movie reviews for barbie

“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 .

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
Alexandre Desplat
Mark Ronson
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‘Barbie’ May Be the Most Subversive Blockbuster of the 21st Century

By David Fear

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

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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’ Reviews Are In: Slickly Subversive or Inescapably Corporate?

Some critics viewed the highly-anticipated movie as satirically capitalistic, while others saw it as capitalistically satirical.

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Margot Robbie as Barbie stands in the middle of a screenshot from the movie; she’s wearing a sparkly dress, turned to the side, winking and clapping her hands. People surround her, in various poses of dancing, and there’s a lot of pink.

By Julia Jacobs

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 “Little Women,” had met the expectations for a more subversive take on the 11.5-inch Mattel phenomenon. They thought Gerwig’s script, which she collaborated on with her partner, Noah Baumbach, succeeded in acknowledging the criticisms that the Barbie brand has received over the years — including unrealistic representations of women’s bodies and, up until recent years, a lack of diversity in its collection — while presenting a comedy that leans into the delightful weirdness of the Barbie universe. Others felt that the director did not go far enough in dinging her corporate sponsors, keeping the critiques of consumerism and female beauty standards at surface level.

Critics tended to be unified in their praise of the movie’s stars, however, celebrating Margot Robbie’s surprising emotional depth as the so-called stereotypical Barbie who embarks on an eye-opening journey outside of the meticulously manufactured dolls’ world, as well as Ryan Gosling’s deadpan comedy as a Ken who delights in his discovery of the patriarchy.

Read on for some highlights.

‘Barbie’ May Be the Most Subversive Blockbuster of the 21st Century [ Rolling Stone ]

The movie does more than avoid delivering a two-hour commercial for Mattel, David Fear writes, suggesting that the movie could be “the most subversive blockbuster of the 21st century to date.”

“This is a saga of self-realization, filtered through both the spirit of free play and the sense that it’s not all fun and games in the real world — a doll’s story that continually drifts into the territory of ‘A Doll’s House,’” Fear writes. “This is a movie that wants to have its Dreamhouse and burn it down to the ground, too.”

We Shouldn’t Have to Grade Barbie on a Curve [ Vulture ]

In one of the most critical reviews of the movie’s approach to gender politics, Alison Willmore writes that “it’s not a rebuke of corporatized feminism so much as an update,” noting “a streak of defensiveness to ‘Barbie,’ as though it’s trying to anticipate and acknowledge any critiques lodged against it before they’re made.”

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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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‘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 Francis Ford Coppola Recalls Robert De Niro’s Audition for Sonny Corleone Saoirse Ronan Says Filming John Crowley’s ‘Brooklyn’ Was Emotionally ‘Really Hard’: It ‘Left Me with a Bit of a Bruise’

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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Trivia Barbie is 23% larger than everything in Barbieland to mimic the awkward, disproportionate scale that real Barbies and Barbie activity sets are produced in. This is why Barbie sometimes appears too large for things like her car or why ceilings seem to be too low in the Dreamhouses.
Goofs Gloria drives a Chevrolet Blazer SS EV, yet during the car chase scene her electric vehicle makes conventional gas engine acceleration noises.

Ken : To be honest, when I found out the patriarchy wasn't just about horses, I lost interest.

Crazy credits All the actors playing Barbies and Kens are not indicative of which Barbie and Ken they portray, and are simply listed as playing "Barbie" and "Ken", with the exception. (Just for clarification's sake, Margot Robbie plays "Stereotypical Barbie", Kate McKinnon plays "Weird Barbie", Issa Rae plays "President Barbie", Hari Nef plays "Dr. Barbie", Alexandra Shipp plays "Writer Barbie", Emma Mackey plays "Physicist Barbie", Sharon Rooney plays "Lawyer Barbie", Ana Cruz Kayne plays "Judge Barbie", Dua Lipa plays all the "Mermaid Barbies", Nicola Coughlan plays "Diplomat Barbie", and Ritu Arya plays "Journalist Barbie".)
Alternate versions The IMAX version, released on September 22, 2023, has an extended runtime of two hours.
Connections Edited from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Soundtracks Requiem (1963/65): 2. Kyrie Written by György Ligeti Performed by Bavarian Radio Orchestra (as Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks) and Francis Travis Courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH Under licence from Universal Music Operations Ltd

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$100,000,000 (estimated)
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Runtime 1 hour 54 minutes
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Barbie Reviews

With an overload of pink (not that we’re complaining), the film took over theatres globally with its timely and heartfelt messaging.

Full Review | Sep 20, 2024

Greta Gerwig's film blazes its way into a strange and bold future where adapting a film from a corporate toy franchise doesn’t immediately feel ugly and anti-art.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 18, 2024

The world’s most famous doll turns her thoughts to more existential, philosophical matters in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, a jazzy and infectiously vibrant summer blockbuster.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 3, 2024

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

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

If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

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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‘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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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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.

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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’ 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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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)

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)

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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.

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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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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July 11, 2023

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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Sept. 20, 2024

Barbie Review

A hyper-femme roller-coaster ride full of twists and turns as emotional as they are entertaining.

What’s tall and blonde and plastic all over? The subject of what’s shaping up to be the movie of the summer, of course. Barbie is a hyper-femme roller-coaster ride full of twists and turns as emotional as they are entertaining. Greta Gerwig’s triumphant take on the statuesque icon is a poignant picture of the rocky transition from girlhood to womanhood. It’s a powerful celebration of femininity, one that recognizes its contradictions, its joys, its frustrations, its limitations, and its freedoms.

Gerwig brings a nuance to the script (co-written with her personal and professional partner, Noah Baumbach), which both reveres our pretty-in-pink Vitruvian woman while remaining critical of what she’s come to symbolize. Under Gerwig’s direction, Barbies and Kens frolic beneath the sunlit skies of Barbieland. It’s the ultimate dollhouse, the dream Mattel (Barbie’s on- and off-screen manufacturer) has pedaled to children for generations. And, oh , is it pink. Name a shade and expect to find it. Salmon? Check. Rose? You got it. Hot? Just ask that Barbie sun. Millennial? Well what would this movie be without it? But while it brims with possibility and excitement, Barbie’s everyday life is a pattern on repeat – a perfect cycle complete with Lizzo’s earworm of a sitcom-y showtune “Pink.” It’s an illusion of choice where the only option is uniform perfection.

This is the crux of Barbieland. Things are simply as they should be. Women are doctors, reporters, construction workers, Supreme Court justices, the president. And Ken meanwhile is, well, really just Ken. Sarah Greenwood’s production design is stellar, mixing fully functional props with sets more akin to the fantasy of a dollhouse.

Each Barbie and Ken shines in their childlike optimism and enthusiasm, playing to the audience with a charming lack of sophistication. The ensemble cast is brilliant: Issa Rae, Hari Nef, Simu Liu, Ncuti Gatwa, Alexandra Shipp, and their castmates bring enough distinctions to their Barbies and Kens to keep Barbieland from becoming a realm of mindless clones. Like a child’s game of dolls, this is a rollicking society full of personality and interpersonal relationships. Ryan Gosling especially stands out, somehow managing to make a subplot that boils down to “Ken Discovers Sexism” into something that lets us feel for Barbie’s eternal sidekick. His airheaded harmlessness inspires a sort of puppy-dog sympathy that made me agonize over his introduction to the dogmatic misogyny that plagues society.

Robbie is the star of the show, of course. It’s the role she was born for, her megawatt charisma brilliantly matched to the world’s most famous doll. Robbie imbues her performance with a layer of naive optimism that’s slowly torn away by the realities of the Real World (a setting treated as a proper noun in the script and on a prop billboard). It’s heartbreaking to watch. As with Ken, I desperately wanted Barbie to remain ignorant to the social woes of the real world, and watched with dread as she uncovers new layers of self-consciousness. There’s no doubt that Robbie deserves award attention for the awe-inspiring balancing act she nails as the film’s veneer of silliness peels back to reveal something much deeper.

Like Gosling and Margot Robbie, America Ferrera is unquestionably perfect in her role. Growing up an awkward Latina, Ferrera was as much a childhood icon to me as Barbie ever was and it’s thrilling to watch the woman who helped shape my adolescence drive home the most pivotal themes of the movie. As Gloria, a Mattel employee living in the Real World, Ferrera commands gravity as our POV character. She serves as the ultimate reminder that it is our mothers who experienced the complex contradictions of womanhood before us. Beneath the trappings of adulthood remains the child we were, unsure and anxious but moving forward anyway.

Barbenheimer: Which movie are you seeing first?

Barbie’s choice to allow its fantasy to seep into the real world is inspired. Yes, this is the reality we know – full of catcallers and cruelty and corporate suits – but it’s not so grittily real that it stifles the fun. The labyrinthine offices of Mattel exemplifies this, and a zany CEO character (Will Ferrell) highlights it. Even the “portal” from the real world to Barbieland commits to this playfulness, introducing a nebulous method of reaching either realm that’s comically childlike but accepted by those in the Real World as a matter of course.

Cycles of life and age act as an important theme in the film. In a stirring moment, Barbie encounters an elderly woman at a bus stop and simply says: “you’re beautiful.” She whispers it with such reverence, as if uttering a cosmic truth about the miracle of aging. To live a life of experience not defined by the number of jobs you’ve had but by the mark of every single day you wake up. It’s a reminder that Barbie is both eternally young and yet also older than many of us.

This is Gerwig’s power: to take an ageless icon of femininity and remind us that as much as she as she defined us, we will forever continue to define her. There’s a deeply held understanding in this film that the capitalist feminism Barbie represents is inherently flawed – women will not find liberation through professional excellence alone, not when entire systems thrive upon our subjugation. Likewise, Gerwig’s film calls into question the limitations of “representation” as a means of social progress. Sure, the Barbies of Barbieland have every job one could possibly imagine. But who sits in the boardroom making every decision about her? If I had one wish, it’s only that we got to dive a little deeper into Barbie’s impact on beauty standards – even if we do get a fun, fourth-wall-breaking joke about it.

That said, there’s such an incisive understanding here of what it means to go from girl to woman. As Barbie “matures,” so to speak, it’s both fraught and wonderful. There’s an insightful beauty in the ending of this film, anchoring Barbie’s mark of growth not in necessarily landing a career, but in, for instance, comfortably accessing women’s healthcare for the very first time.

Brimming with love for a long-standing cultural cornerstone, Barbie reminds us that there’s a safety in childhood we will always inevitably lose. It’s nostalgic and therefore bittersweet. It asks an important question: If the woman society looks to as a guiding example has fears too, why do we put such pressure on ourselves to live without anxieties or regrets? Embrace the unknown, Barbie tells us, and feel comfort in knowing you’re not the first to feel scared.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is a masterful exploration of femininity and the pressures of perfection. This hyper-femme roller-coaster ride boasts meticulous production design, immaculate casting, and a deep-seated reverence for Barbie herself. Margot Robbie sparkles at the center of the film, alongside Ryan Gosling’s airheaded Ken and America Ferrera’s well-meaning Gloria. Ultimately, Barbie is a new, bold, and very pink entry into the cinematic coming-of-age canon. Absolutely wear your pinkest outfit to see this movie, but make sure you bring tissues along too.

Where to Watch

Not yet available for streaming.

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Barbie: Movie Poster: Barbie and Ken on a giant pink-and-white B

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 201 Reviews
Kids Say 220 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Clever, colorful comedy with sophisticated themes, script.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 11+?

Barbie and Mattel brands are in nearly every scene of the movie, including refer

One bleeped "motherf--," plus a few uses of words including "damn," "hell," "cra

A big fight among a lot of characters involves use of silly weapons and physical

Ken asks Barbie to spend the night. When she asks why, he says because they're b

The Kens have a lot of "brewskis" (beers), as well as red cups, and a party scen

Any Positive Content?

Promotes idea that feminism is inclusive of all women -- and that being a woman

Barbie is curious, empathetic, brave, and kind, and she doesn't give up on her g

The main Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) are White and conventiona

Products & Purchases

Barbie and Mattel brands are in nearly every scene of the movie, including references to real Barbie dolls and accessories. Other featured brands include Duolingo, Hydro Flask, Hummer, Suburban, Chevy, Birkenstock, and Chanel. Clips from movies like The Godfather and Pride & Prejudice are seen.

One bleeped "motherf--," plus a few uses of words including "damn," "hell," "crap," "bimbo," "tramp," "stupid," "penis," "vagina," "crazy," "nut job," "jeez," "oh my God," "for Christ's sake," "freaking," "frigging," "shut up," "up the wazoo," the suggestive euphemism "beach you off," and catcalls and double entendres.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

A big fight among a lot of characters involves use of silly weapons and physical grappling; another fight includes a chokehold. Barbie runs away from the Mattel executives who want to "box" her; they chase her in a scene with a lot of slapstick. There's a high-speed pursuit, but no one is injured. The Barbie cars spin out and flip over, but no one gets hurt. Ken has a fall and is taken to an ambulance/clinic for treatment. Barbie admits to having persistent thoughts about death.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Ken asks Barbie to spend the night. When she asks why, he says because they're boyfriend and girlfriend, but he doesn't know what that really entails. Barbie makes a comment about her and Ken not having genitals. A character wonders what kind of "nude blob" a Ken is "packing." Suggestive pickup lines and double entendres. After the Kens take over, several Barbies are shown flirting with and serving the Kens, often scantily clad. The primary Ken is frequently shirtless; some of the other Kens are too. Ken tries to kiss Barbie a couple of times, but she tells him no or dodges it.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The Kens have a lot of "brewskis" (beers), as well as red cups, and a party scene shows the primary Ken holding what looks like a wine glass. He also mentions being "day drunk" at one point.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Promotes idea that feminism is inclusive of all women -- and that being a woman is complicated and sometimes messy. Barbieland is welcoming, if naive about the ways the real world works. Encourages women to support one another, to be free of the many standards thrust upon them by society. Emphasizes importance of finding out who you are separately from your relationships with other people.

Positive Role Models

Barbie is curious, empathetic, brave, and kind, and she doesn't give up on her goals. She realizes that she doesn't have to be "perfect" to have value. Ken is insecure and shallow but develops meaningfully over the course of the story. The Barbies have power (until they fall under the sway of the patriarchy), and they eventually learn how to coexist with the Kens. Gloria is an observant, loving mother, and her daughter, Sasha, is smart and bold.

Diverse Representations

The main Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) are White and conventionally attractive -- to the point where traits like flat feet and cellulite are, albeit satirically, treated as disgusting. The rest of the Barbies and Kens in Barbieland are diverse and inclusive in many ways. There are Barbies and/or Kens who are of color, have a disability (one Barbie uses a wheelchair), and represent a range of body types, backgrounds, and professions. One Barbie is played by Hari Nef, who's trans, but her identity isn't referenced in the movie. Gloria is played by Honduran American actor America Ferrera, and her daughter, Sasha, is played by Ariana Greenblatt, who's Latina. The movie was directed and co-written by female filmmaker Greta Gerwig.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Parents need to know that writer-director Greta Gerwig 's all-star take on Barbie has a sophisticated message about feminism and the patriarchy (and, consequently, a screenplay that will likely go over younger kids' heads). The movie follows "Stereotypical Barbie" ( Margot Robbie ) and her handsome but insecure (boy)friend, Ken ( Ryan Gosling ), as they venture into the human world and discover the shocking-to-them truth that Barbie dolls didn't actually solve the problems of sexism and patriarchal control. While there's no sex in the movie (the Barbies and Kens are frank about not having genitals), Kens are shown shirtless, Barbies get catcalled, and there are suggestive references to the dolls' bodies -- including Ken's "nude bulge" -- and how a male-dominated society expects women to be ornamental and helpful. There's a bleeped use of "motherf--" (plus "crap," "shut up," "oh my God," etc.), a couple of big brawls with silly weapons, slapstick chases, beer drinking, and near-constant mentions of Barbie-maker Mattel. Characters demonstrate empathy and perseverance, and Barbieland is populated by a diverse group of Barbies and Kens from a range of body sizes, abilities, genders, and racial and ethnic backgrounds. The supporting cast includes Simu Liu , Issa Rae , America Ferrera , Will Ferrell , Emma Mackey , and Michael Cera . To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (201)
Kids say (220)

Based on 201 parent reviews

Ruined by Political Messaging and Cheap Potshots

What's the story.

BARBIE opens with a Helen Mirren -narrated 2001: A Space Odyssey homage that explains how the advent of the Barbie doll changed girls' playtime forever, allowing them to imagine unlimited futures and roles beyond motherhood. Then viewers are taken to a parallel universe called Barbieland, where myriad Barbies live in harmony with a bunch of Kens and their pals Midge and Skipper. Since Barbies rule this idealistic, inclusive land -- serving as everything from president ( Issa Rae ) and Supreme Court justices to Nobel laureates, surgeons, etc. -- they believe that the real world is similarly woman- and girl-friendly. None is more sure of that than "Stereotypical Barbie" ( Margot Robbie ), who's always perfect from head to toe, hosting nightly parties and sleepovers and occasionally paying attention to Ken ( Ryan Gosling ), who does little more than stand around at the beach with the other Kens and yearn after her. But when Barbie starts to have thoughts about death, she loses her permanent foot arch and sprouts a spot of cellulite, forcing her to visit the wise but isolated "Weird Barbie" ( Kate McKinnon ). Weird Barbie explains that Stereotypical Barbie will continue to deteriorate if she doesn't cross over into the human world, find the girl who's playing with her, and cheer her up. So Barbie and stowaway Ken set off on a quest to Los Angeles. As Barbie tries to find her human, she realizes that the human world isn't at all what she expected. Meanwhile, Ken is in awe of how much more powerful men are in the real world than they are in Barbieland.

Is It Any Good?

Greta Gerwig 's delightful comedy adventure is bolstered by Robbie and Gosling's impeccable performances, a top-notch ensemble cast, and a witty screenplay. The two stars are perfectly cast in the iconic lead roles, humanizing the doll characters and nailing both the emotional beats and the comedic aspects of Barbie's and Ken's development. The sprawling supporting cast is also well selected, with memorable performances from Rae as the Barbie president, America Ferrera as truth-telling human mom Gloria, Simu Liu as Gosling's rival Ken, and Will Ferrell as the smarmy CEO of Mattel. Three young actors from Sex Education -- Emma Mackey , Ncuti Gatwa , and Connor Swindells -- make notable appearances in supporting roles, and Academy Award-winning filmmaker/screenwriter Emerald Fennell turns up as Barbie's discontinued pregnant friend, Midge. Overall, Barbieland is a pleasingly inclusive place, where the Barbies and Kens can be more than thin, White, and blond as they sing and dance in their carefully curated outfits.

This movie isn't like the many animated Barbie movies , and its sophisticated themes may land better with teens and adults than tweens and kids. But the contrast between the movie's serious societal commentary and the trippy, nostalgic comedy manages not to feel off-putting or off-balance. Ken's explanations about the benefits of the patriarchy (horses, hats, all the top jobs!) are laugh-out-loud funny, while Gloria's passionate speech about the ways women must and mustn't act in human society rings soberingly true. For all of the jokes, there's a ton of heart in the screenplay, with Robbie and Gosling both getting many scene-stealing, moving monologues. Their memorable portrayals carry the movie, but the behind-the-scenes technicians deserve awards, too, including production designer Sarah Greenwood for the film's pink-infused Barbie-core set pieces, music supervisor George Drakoulias for the Mark Ronson-produced soundtrack, Oscar-winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran for the hundreds of authentic Barbie and Ken costumes, and director of photography Rodrigo Prieto for the fizzy cinematography. An ideal mother-daughter pick and a collaborative achievement worthy of the hype, this Barbie is a keeper.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Barbie 's message: that society has sexist, contradictory, unattainable expectations for women. Do you agree? What are your thoughts about what it means to be a girl and a woman?

Discuss the way that patriarchy and feminism are explored or explained in the movie. Does Barbieland treat Kens the way women are treated in the human world? Why is Ken so delighted to return to Barbieland?

Although the movie is about a children's doll, it's not really aimed at young kids, with its mature themes and humor. Do you think a movie inspired by and about toys needs to be appropriate for little kids?

Talk about the relationship between human mom Gloria and her middle school-age daughter, Sasha. What changes about their connection once they meet Barbie?

Did you notice positive diverse representation in the movie? Why is that important?

Movie Details

In theaters : July 21, 2023
On DVD or streaming : October 17, 2023
Cast : Margot Robbie , Ryan Gosling , America Ferrera , Will Ferrell
Director : Greta Gerwig
Inclusion Information : Female directors, Female actors, Latino actors, Female writers
Studio : Warner Bros.
Genre : Comedy
Topics : Princesses, Fairies, Mermaids, and More , Friendship , Great Girl Role Models
Character Strengths : Empathy , Perseverance
Run time : 114 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : suggestive references and brief language
Awards : Common Sense Selection , Golden Globe - Golden Globe Award Winner , Kids' Choice Award
Last updated : September 6, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

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Entertainment
<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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Everything We Know

Barbie : release date, trailer, cast & more, we break down the plot, the cast, the release date, and more..

TAGGED AS: Comedy , Film , films , movie , movies

Does Barbie’s Dream House have a movie theater? It better, because how else is she going to be able to watch the blockbuster film adaptation of the world’s most famous doll? Barbie, the iconic doll that first hit toy stores way back in 1959, is getting her very own live-action movie. It’s hardly the first toy to get the film treatment (see: Transformers , LEGOS , G.I. Joe , and more), but the upcoming Barbie movie feels like it could be something special — or at the very least, extremely interesting.

Barbie boasts an incredible cast and an acclaimed director, and though we haven’t heard too many specifics about the plot, what little we do know seems like it has the potential to be buck wild. Here’s everything we know about Barbie .

Who Is Directing Barbie ?

(Photo by Rick Rowell/Getty Images)

Greta Gerwig , the writer Oscar-nominated director of Lady Bird and 2019’s celebrated Little Women remake, signed on to write the Barbie movie in 2019 along with her partner, Marriage Story writer-director Noah Baumbach . In July of last year, however, Variety confirmed that Gerwig would also be directing the film.

Barbie is a bit outside the norm for Gerwig and Baumbach. Gerwig, who is also an actress, is best known for her quirky and insightful comedy-dramas. Baumbach tends to make highly mannered and somewhat dry films like The Squid and the Whale . Neither’s filmography necessarily screams “the obvious person to make a movie about a famous toy.” But, that’s perhaps what makes Barbie so intriguing.

Who’s In It?

(Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures)

Margot Robbie , best known for her role in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood and for playing Harley Quinn in three DC superhero movies , signed on to play the title role way back in July 2019. Robbie is also producing the film through her production company LuckyChap Entertainment, with Mattel Films and HeyDay Films co-producing.

For a while, Robbie was the only star confirmed for the movie, but what would Barbie be without Ken? In October 2021, Ryan Gosling was announced as the live-action Ken opposite Robbie. Gosling has previously starred in films like Blade Runner 2049 and Drive , but he’s also done lighter fare like La La Land and Crazy Stupid Love , so it seems rather clear which of his past performances will be the most relevant to his portrayal of Ken.

Robbie and Gosling are not the only big names in the movie, however. In fact, the list of big names in the film is honestly kind of absurd. According to some gossip that New York Times journalist Kyle Buchannan heard at the Cannes Film Festival, there are going to be multiple Barbies and Kens in the film. Insecure star Issa Rae and Hari Nef , the trans actress and model who starred in Transparent , will reportedly both play Barbies, too. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star Simu Liu and Ncuti Gatwa , who was recently announced as the 14th Doctor in the upcoming Doctor Who season, will be alternate Kens.

There are a ton of additional actors playing as-yet unknown roles. A-list comedians Kate McKinnon , Will Ferrell , and Michael Cera will all be in Barbie in some capacity. Emma Mackey , the Death on the Nile star who is frequently said to resemble Margot Robbie, will appear alongside her doppelganger in Barbie .

America Ferrara , Ariana Greenblatt , Alexandra Shipp , Kingsley Ben-Adir , Rhea Perlman , Sharon Rooney , Scott Evans , Ana Cruz Kayne , Connor Swindells , Ritu Arya , and Jamie Demetriou also are slated to appear in the movie. Emerald Fennell , writer-director of 2020’s Promising Young Woman , has a role as well.

All-new character posters for #Barbie , featuring Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Michael Cera, and more. pic.twitter.com/vs2sE0RsbM — Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) April 4, 2023

This cast is truly wild, making it extra funny that Barbie is scheduled to open on the same day as another 2023 movie with a ridiculously huge and impressive all-star cast, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer .

What Is It About?

Truly, we have no idea what this movie is going to be about. In an interview with British Vogue in June 2021, Robbie suggested that people should expect the unexpected.

“It comes with a lot of baggage!” she said of the role. “And a lot of nostalgic connections. But with that comes a lot of exciting ways to attack it. People generally hear Barbie and think, I know what that movie is going to be, and then they hear that Greta Gerwig is writing and directing it, and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, maybe I don’t…’”

Robbie said something similar when speaking to The Hollywood Reporter that same summer.

“Something like Barbie where the IP, the name itself, people immediately have an idea of, ‘Oh, Margot is playing Barbie. I know what that is,’ but our goal is to be like, ‘Whatever you’re thinking, we’re going to give you something totally different — the thing you didn’t know you wanted,’” Robbie said. “Now, can we truly honor the IP and the fan base and also surprise people? Because if we can do all that and provoke a thoughtful conversation, then we’re really firing on all cylinders.”

The multiple Barbies and Kens, while fitting the 60-year history of the doll, certainly invite some level of curiosity, but we didn’t get much of a hint from the first teaser for the film, either. In 2016, there was an earlier version of the Barbie movie starring Amy Schumer that didn’t end up getting made for a number of reasons. That film would have followed Schumer’s character after she’s kicked out of “Barbieland” because she’s not up to their standards of beauty. A second teaser released in April seems to indicate there is some element of that in the new film, as it depicts Robbie’s Barbie and Gosling’s Ken apparently driving a car down a mystical road that transports them from “Barbieland” to the real world, and it also features Barbie walking into a meeting led by Will Ferrell’s real-world toy CEO. But we don’t get many hints about the overarching plot itself, so we’ll have to wait for the next trailer to learn more.

How Long Has This Movie Been In Development?

Cover for Barbie Princess Adventure (2020)

There have been almost 40 animated Barbie movies with titles like Barbie: Fairytopia , Barbie in A Mermaid Tale , and Barbie: The Princess and the Popstar over the past 20 years, with more on the way. This will be the first live-action and the first theatrically released Barbie movie, though, and it’s been in various stages of development for a while. There was talk of a Barbie movie as far back as 2009, though that film, which would’ve been made with Universal Pictures, never came to be. A more serious attempt was made in 2014 when Mattel partnered with Sony Pictures. That script went through various phases of pre-development, and at one point Juno writer Diablo Cody came aboard for rewrites, though she revealed to ScreenCrush that she never even turned in an initial draft.

As mentioned, there was then also the 2016 Amy Schumer project, in which she would have starred as a woman who is kicked out of Barbieland for her imperfections, but that one fell apart after she walked away four months later.

“They definitely didn’t want to do it the way I wanted to do it, the only way I was interested in doing it,” Schumer told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year, revealing the extent of their creative differences. Schumer wanted her Barbie to be an ambitious inventor, but the studio requested that her big invention be a high heel made of Jell-O.

There were then talks that Anne Hathaway might star, but in 2018, after no movie had been made, Sony’s options to the Barbie rights expired and Warner Bros. took them over, eventually resulting in the upcoming Gerwig and Robbie film.

Most Importantly, Will Aqua’s Seminal 1997 hit “Barbie Girl” Be in the Movie?

Mattel, the company that owns Barbie, has a complicated history with Aqua’s “Barbie Girl.” Shortly after the song’s release, Mattel sued MCA Records, accusing the song of violating their trademark and sullying Barbie’s wholesome image with lyrics like “I’m a blond bimbo girl in a fantasy world” and “You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere.” Mattel lost the case but escalated it up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected the toy company’s appeal.

Eventually, in 2009, Mattel appeared to lean into the song’s popularity by using a version with cleaned-up lyrics to promote the toy. Even still, “Barbie Girl” will not feature in the film. Variety reached out to Ulrich Møller-Jørgensen, the manager of Aqua’s lead singer Lene Nystrøm, and were told “The song will not be used in the movie.” At least we’ll always have the music video.

Barbie is currently scheduled for release on July 21, 2023.

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Barbie movie review by California Barbie Princess: 'I cried multiple times'

Socialite wants to emulate barbie... show up, do the work, uplift the community, and do it all 'serving a look'.

Barbie mania is sweeping across social media platforms. Have you noticed an explosion of pink? I'm not a fashion doll fan, but I hopped in the Barbie Corvette and went along for the ride.

Wearing a pink dress, hair bow and lipstick as well as high heels and pearls, I went to see the Barbie movie. My blanket fit perfectly in my pink, plastic, Victoria's Secret beach tote. Numerous women and girls of all ages and ethnicities were decked out in pink Barbie-inspired attire as well as some men and boys.

Just 17 days after the Barbie film was theatrically released in the U.S. on July 21, it reached $1 billion in global ticket sales, according to distributor Warner Bros.

As a child, I was a tomboy and not fond of Mattel's fashion dolls, however, my friend Emma Ebensberger, who lived across the street from me, loved them. She had a variety of clothes and accessories. Trying to dress Barbie in skintight clothing was frustrating, and don't even get me started on how her high heels always fell off.

The Barbie movie main trailer is described as such: 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.

The acting, singing and dancing were enjoyable; however, I found the entire Barbie movie somewhat cheesy. It was entertaining, but I would not watch it again. For a review from a Barbie fan, I reached out to Helena Levin aka California Barbie Princess [CA Barbie Princess]. I met her at a wedding in California in July last year. My nephew Zachary Eggers and Benjamín Pérez Lecuona tied the knot at the City Club of San Francisco.

The 30-something teenager, a California native, was their flower girl. I did not know she was the CA Barbie Princess, but Barbie was the first thing that popped in my mind when I saw her. Dressed in pastel pink from head to toe, Levin looked fabulous coming down the aisle while she tossed pink, rose petals.

Barbie fan: California Barbie Princess

Levin cannot recall her first Barbie, but she does remember Barbies were always a part of her life. Every birthday, she would get excited when she saw a rectangular-shaped, wrapped gift, because she knew it was a new addition to her collection.

"We had a den in my childhood home where I played Barbies, and it became known as 'The Barbie Room,' Levin said. "Dolls and outfits were always strewn about. I remember telling my parents it didn't make sense to clean it up because I would just take it out again."

Levin's collection that she played with daily included two Kens and about 30 Barbies. In hindsight, she feels they were truly unnecessary; however, she still has a Barbie collection.

"I started my 'in box' collection when I was in middle school. My favorite is probably 40th-anniversary Barbie. She is wearing a gown, but the bodice is a sequined nod to the original black and white bathing suit," Levin said. "I got her for my Barbie-themed Bat Mitzvah. My dad called it my Barbie Mitzvah."

Levin preferred to play with Barbies alone in her youth. She wanted to invent her own stories and play out her own worlds.

"I didn't really like playing Barbie with friends, the storylines never went the way I wanted," Levin shared. "It's funny to think about now, because I have 'never' been an introvert, and I would always prefer to spend time with people over being alone, but Barbie time really was just for me and my imagination."

Mattel: Barbie fashion dolls

What does CA Barbie Princess like/love about Mattel's Barbie merchandise/world?

"I guess everything. Pink is and always has been my favorite color. I also love that Barbie, to me, is much more of an adjective than a noun. When someone calls me Barbie, I always see it as a compliment," Levin said. "I love the femininity of it all coupled with the feminist aspect. That's what I have always loved about Barbie. She is truly a feminist icon. She's been a doctor, a veterinarian, she was in space 30 years before Sally Ride, and she has done all of these things on her own. She's never needed a man, just her friends and her can-do personality. And she has done it all in heels!"

Barbie movie review

Levin loved the Barbie movie. She is not sure what she can say that hasn't already been said by trained film critics, but, as one of the biggest Barbie fans, she really believes they did her justice.

"I cried multiple times! They said all the things about Barbie that I always say and what I wrote in my college thesis about her being a feminist icon. They also addressed all the problematic issues that Barbie can represent," Levin said. "I really appreciated how they didn't shy away from the societal pressure for women and how it manifests in a doll. I loved how self-aware and self-deprecating the movie was while also being uplifting and hopeful."

Levin pointed out one critique. She feels the Barbie film focuses a little too much on Ken.

"I always appreciate commentary on the dangers of patriarchy, but I think it could have used it a little more as a platform to show that boys should be allowed to be feminine," Levin stated. "Other than that, zero criticism except that I didn't get to play Barbie. Greta Gerwig, if you're reading this, we need a Barbie musical starring me please. But truly, I can't stop gushing about it. It's sweet and smart and has so many hidden nods for the original Barbie fans and so many paths for newer Barbie fans to get onboard the pink train."

The American fantasy comedy film was directed by Greta Gerwig. It is the first live-action Barbie film. My favorite scene in the movie is when Barbie floats down from the top floor of her dream house into her car. The Weird Barbie played by Kate McKinnon was my favorite character. Mattel is taking pre-orders for the misfit doll that will be dressed in a bright pink dress with colorful artwork and puffy sleeves as well as green, snakeskin boots. The limited-edition Weird Barbie's features will include short, tousled hair and markings on her face to emulate a doll that’s been played with just a wee bit too much.

California Barbie Princess: Helena Levin

CA Barbie Princess was Levin's first email address and AIM [AOL Instant Messenger] screen name. She wanted just Barbie Princess but it was already taken, so she added CA for California. Levin adores California and particularly the city of San Francisco, a place that allows her to be who she is and accepts and embraces her.

"I do feel like I have outgrown the 'Princess' part a little bit at this stage in my life, but it was a core identity for so many years that I just don't think I could ever change it," Levin said. "Barbie though, I will never outgrow, nor California."

Levin works in fashion as a senior buyer for DollsKill.com. She loves fashion and performing, especially musical theater.

"I do theater and drag all over the city and sing often in cabaret shows," Levin shared. "I have been so welcomed by the LGBTQ+ community and feel so truly honored to perform and work in queer spaces."

CA Barbie Princess wants to bring joy and love to a community that has shared so much with her. She supports as many queer spaces and local theaters as she possibly can by going to every show/event that her schedule allows.

"In a way, I just want to emulate Barbie... show up, do the work, uplift the community, and do it all 'serving a look.' Not to get too philosophical here, but I think there is so much power in standing in your femininity," Levin said. "At the risk of sounding a little conceited, I know people are interested in talking to me. It happens every time I am at a bar or an event. Strangers come up to me, however, it's just girls, gays and theys, straight men never approach me. I think it's that feminine energy that draws them in."

Spectators find Levin's outfits, hair styles and impractical shoes interesting. I myself took a close-up picture of one of her shoes at Zac and Ben's wedding.

"Once people start talking to me, I think my kindness and conversational skills keep them engaged," Levin said. "And this is how I can create community and help create a world that celebrates kindness, empathy, diversity and pink."

On Instagram @cabarbieprincess Levin has 10.5K followers and 17.6K on TikTok @helenalevin. She doesn't consider herself a celebrity but is happy to know people resonate with who she is and how she lives her life.

"Social media is nice because it allows me to have a little platform to speak out on issues I care deeply about and communities I support," Levin said. "This Barbie is an activist. Now if I could just get these people to come to my shows."

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'Wuthering Heights' and the Robbie-Elordi casting row

Casting Barbie and Elvis to play Brontë's lovers in Emerald Fennell's new film is 'fundamentally, egregiously wrong'

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Jacob Elordi at the GQ Men of the Year party 2023

Emily Brontë's 1847 tragedy "Wuthering Heights", set in the windswept wilds of the Yorkshire Moors, has had "several movie adaptations, released to varying degrees of acclaim", said ScreenRant 's Cathal Gunning, but the latest one has come under fire before it has even been made.

Filmmaker Emerald Fennell is facing a backlash over the casting for her new adaptation, in which "Barbie" star Margot Robbie is lined up to play Cathy, while Jacob Elordi, who played Elvis Presley in "Priscilla", will take on the role of her lover Heathcliff.

A 'perverse' choice

Although his "specific race" isn't mentioned in Brontë's text, Heathcliff is "heavily implied" to be "Romani, mixed-race, or possibly North African", said Gunning. This is a "pivotal plot point", as much of the abuse Heathcliff faces is as a result of his "racial ambiguity", making him "one of the literary canon's most prominent characters of color". Casting Elordi, a white Australian, "arguably rewrites Brontë's story".

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It is "perverse" to ignore Heathcliff's skin colour considering it is mentioned several times in the novel, said BBC Culture 's Nicholas Barber. After Andrea Arnold's 2011 adaptation featured a black Heathcliff (James Howson), Fennell's decision "can't help but feel like a leap in the wrong direction".

The choice of Robbie is no better, as surely few of the novel's readers will have pictured the Victorian protagonists as "the spitting images" of these two "impossibly good-looking Australians".

'Far too pretty'

The leads are "far too pretty", said The Telegraph 's Michael Deacon. Heathcliff is supposed to be "wild, cruel, brooding and ragingly intense – not like some cute, winsome, boy-band-style pin-up" and while Robbie is "very talented", she "doesn't exactly scream 'windswept Yorkshire moors'".

This "glossy and glamorous" look makes them "too contemporary to be credible in a period drama", said Barber. "They belong on a red carpet, not in a muddy field." The "pearly white teeth, flawless skin, sleek hair and a gym-honed physique" makes it "almost impossible to buy them as living in the days before stylists, nutritionists and personal trainers".

Cathy also dies aged around 19 in the book, but will be played by 34-year-old Margot, while Heathcliff, who is 40 at the end of the novel, will be played by a 27-year-old. Considering for much of the book the pair are in their mid-teens, Elordi is in the unenviable position of "being both too old and too young", said Gunning.

The casting "seems fundamentally, egregiously wrong" at first glance, said Barber. But Robbie and Elordi are "brilliant actors" and if anyone can make this "problematic casting" work, it's them.

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Barbie Movie Reviews Are Here & They Praise The Costumes & Plot
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July 21, 2023. 5 min read. "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 ...
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Even still, "Barbie Girl" will not feature in the film. Variety reached out to Ulrich Møller-Jørgensen, the manager of Aqua's lead singer Lene Nystrøm, and were told "The song will not be used in the movie.". At least we'll always have the music video. Barbie is currently scheduled for release on July 21, 2023.
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'Wuthering Heights' and the Robbie-Elordi casting row
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