumbelina who lives in harmony with nature in the magical world of the Twillerbees that's hidden among the wildflowers. At the whim of a spoiled young girl named Makena, Thumbelina and her two friends have their patch of wildflowers uprooted and are transported to a lavish apartment in the city.

Barbie and the Three Musketeers

Corinne (Barbie) is a young country girl who heads to Paris to pursue her big dream – to become a female musketeer! Never could she imagine she would meet three other girls who secretly share the same dream! Using their special talents, the girls work together as a team to foil a plot and save the prince. It's all for one and one for all!

Barbie in A Mermaid Tale

Barbie stars as Merliah, a surfer who learns a shocking secret: she's a mermaid! She and her dolphin friend set out for an undersea adventure to rescue her mother, the queen of Oceana.

Barbie: A Fashion Fairytale

Join Barbie in a colourful, modern-day fairytale filled with fashion, friends and fun! Barbie and her dog Sequin jet off to visit her Aunt's amazing fashion house in Paris, and much to her surprise it's about to be shut down forever. After she discovers three enchanting Flairies with sparkle-magic powers, Barbie comes up with a brilliant idea to save the business. She even inspires Alice, a shy fashion designer, and together they create a dazzling runway fashion show. Barbie shows that magic happens when you believe in yourself.

Barbie: A Fairy Secret

Get ready for Barbie: A Fairy Secret, an amazing adventure with Barbie where she discovers there are fairies living secretly all around us! When Ken is suddenly whisked away by a group of fairies, Barbie's two fashion stylist friends reveal they are actually fairies and that Ken has been taken to a magical secret fairy world not far away! Barbie and her rival Raquelle take off with the fairy friends on an action-packed journey to bring him back. Along the way they must stick together and learn that the real magic lies not just in the fairy world itself, but in the power of friendship.

Barbie: Princess Charm School

Barbie stars as Blair Willows, a kind-hearted girl who is chosen to attend Princess Charm School: a magical, modern place that teaches dancing, how to have tea parties, and proper princess manners. Blair loves her classes -- as well as the helpful magical sprites and her new friends, Princesses Hadley and Isla. But when royal teacher Dame Devin discovers that Blair looks a lot like the kingdom’s missing princess, she turns Blair’s world upside down to stop her from claiming the throne. Now Blair, Hadley and Delancy must find an enchanted crown to prove Blair’s true identity in this charming and magical princess story!

Barbie: A Perfect Christmas

Join Barbie and her sisters Skipper, Stacie and Chelsea as their holiday vacation plans turn into a most unexpected adventure and heartwarming lesson. After a snowstorm diverts their plane, the girls find themselves far from their New York destination and their holiday dreams. Now stranded at a remote inn in the tiny town of Tannenbaum, the sisters are welcomed by new friends and magical experiences. In appreciation for the wonderful hospitality they receive, they use their musical talents to put on a performance for the whole town. Barbie and her sisters realize the joy of being together is what really makes A Perfect Christmas!

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‘It Ends With Us,’ a Romance Based on a Best Seller, Soars at the Box Office

The film, which cost $25 million to make, is on track to earn an estimated $50 million in North America on its opening weekend, analysts say.

Isabela Ferrer, wearing a long black dress, and Blake Lively, wearing a long feathery red coat over a white dress, stand on a stage in front of a big image promoting "It Ends With Us."

By Nicole Sperling

Colleen Hoover’s book “It Ends With Us” has been a fixture on the best-seller list for years. And now, the movie adaptation has become a smash at the box office. The $25 million film from Sony Pictures is on track to earn an estimated $50 million in the United States and Canada, box office analysts say.

Starring Blake Lively, the romance is based on Ms. Hoover’s most popular book — one that was initially released in 2016 but reappeared on the best-seller list in the midst of the pandemic in 2021 and has since spent some 140 weeks there. Buoyed by TikTok, the book, about a complicated love triangle with undertones of domestic violence, has sold 8 million copies and found fans worldwide.

The low-budget film comes at a time when there has been little in the marketplace geared to women, in contrast with last summer when “Barbie” earned $1.4 billion worldwide and became the highest-grossing film of the year. Sony took advantage of this dearth in the marketplace with a potent social media campaign that featured Ms. Lively, guest appearances by her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and the help of her friend Taylor Swift, who contributed the song “My Tears Ricochet” to the film and the trailer.

On Friday alone, the PG-13 rated film earned more than $24 million as audiences tuned in to see Ms. Lively play a florist with a challenging past who falls for a sexy, abusive neurosurgeon played by Justin Baldoni, who also directed the film. It took in another $13.7 million on Saturday and is projected to earn about $12 million on Sunday.

The film’s performance is a welcome boost for the box office, which is still down some 16 percent since last year at this time.

“Pure romance is not a big performer at the box office, but occasionally the right story based on the right book comes along, and with a well-cast female lead the movie catches fire,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers. “That’s happening here.”

Reviews have been middling. The New York Times called it “fitfully diverting, at times touching, often ridiculous and, at 2 hours and 10 minutes, almost offensively long.” Yet audiences are giving it high marks. The Rotten Tomatoes audience score is hovering at 94 percent positive and the exit score, as recorded by tracking service CinemaScore, is A-.

The film will just miss the No. 1 slot for the weekend with Mr. Reynolds’s hit, “Deadpool vs. Wolverine,” holding on for its third frame. The Marvel movie will soon cross the $500 million threshold.

Things weren’t as rosy for the Lionsgate adaptation of the video game “Borderlands,” which despite the star power of Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart and Jack Black, took in an estimated $8.8 million. It was a total misfire for the $115 million sci-fi comedy from the director Eli Roth.

Nicole Sperling covers Hollywood and the streaming industry. She has been a reporter for more than two decades. More about Nicole Sperling

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Alien: Romulus

While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonists come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe. While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonists come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe. While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young space colonists come face to face with the most terrifying life form in the universe.

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Trivia Director Fede Alvarez sought out the special effects crew from Aliens (1986) to work on the creatures. Physical sets, practical creatures, and miniatures were used wherever possible to help ground later VFX work.
Goofs When the characters first enter the space station, the artificial gravity briefly turns on and then off again. Shortly thereafter, they enter a room where several objects are hovering in mid-air. If the objects had momentum immediately after the gravity switched off they should be moving on a trajectory, and if not they should still be against the floor. Either way, they should not be unmoving several feet off the floor.

Andy : The solution for a claustrophobic astronaut is to give him more space.

Crazy credits The 20th Century Studios fanfare freezes and turns ominous, as in Alien³ (1992) , leading into the film's opening scene. The logo itself suffers a burst of static and turns green.
Connections Featured in Nerdrotic: The Acolyte: Force is Female CONFIRMED? The Death of Theaters - The Real BBC @MauLer @HeelvsBabyface (2024)
Soundtracks Theme from Alien Written by Jerry Goldsmith

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Barbie movie review & film summary (2023)
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' Review: Out of the Box and On the Road
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.
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
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 ...
'Barbie' Review: Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling Excel
Ryan Gosling. 'Barbie' Review: Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling Compete for Control of High-Concept Living Doll Comedy. Reviewed at Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, July 9, 2023. MPA Rating: PG ...
Barbie review: a feminist parable fighting to be great in spite of
Greta Gerwig's Barbie is often good and sometimes great, but it always feels like it's fighting to be itself rather than the movie Warner Bros. and Mattel Films want. By Charles Pulliam-Moore ...
Barbie: Reviews of Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling
July 19, 2023. As reviews for "Barbie" rolled out ahead of its weekend opening, a critical divide emerged. Some thought that Greta Gerwig, the acclaimed director of "Lady Bird" and ...
Barbie reviews: What do critics make of the Margot Robbie film?
In a five-star review, the Independent's Clarisse Loughrey said: "Barbie is one of the most inventive, immaculately crafted and surprising mainstream films in recent memory - a testament to what ...
Barbie
Full Review | Dec 28, 2023. Denise Pieniazek Puesta en Escena (AR) Barbie is very entertaining and despite the apparent artificiality, it questions social mandates. Throughout the film, a ...
'Barbie' Review: Greta Gerwig's Funny, Feminist Fantasia Delights
Yes, the Barbie movie will definitely make you laugh, probably make you cry, and absolutely make you think. It opens, of course, with an homage to Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey ...
'Barbie' Review: Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in Greta Gerwig Comedy
July 18, 2023 4:00pm. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in 'Barbie' Courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment. There isn't exactly a God in Greta Gerwig 's Barbie (unless you count Helen Mirren's ...
Barbie First Reactions: Witty, Impeccably Designed, Overblown Fun
The movie of the summer may have finally arrived, as the buzz on Barbie is exceptional. The first critics' reactions have made their way online following the Sunday night premiere of the movie, which stars Margot Robbie as the titular doll and Ryan Gosling as Ken. Co-written and directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Greta Gerwig with fellow Academy Award nominee Noah Baumbach, Barbie is ...
'Barbie' review: Margot Robbie doll-ivers
Margot Robbie in the movie "Barbie.". (Warner Bros.) By Justin Chang Film Critic. July 18, 2023 4 PM PT. Greta Gerwig's "Barbie," an exuberant, sometimes exhaustingly clever piece of ...
Barbie review: Greta Gerwig's fiercely funny, feminist Dreamhouse
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 ...
Movie Review: She's Perfect Barbie. He's Scene-Stealing Ken. Their life
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.)
'Barbie' Review: The Most Subversive Blockbuster of the 21st Century?
movie review 'Barbie' May Be the Most Subversive Blockbuster of the 21st Century It's a long commercial for a legacy corporate brand and a pretty-in-pink "f-ck you" to the patriarchy.
'Barbie' review: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling sparkle in fun toy story
2:45. In director Greta Gerwig's playful hands, "Barbie" is a bedazzled plastic Trojan horse. Awash in pink-drenched Dreamhouses and plucky dolls, the enjoyably goofy and enormously creative ...
'Barbie' Review: Life in Plastic, It's Fantastic
In the world of Gerwig's film, whose detail-rich, forceful vision is the antithesis of the Barbie brand's vague messaging and sense of trendsetting, not everything is equal. But the film makes you believe in the possibility of that equality—that it can be more than just a beautiful promise. And it does so by refining the doll's intended ...
Barbie is a near-miraculous achievement
Barbie review: A near-miraculous achievement from Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie. While it's impossible for any studio film to be truly subversive, this Mattel-approved comedy gets away with far ...
Barbie review: A laugh-out-loud mockery of men's rights
Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Will Ferrell, Michael Cera, and America Ferrera star in Barbie, Greta Gerwig's gleeful satire of toxic masculinity.
'Barbie' delivers a feminist message dressed up in all the right
Still, there's an enjoyable movie buried under all that hype, especially for those receptive to unwrapping the neatly packaged real-world themes while watching "Barbie" strut her stuff ...
Barbie Movie Review: Very Pretty But Not Very Deep
By Stephanie Zacharek. July 18, 2023 7:00 PM EDT. T he fallacy of Barbie the doll is that she's supposed to be both the woman you want to be and your friend, a molded chunk of plastic—in a ...
New Barbie Movie Being Discussed, But Greta Gerwig & Margot Robbie
Barbie reviews were glowing from critics and audiences alike, and the film ended up becoming a box office sensation. Made on an estimated budget of $145 million, the film would ultimately gross $1.446 billion worldwide. From every angle, the film was a hit, and Mattel will certainly be taking this as a sign that the world is ready for more Barbie.
OK, Fine: I Did Barbenheimer
During the adverts, a Barbie preview played, and the Oppenheimer audience gasped and giggled. That mood didn't last. That mood didn't last. Within 30 seconds of the film starting, the room was ...
Mattel Reportedly Want to Make Animated Barbie Movie After Live ...
However, the key players in the live-action Barbie movie don't seem enthused about the animated version. The report claims lead actor/producer Margot Robbie and director/co-writer Greta Gerwig know about the talks between Mattel and Illumination and "aren't thrilled" about the prospect of an animated Barbie film. Considering Robbie and Gerwig have expressed hesitancy about doing a Barbie live ...
Tracking Down Klaus Barbie
Visit the movie page for 'Tracking Down Klaus Barbie' on Moviefone. Discover the movie's synopsis, cast details and release date. Watch trailers, exclusive interviews, and movie review. Your guide ...
How to Watch Every Barbie Movie Online
Movies like Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse, paid more attention to music, fashion, and pop-culture, and saw a new shift in the world of Barbie movies. Where to Watch All the Barbie Movies in Order of Release and Online. Just like Hallmark Christmas movies, Barbie movies hold a special place in the hearts of many. With nearly one new movie ...
'It Ends With Us' Soars at the Box Office
"Pure romance is not a big performer at the box office, but occasionally the right story based on the right book comes along, and with a well-cast female lead the movie catches fire," said ...
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Reviewed at Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, July 9, 2023. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 114 MIN.

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Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is often good and sometimes great, but it always feels like it’s fighting to be itself rather than the movie Warner Bros. and Mattel Films want.

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