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

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

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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.

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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 .]

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Available in theaters on July 21st. 

Christy Lemire

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

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Barbie (2023)

Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language.

114 minutes

Margot Robbie as Barbie

Ryan Gosling as Ken

America Ferrera as Gloria

Will Ferrell as Mattel CEO

Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie

Ariana Greenblatt as Sasha

Issa Rae as President Barbie

Rhea Perlman as Ruth Handler

Hari Nef as Doctor Barbie

Emma Mackey as Physicist Barbie

Alexandra Shipp as Writer Barbie

Michael Cera as Allan

Helen Mirren as Narrator

Simu Liu as Ken

Dua Lipa as Mermaid Barbie

John Cena as Kenmaid

Kingsley Ben-Adir as Ken

Scott Evans as Ken

Jamie Demetriou as Mattel Executive

• Greta Gerwig
• Noah Baumbach

Cinematographer

• Rodrigo Prieto
• Alexandre Desplat
• Mark Ronson

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‘barbie’ 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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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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With Gerwig, the pleasure is always in the details. Her Barbieland — thanks to Sarah Greenwood’s production design and Jacqueline Durran’s costuming — is a pink fever dream. A phantasmagoria of magenta and blush soundtracked by funky compositions by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, and bubblegum anthems from Dua Lipa, Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice. Plastic trees and identical two-story Barbie dream homes line each avenue of this manufactured oceanside locale. Engineless vehicles roam the road but flying is the preferred mode of transportation. Think about it: Have you ever seen a Barbie take the stairs?  

An army of Kens patrol the land’s pristine beaches. The chiseled dolls can’t rescue a drowning person or save anyone for that matter, but they do stand around and look pretty. Barbies do the real work: She is the president and all the members of the Supreme Court. She is a doctor and a physicist. She has won every Nobel prize and probably cured cancer. Barbieland is feminist utopia as inversion of our patriarchal reality. Voiceover commentary by Mirren adds to its storybook quality.

Gerwig populates her pink vista with a range of Barbies played by a formidable and starry cast: Issa Rae , Emma Mackey, Alexandra Shipp and Hari Nef are a few of the faces in the film. But the protagonist of this wily and fun comedy is Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), the blonde-haired, blue-eyed manifestation of Ruth Handler’s imagination. Her Ken counterpart is played with impressive heart and humor by Ryan Gosling (with Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir and John Cena among the film’s other assorted Kens). The pair are a version of Eve and Adam, if Eve were God’s favorite and Adam acknowledged as the liability he was. 

Their fall is not as righteous but just as dramatic. When Barbie finds her perfect life suddenly hobbled by existential thoughts, she seeks answers from Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), a doll whose traumatic history (she was played with “too hard”) has turned her into the kingdom’s sage. On the outcast Barbie’s advice, Stereotypical Barbie, with an all-too-eager Ken in tow, heads to real-world Los Angeles to find her little girl. The relationship between Barbies and their human owners is tenuously outlined, so it’s best not to think too deeply about how it all works. 

Greta slips in au courant commentary through Barbie’s encounters with real people: the all-male executive suite of Mattel (which includes Will Ferrell playing CEO); Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a teenager whose disdain for Mattel’s dolls is only outmatched by her hatred of fascism; and Sasha’s mother Gloria (a brilliant America Ferrera ), a Mattel secretary with an indiscriminate love of the toy.

Those worried that the film would uncritically pedestal Handler’s invention have little to fear. Barbie lives up to its early tagline: “If you love Barbie…if you hate Barbie, this movie’s for you.”

Fulfilling this mission comes at a cost, though. There’s a tension between Gerwig’s effort to keep Barbie fun and to texture her source material with the emotional dexterity of her previous projects. After an unplanned detour separates her from Ken, Barbie makes her way back home ready to restore perfection to her routine. But her homecoming is a dour one; Barbie returns to see that Ken, armed with his newfound knowledge of the patriarchy, has transformed Barbieland.

In some ways, Barbie builds on themes Gerwig explored in Lady Bird and Little Women . The film wrestles with the twisting journey of self-definition and the mercurial relationships between mothers and daughters. It’s fraught with the questions that plague artists and women trapped in a category-obsessed society.

The tension between Barbie as object and subject can be felt especially through Robbie’s performance. Barbie’s increased consciousness plays across the actress’ expressive eyes, which become steadily weighted by the forces of the human world. Her physical presence tells us something, too: Robbie moves mechanically in Barbieland because she’s a toy, but who’s to say she’s any less rigid in the real world?

However smartly done Gerwig’s Barbie is, an ominousness haunts the entire exercise. The director has successfully etched her signature into and drawn deeper themes out of a rigid framework, but the sacrifices to the story are clear. The muddied politics and flat emotional landing of Barbie are signs that the picture ultimately serves a brand.

This wouldn’t be as concerning if the future of films weren’t blighted by Mattel’s franchise ambitions . After all, we can’t get all our humanist lessons from corporate toymakers.

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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 Ted Sarandos to Creatives: AI Won’t ‘Take Your Job,’ but a ‘Person Who Uses AI Well Might’ Lily Gladstone’s Oscar Loss Isn’t Holding Her Back: ‘I Have Work Coming Out and I Have Work Lined Up’

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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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: A pink, plucky, and poignant rumination on womanhood

Margot robbie and ryan gosling play iconic mattel dolls facing an existential crisis in greta gerwig's terrific high-concept comedy.

In 1959, a mere 64 years before the release of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie , Mattel’s signature doll hit store shelves for the first time and quickly became a Rorschach test for many girls and women as they transposed their own identity onto a plastic plaything. The small-scale doll was created by company co-founder Ruth Handler—pulling inspiration from Germany’s Bild Lilli doll—as a way to empower girls like her daughter Barbara (the brand’s namesake) to use their imagination in creating limitless worlds where they can be and do anything they want. It revolutionized play patterns for pint-sized consumers who weren’t just seeking the pretend solace of motherhood and domesticity. Yet for some adults, this tiny wonder represented an unattainable, manufactured version of perfection, subsequently transforming her into a lightning rod for controversy and feminist critique.

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Nevertheless, Barbie persisted, blessedly changing with the increasingly enlightened times, diversifying her size and skin tone to become a more inclusive toy line. Co-writer and director Greta Gerwig repackages these goods in Barbie , her hilarious and heartfelt homage to the brand . By lovingly lampooning corporate missteps along with celebrating the successes, the film’s self-effacing humor, out-of-the-box smarts, and emotional potency strike the right tone. Gerwig and her creative collaborators—including co-writer Noah Baumbach—not only give the formerly inanimate figure a sparkling personality and a pastel-shellacked pop-art playground, they also deliver genuinely meaningful sentiments surrounding the complexities of gender politics. It’s the year’s best tear-jerking, thought-provoking comedy.

Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) has always had the quintessential Best Day Ever. She’s awakened each morning by a song (Lizzo’s “Pink” provides her daily mojo), dines on perfect meals, wears the cutest fashions, and hangs out with her fellow Barbies (played by Issa Rae, Hari Nef, Emma Mackey, Alexandra Shipp, and Nicola Coughlan) and Kens (played by Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, and Scott Evans). There’s also Ken’s friend Allan (Michael Cera) and Barbie’s pregnant friend Midge (Emerald Fennell), whose presence is purposeful even though their dolls were both discontinued. In the plastic fantastic Malibu-meets-Miami enclave of Barbie Land, all jobs are held by women while the men exist to frolic on the beach and the dance floor. It’s a fantasy utopia without walls or negativity.

That is until Stereotypical Barbie begins suffering from the throes of an existential crisis manifested in the form of bad breath, too-cold showers, flat feet, and pervading thoughts of death. Hoping for a quick fix, she pays a visit to Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), a spiky-haired, shaman-like Barbie that’s been “played with too hard.” Weird Barbie advises her to go into the Real World to find the person playing with her in doll form and cheer them up so life can return to normal. However, when Stereotypical Barbie and a stowaway Ken (Gosling) arrive in Southern California, they face fish-out-of-water hijinks while dealing with humans’ dysfunctional nature stemming from patriarchal toxicity, loss of adolescence, and adult disillusionment.

Since Gerwig and Baumbach are telling a story of a doll who has encapsulated all walks of womanhood over six decades, they find narrative weight in a multitude of supporting angles. In addition to Barbie’s main odyssey, there’s a mother-daughter story between surly tween Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) and her deflated mom Gloria (America Ferrera) that’s touching and empowering. There are also heady statements about artistic creation, both in the visuals (one recalls Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam) and in Stereotypical Barbie’s relationship with her god-like creator, Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman), who receives her share of ribbing. Initially defining the tertiary Barbies by their profession speaks satirically to all the one-dimensional female characters we’ve seen before in cinema, only here they’re given space to grow and acquire a richer sense of internality.

The filmmakers don’t pull any punches when skewering the commercialist underbelly of the brand. They allot screen time to a few ill-advised creations, like Tanner the pooping dog and Growing Up Skipper (“The doll who grows breasts!”). They make the all-male Mattel brass (led by Will Ferrell’s CEO) look like buffoons tripping over themselves and their faux-feminism to put Barbie and womankind back in a box—both physically and metaphorically. Still, at times it talks out of both sides of its mouth, celebrating what it also condemns. Crass commercialism is handled with a sly wink and a nod, playing to audiences’ nostalgic memories while simultaneously encouraging them to purchase new dolls.

The world-building in Barbie is exceptional. Production designer Sarah Greenwood and set designer Katie Spencer have created a candy-colored confectionary dream for Barbie’s environments, heightening the carefully constructed stylistic surrealism. They’ve coated it with vibrant pink paint, molded plastics, and tactile backdrops harkening back to classic Hollywood musicals. Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt’s pop soundscape bolsters the synthetic atmosphere in Barbie Land, but they thread the needle perfectly in the Real World, blending musical themes from Billie Eilish’s ballad “What Was I Made For?” to land the palpably moving moments.

Robbie nimbly handles the comedic rhythm of these worlds, igniting the spark of the dialogue and the slapstick as well as nailing the nuance and vulnerability of the grounded sequences. Her work sings in chorus with that of costume designer Jacqueline Durran, whose textures and tailoring augment the performance, and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who illuminates the hidden facets within Barbie’s evolving psyche. Gosling’s portrait of Ken as a jealous, competitive himbo is absolutely divine, allowing him to show off his comedic chops, Gene Kelly-esque moves, and singing talents. (And abs!) Supporting cast members all shine, especially Rae, who plays President Barbie with crackling confidence, and Simu Liu, who plays Gosling’s adversary Ken with vigor.

It’s a tall order for Gerwig and company to deliver a feature that’s reverent and revelatory while speaking directly to the pressures of living up to an impossible feminine ideal. And yet they did it with crafty aplomb. Though a tad overstuffed with too many good ideas, pulling from loads of subtly identifiable cinematic references (everything from Powell and Pressburger’s 1946 drama A Matter Of Life And Death to the more recent The Truman Show ) , Barbie ultimately leaves us entertained, emotionally exhausted, and ready to play again soon.

Barbie opens in theaters on July 21

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

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

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‘Barbie’ 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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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.”

“To be a film fan these days is to be aware that franchises and cinematic universes and remakes and other adaptations of old IP have become black holes that swallow artists, leaving you to desperately hope they might emerge with the rare project that, even though it comes from constrictive confines, still feels like it was made by a person,” she writes. “‘Barbie’ definitely was. But the trouble with trying to sneak subversive ideas into a project so inherently compromised is that, rather than get away with something, you might just create a new way for a brand to sell itself.”

There are limits to how much dimension even Greta Gerwig can give this branded material [ New York Times ]

Manohla Dargis, the chief film critic for The Times, offers high praise to Gerwig as a director, writing that her “directorial command is so fluent she seems born to filmmaking,” but she asserts that the movie largely dodged the “thorny contradictions and the criticisms that cling to the doll.”

“While Gerwig does slip in a few glints of critique — as when a teenage girl accuses Barbie of promoting consumerism, shortly before she pals up with our heroine — these feel more like mere winks at the adults in the audience than anything else,” Dargis writes.

A doll’s life is richly, unexpectedly imagined by Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie [ The Chicago Tribune ]

“Any $145 million studio movie based on a doll, accessories sold separately, no doubt comes with a few restrictions,” Michael Phillips writes. “And yet this one actually feels spontaneous, and fun.” Giving the film 3.5 starts out of 4, he contends that Mattel “could have played things far more safely” and that “a lot of the biggest laughs in ‘Barbie’ come at Mattel’s expense.”

Ryan Gosling is plastic fantastic in ragged doll comedy [ The Guardian ]

Peter Bradshaw was among the critics who felt that Gosling steals the show with Barbie herself reduced to the “bland comic foil.” He was in the more cynical camp of reviewers when it came to the film’s self-awareness, calling the film “entertaining and amiable, but with a softcore pulling of punches: lightly ironised, celebratory nostalgia for a toy that still exists right now.”

Welcome to Greta Gerwig’s fiercely funny, feminist Dreamhouse [ Entertainment Weekly ]

Describing the movie as “packed with winking one-liners,” Devan Coggan acknowledges the praise of Gosling but contends that Robbie “remains the real star.”

“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,” she writes, “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.”

Greta Gerwig’s World of Plastic Is Fantastic [ Collider ]

Ross Bonaime writes that “Barbie” could have been “little more than a toy ad,” but it instead became an “existential look at the difficulties of being a woman, the terrifying nature of life in general, the understanding that trying to be perfect is absurd, while also encapsulating everything that Barbie has meant to people — both good and bad.”

Calling Gerwig’s work behind the camera “vibrant and bold,” Bonaime also praises the narrative work of the popstar-packed soundtrack, which includes songs from Lizzo, Billie Eilish, Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice.

Margot Robbie doll-ivers [ Los Angeles Times ]

Describing the film as a “conceptually playful, sartorially dazzling comic fantasy,” Justin Chang suggests that “Barbie” succeeds in making the arguments both for Barbie haters and Barbie lovers.

“Gerwig has conceived ‘Barbie’ as a bubble-gum emulsion of silliness and sophistication, a picture that both promotes and deconstructs its own brand,” he writes. “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.”

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‘Barbie’ Review: Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie, and Ryan Gosling Made an Instantly Timeless Masterpiece

After what feels like an eternity of waiting, “Barbie” has arrived—and in a moving, hilarious, nearly perfect package to boot.

Coleman Spilde

Entertainment Critic

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway / Kelly Caminero / The Daily Beast / Photos by Getty / Warner Bros.

It’s barbie week at the daily beast’s obsessed, celebrating the doll’s pop-culture history, our favorite barbie memories, and a certain major movie. read all of our coverage here .

With all of the chatter regarding the Barbie movie for the last four years , the most pressing question has ended up being whether Greta Gerwig’s film could exceed the insurmountable hype surrounding it. There was an influx of candid set photos , multiple trailers and pre-release clips, and massively popular memes that quickly created a level of fatigue that was just as ubiquitous as the Barbie poster generator. Barbie was a sensation long before we were close enough to see the radiant pink glow of its looming July 21 release date. Surely, no matter how good the film was, it could never fully live up to that amount of sheer anticipation.

But to settle for tempered expectations is simply not the Barbie way. Barbie can be a doctor, a CEO, a politician, and even a damn mermaid. The sky's the limit for Barbie—scratch that; she’ll become an astronaut and defy that restriction too. With all of these achievements under Barbie’s belt, who better to bring her story to the big screen than Gerwig? In her career as a writer and a director, Gerwig has crafted exceptional, singular films that brilliantly assess the subtleties of womanhood. No one is quite so adept at making the ultra-specific feel universal.

So of course, in Gerwig’s capable hands, even a movie about the one of most popular toys of all time eludes expectations at every turn. Barbie is her mainstream masterpiece, a dazzling dream that will touch the souls of everyone who sees it, even if they’ve never picked up a doll.

Warner Bros.

For those viewers who may not be so familiar with the legacy of Barbie, the film opens with a crash course in the doll’s history. That 2001: A Space Odyssey reference from the first teaser trailer is no less amusing in the film itself, when it introduces the viewer to a monolithic version of the toy, before thrusting us into the technicolor world of Barbieland. It’s here where Barbie ( Margot Robbie ) and all of her friends—Barbie, Barbie, Barbie, and of course, Barbie—reside, living out each perfect day in one another’s company. For every Barbie, there is a Ken, trying to sweep a Barbie off of her factory-made elevated feet.

Robbie plays Stereotypical Barbie, a plain but indisputably beautiful doll who comes without a pre-packaged career path, letting the person playing with her use their imagination. A generic Barbie deserves a just-as-common Ken ( Ryan Gosling ), whose only real goal in life (besides getting Barbie to fall for him) is, quite simply, Beach. Ken loves Beach almost as much as he adores not buttoning his button-up shirts, and he’s extremely good at both of these things.

Most of the dolls in Barbieland might share the same name—although we can’t forget Allan ( Michael Cera ) and Midge ( Emerald Fennell ), two discontinued toys that still hang with the Barbies and Kens—but they’re all unique. Barbieland is as diverse as our real world, but no one ever calls attention to it. There’s no tokenism here; Barbieland is just a perfect utopia, where Barbie can be every woman. After all, as the film winkingly states in that opening montage about Barbie’s background, the prevalence of different types of Barbies means that all disputes of feminism and equal rights have been solved!

There’s just one problem: Barbie is having irrepressible thoughts of death. Okay, two problems: She’s also getting cellulite. Make that three: Her feet have gone—gasp!— flat . It’s not long before Barbie finds out that the sudden fear of her own demise is somehow connected to the human world, where whichever little girl is playing with her is starting to become world-weary. “She can’t be sad,” Barbie protests. “We fixed everything in the Real World.” The screenplay, which Gerwig co-wrote alongside her husband and creative partner Noah Baumbach, delicately stacks Barbie’s bursts of unintentional naivete, making her inevitable trip to the Real World to save herself from full malfunction all the more powerful.

Gerwig and Baumbach’s delightfully dry wit is omnipresent, and with so much to look at in Barbieland’s enchanting environment, it’s easy to miss these little jabs at how women are expected to operate in a man’s world. “I would never wear heels if my feet were shaped like this,” Barbie says of her newly flat sole, stumbling around in a pair of pumps. A caustic line like that could elicit sighs and eye-rolls galore, if it were written by anyone other than Baumbach and Gerwig. But their scripts have always masterfully coated irony with a thick layer of sincerity. Through nods to a kaleidoscopic list of cinematic references (their screenplay is The Red Shoes -meets- The Truman Show , through a Barbie-fied lens) and Robbie’s truly versatile performance, Barbie ’s biting cultural commentary works in both small doses and big swings.

As Barbie and Ken (who tags along for the ride) wade into the murkiness of the Real World, they both are stricken by its fundamental differences. The conventional, gendered appearance of both of these famous characters—a longtime chief complaint of many of Barbie’s detractors since the Barbie doll’s debut in 1959—has a direct effect on how they’re treated by humans. Gerwig and Baumbach’s dissection of patriarchy and everyday misogyny ricochets between unassumingly cunning to overt and hilarious. Almost all of the laughs produced by Barbie and Ken’s trip to the Real World—and there are so, so many—cut deep. They’re the kind of incisive observational humor that Barbie ’s pair of writers cut their teeth with in Frances Ha and Mistress America , dialed up so far that the knob broke off.

The genius of Barbie is that its script has an answer for everything. Gerwig and Baumbach know just what to say to Barbie cynics, who criticize the doll’s appearance, its potential impact on children, and how that might affect their perception of womanhood. The film firmly asserts Barbie as a feminist; at the same time, it skewers Mattel's own commodification of feminism to sell dolls. Even Ken, who could have easily been all comic relief and goofy one-liners, is rewarded with an intricate plotline that sways the film’s entire narrative, which Gosling commits to harder than he has for any role prior. Confused by how Gosling’s blonde, chiseled Ken, with perfect contoured pecs, can distract from what is inherently a woman’s story? Barbie has a tongue-in-cheek answer for that too.

Though Gosling is undeniably fantastic in the film—his physical comedy and line deliveries are the stuff of a bygone era of leading men— Barbie is firmly Robbie’s movie. Her Barbie is endlessly layered, thanks to Robbie’s affable demeanor and clear regard for this character’s importance. There is a stunning kindness to Barbie, and her natural benevolence and ceaseless compassion provide the film’s emotional crux. Robbie can make audiences cry at the drop of Barbie’s embroidered cowboy hat, but she doesn’t show her cards too early. Barbie ’s final 20 minutes are gut punch-after-gut punch, but they wouldn’t be nearly as effective if Gerwig’s sensitive direction didn’t build up to them slowly. One particularly effective moment arrives not halfway through the film, when Barbie briefly meets an older human woman at a bus stop. It’s one of the most slyly poignant scenes in any of Gerwig’s films thus far; just thinking about it is enough to get me choked up.

That is the sheer power of Gerwig’s filmmaking. She can condense a feeling into its purest form with seemingly effortless aplomb. Barbie is a movie that only she could have made, and only after Lady Bird and Little Women . Those films exhibited Gerwig’s abilities to keenly analyze womanhood and societal ideas of femininity through an ultra-personal lens, which she’s managed to do again with Barbie , on a spectacular scale.

Though Barbie might throw around existential quips oft-seen online as we all continue to grapple with the fragility of life post-pandemic, Gerwig spins these jokes into something all her own. They go farther and hit harder than your average conversational nihilism. America Ferrera, who steals scenes as a human that Barbie meets during her time in the Real World, gets a monologue so compelling that it makes you laugh as much as it makes you want to throw up under the weight of the world’s immense imbalance. Ferrera might be talking about all of the things that women have to make themselves comfortable with just to survive in the world, yet it’s never preachy.

Barbie ’s ability to cover so much ground in just under two hours is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Its granular level of detail will keep viewers coming back to it for years, just as they do their childhood Barbies, tucked away somewhere in a big, plastic bin. That nostalgia will be potent for mothers and daughters the world over, and Barbie ’s regard for motherhood ends up being its most continuously stirring theme. The existentialist absurdity of the film’s dialogue will live on in meme format for years to come, but it’s the warm affection for a matriarchy that gives Barbie its bite, one that can’t be compacted into GIF form.

For anyone worried that Barbie would be Gerwig’s capitalist sellout, fear not. Even in an inherently plutocratic world, Gerwig maintains her integrity. Barbie will likely generate millions of dollars for Mattel, as the brand already does. But the film’s cultural impression will outlast the bigwigs who profit from it, while its plot chides the men who presently run the company for controlling an empire built on the image of a woman. Some might think those things are mutually exclusive, but Gerwig and Barbie don’t bother overthinking it; Barbie’s legacy has taught us all too well that you can’t please everyone. There’s more to be done, and Barbie is on a mission to change the world—again. Like the doll herself, the film needs no one’s permission but its own.

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Barbie First Reactions: Witty, Impeccably Designed, Overblown Fun

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

TAGGED AS: Comedy , First Reactions , movies

Here’s what critics are saying about Barbie :

Does Barbie live up to the hype?

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

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

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

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

(Photo by ©Warner Bros.)

How are the performances?

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

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

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

What about the script?

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

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

Anything else impressive about it?

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

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

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

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

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

Barbie opens in theaters everywhere on July 21, 2023.

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'Barbie' Review: Greta Gerwig’s World of Plastic Is Fantastic

Starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, Greta Gerwig turns 'Barbie' into much more than just a toy commercial.

The Big Picture

• Barbie , directed by Greta Gerwig, is a comedy that explores the difficulties of being a woman and the absurdity of trying to be perfect.
• The film uses pointed jokes to discuss sexism and womanhood.
• Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling deliver fantastic performances as Barbie and Ken in a film that both praises and critiques the iconic doll.

In the over sixty years since Barbie was first released, there have been many differing opinions on the incredibly popular doll . Some have seen Mattel’s creation as a sign of empowerment, an example to young girls showing that they can become anything they want to be, while others have seen it as a symbol of impossible standards and outdated ideals. Barbie could’ve easily been little more than a toy ad, but through director and co-writer Greta Gerwig , it becomes an existential look at the difficulties of being a woman, the terrifying nature of life in general, the understanding that trying to be perfect is absurd, while also encapsulating everything that Barbie has meant to people—both good and bad. But amongst all this, Gerwig makes Barbie one of the funniest comedies of the year, a delightfully strange adventure that gets weirder at every turn. Barbie has always contained multitudes and, fittingly, so does Gerwig’s excellent third film.

Barbie suffers a crisis that leads her to question her world and her existence.

What Is 'Barbie' About?

Margot Robbie stars as Barbie, the iconic doll who lives in Barbie Land with the other Barbies (played by Emma Mackey , Hari Nef , Alexandra Shipp , and many, many others), where they all have the best day of their life every day. In this land, the Barbies rule, as they have a Barbie president ( Issa Rae ), they run the land’s congress, and win Nobel Prizes daily. The Barbies believe that their example of a female-run world has been an inspiration to the Real World, which they assume is also run by empowered women. Barbie Land also has its share of Kens, who only have a good day if Barbie notices them. Ken ( Ryan Gosling ) is in love with Robbie’s Barbie, and fights for her attention with Ken ( Simu Liu ) when he’s not doing his job of “beach.”

After yet another incredible day in Barbie Land, Robbie’s Barbie mentions that she’s been thinking about death, which stops her grand, choreographed dance party at her Barbie mansion dead in its tracks. The next morning, nothing is right. Her shower is cold, she falls off her roof, and her feet are no longer perfectly shaped to fit her high heels. To find out what’s going wrong, she’s told by Weird Barbie ( Kate McKinnon )—who knows of the human world all too well after being played with too hard—that she must go to the Real World and find the girl who is playing with her. Clearly, this girl is also having these negative feelings, and things won’t be right with Barbie until things are repaired. To fix her world, Barbie and Gosling’s Ken go to the Real World to find Barbie’s owner , but in doing so, they both find a world that couldn’t be more different than their own.

Greta Gerwig Is the Perfect Filmmaker to Tell This Story

Barbie is ambitious in its approach to the quintessential toy, and this story simply wouldn’t work without the direction of Gerwig and her and Noah Baumbach ’s bonkers script. Barbie balances the incredibly pointed specificity of the jokes and relatability of Lady Bird , with the celebration of women and the ability to show a new angle of something we thought we knew like we saw with Gerwig’s take on Little Women . Gerwig and Baumbach manage to make this not feel like a toy ad, but rather, a discussion of sexism and womanhood that’s also hysterical and extremely odd. This is a film that balances jokes about Ken being good at his job of “beach,” with references to Marcel Proust and Stephen Malkmus. It’s almost shocking how much this duo gets away with in this script, and in certain moments, like a major speech by America Ferrera ’s Gloria, who works at Mattel, it’s beautiful that some of these scenes can exist in a big-budget summer film like this. While many have tried to get this idea off the ground and running, it’s hard to imagine anyone doing it with as much skill and care as Gerwig and Baumbach do here.

Gerwig’s direction here is also terrific, as she’s able to make Barbie Land feel real, with production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer doing unbelievable work throughout. Gerwig’s work behind the camera is vibrant and bold, and it’s great to see her have such a massive canvas to play with. Gerwig’s handling of this story can’t help but remind of the eye-popping colors of Jacques Demy films like The Young Girls of Rochefort or The Umbrellas of Cherbourg , fantasy numbers that feel right out of An American in Paris , and the perfectly constructed offices of Mattel in the real world feel like Jacques Tati ’s PlayTime . Barbie also uses its superb soundtrack, from Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt , to elevate this story in brilliant ways. For example, Lizzo ’s “Pink” almost acts as a narrator to Barbie’s plight at the beginning of the film, while Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” is a pitch-perfect addition to one of the movie’s most moving scenes . Again, it’s this consideration and intentional placement of all these elements that Gerwig adds to the film that makes this feel like more than just “a film about Barbie.”

The only segment of Barbie that doesn’t work as well as it maybe should is the addition of Mattel into this narrative . Will Ferrell appears as the CEO of Mattel, and his all-male boardroom attempts to get Barbie back to the Real World, lest the world finds out how easy it is for toys to come into our world. It’s an admirable addition, with Gerwig commenting on how this girl’s toy is largely created by men and how hypocritical that can be. While that’s certainly worth adding to this story, the film frequently returns to these characters, and especially by the end , they seem to be more of a burden to the story of Ken and Barbie than actually a useful addition. They’ve made their point, and yet, the film continually comes back to them in a way it probably doesn’t need to. But again, this is a minor complaint, and it’s at least impressive that Gerwig and Baumbach were able to get away with making the company behind this film part of the inherent problem with this icon in the first place.

Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are Tremendous as Barbie and Ken

Of course, Barbie would be nothing without Barbie, and Robbie is simply incredible in the title role. Robbie can represent everything this toy has meant to people, as we watch this plaything become human, in her own way . Robbie is very funny when she needs to be, but we can feel the weight of this character learning that the world isn’t what she always hoped it would be. She discovers she might not be the icon of change that she thought she was and begins to understand just how terrifying change can be. It’s as if Gerwig and Baumbach are diving into everything this character has meant over the decades and how that has and hasn’t worked, and Robbie encompasses that perfectly. She has often excelled in these types of roles where we see the power a woman truly has in her environment, but there might not be a better example of that than in Barbie.

Gosling is equally fantastic as Ken, a lovable idiot who thinks the patriarchy has something to do with horses and men ruling the world together . Ken seeing the power that men have in the real world and embracing it could’ve been abrasive, but Gosling always manages to make this character goofy and understandable. As a character who just wants to be seen, our world makes Ken into a person with power like he’s always wanted. Gosling is always great when he embraces comedy, like we’ve seen with The Nice Guys and moments of La La Land , but Ken allows Gosling to go broad in a way that we’ve never seen him go before, and the result is charming, bizarre, and one of the most hysterical performances of the year.

In the months since Barbie came out, after the Barbenheimer fad died down and after the film would go on to become one of the most successful films of all-time, what’s most impressive about Barbie is that it exists in this form at all . Gerwig knows that this is a film that the world will be against (“a movie about a toy ??“), and yet, she handles every aspect with an impeccable consideration and brilliance that it’s hard not to admire what she’s crafted here. But beyond worrying about if certain lines were written by her or Baumbach, or complaining that the feminism doesn’t go far enough, or even for it’s criticism of Mattel, the company still had to sign off on it—it’s still incredible this movie exists and was as successful as it was. This is a film that manages to explore the conflicting ideals of what Barbie means, while also making patriarchy (and how stupid it inherently is) the primary villain. Gerwig has always been outstanding at telling beautiful and daring stories, and she’s managed to do that, while also bringing a larger commentary to this iconic toy—in a film told from the viewpoint of a plastic doll.

It’s easy to be cynical about a film like Barbie , a film that has at least partially been made to sell toys and even makes Mattel a part of the actual story. But Barbie is also an example of how getting the right people behind an unusual idea can make something truly beautiful come out of it, much like The Lego Movie or The Social Network before it. Gerwig has created a film that takes Barbie, praises its contribution as an idea to our world, but also criticizes its faults, while also making a film that celebrates being a woman and all the difficulties and beauty that includes. This also manages to be a film that feels decidedly in line with Gerwig’s previous films as she continues her streak as one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. Barbie could’ve just been a commercial, but Gerwig makes this life of plastic into something truly fantastic .

Greta Gerwig's Barbie is an impressive feat, adapting the unadaptable into a hilarious and surprising emotional experience.

• Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling bring plastic characters to life, giving them each one of their best performances.
• Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach's screenplay hits just the right tone of absurd and emotional honesty.
• From the music to the incredible set design, Barbie is impressive in every aspect.
• The Mattel storyline, featuring Will Ferrell, feels unnecessary in the larger scope of this story.

Barbie is now available to stream on Max in the U.S.

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

Barbie Is Very Pretty But Not Very Deep

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

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

Read More: Our Cover Story on Barbie

It’s true that Barbie does many of the things we’ve been promised: there is much mocking and loving of Barbie, and plenty of skewering of the suits. But none of those things make it subversive. Instead, it’s a movie that’s enormously pleased with itself, one that has cut a big slice of perfectly molded plastic cake and eaten it—or pretend-eaten it—too. The things that are good about Barbie — Robbie’s buoyant, charming performance and Ryan Gosling’s go-for-broke turn as perennial boyfriend Ken, as well as the gorgeous, inventive production design—end up being steamrollered by all the things this movie is trying so hard to be. Its playfulness is the arch kind. Barbie never lets us forget how clever it’s being, every exhausting minute.

That’s a shame, because the first half-hour or so is dazzling and often genuinely funny, a vision that’s something close to (though not nearly as weird as) the committed act of imagination Robert Altman pulled off with his marvelous Popeye. First, there’s a prologue, narrated by Helen Mirren and riffing on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, explaining the impact of early Barbie on little girls in 1959; she was an exotic and aspirational replacement for their boring old baby dolls, whose job was to train them for motherhood—Gerwig shows these little girls on a rocky beach, dashing their baby dolls to bits after they’ve seen the curvy miracle that is Barbie. Then Gerwig, production designer Sarah Greenwood, and costume designer Jacqueline Durran launch us right into Barbieland, with Robbie’s approachably glam Barbie walking us through . This is an idyllic community where all the Dream Houses are open, not only because its denizens have no shame and nothing to hide, but because homes without walls mean they can greet one another each day with the sunrise. “Hello, Barbie!” they call out cheerfully. Everyone in Barbieland—except the ill-fated pregnant Midge , based on one of Mattel’s many discontinued experiments in toy marketing—is named Barbie, and everyone has a meaningful job. There are astronaut Barbies and airline pilot Barbies, as well as an all-Barbie Supreme Court. Garbage-collector Barbies, in matching pink jumpsuits, bustle cheerfully along this hamlet’s perpetually pristine curbs. This array of Barbies is played by a selection of actors including Hari Nef, Dua Lipa, Alexandra Shipp, and Emma Mackey. The president is also Barbie—she’s played by Issa Rae. (In one of the early section’s great sight gags, she brushes her long, silky tresses with an overscale oval brush.)

Barbieland is a world where all the Barbies love and support one another , like a playtime version of the old-fashioned women’s college, where the students thrive because there are no men to derail their self-esteem. Robbie’s Barbie—she is known, as a way of differentiating herself from the others, as Stereotypical Barbie, because she is white and has the perfectly sculpted proportions and sunny smile of the Barbie many of us grew up with—is the center of it all. She awakens each morning and throws off her sparkly pink coverlet, her hair a swirl of perfectly curled Saran. She chooses an outfit (with meticulously coordinated accessories) from her enviable wardrobe. Her breakfast is a molded waffle that pops from the toaster unbidden; when she “drinks” from a cup of milk, it’s only pretend-drinking, because where is that liquid going to go? This becomes a recurring gag in the movie, wearing itself out slowly, but it’s delightful at first, particularly because Robbie is so game for all of it. Her eyes sparkle in that vaguely crazed Barbie-like way; her smile has a painted-on quality, but there’s warmth there, too. She steps into this role as lightly as if it were a chevron-striped one piece tailored precisely to her talents.

Barbie also has a boyfriend, one Ken of many Kens. The Kens are played by actors including Kingsley Ben-Adir and Simu Liu. But Gosling’s Ken is the best of them, stalwart, in a somewhat neutered way, with his shaggy blond hair, spray-tan bare chest, and vaguely pink lips. The Kens have no real job, other than one known as “Beach,” which involves, as you might guess, going to the beach. The Kens are generally not wanted at the Barbies’ ubiquitous dance parties—the Barbies generally prefer the company of themselves. And that’s why the Kens’ existence revolves around the Barbies . As Mirren the narrator tells us, Barbie always has a great day. “But Ken has a great day only if Barbie looks at him.” And the moment Robbie does, Gosling’s face becomes the visual equivalent of a dream Christmas morning, alight with joy and wonder.

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You couldn’t, of course, have a whole movie set in this highly artificial world. You need to have a plot, and some tension. And it’s when Gerwig airlifts us out of Barbieland and plunks us down in the real world that the movie’s problems begin. Barbie awakens one morning realizing that suddenly, nothing is right. Her hair is messy on the pillow; her waffle is shriveled and burnt. She has begun to have unbidden thoughts about death. Worst of all, her perfectly arched feet have gone flat. (The other Barbies retch in horror at the sight.) For advice, she visits the local wise woman, also known as Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), the Barbie who’s been “played with too hard,” as evidenced by the telltale scribbles on her face. Weird Barbie tells Robbie’s confused and forlorn Barbie that her Barbieland troubles are connected to something that’s going on out there in the Real World, a point of stress that turns out to involve a Barbie-loving mom, Gloria (America Ferrera), and her preteen daughter, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), who are growing apart. Barbie makes the journey to the Real World, reluctantly allowing Ken to accompany her. There, he’s wowed to learn that men make all the money and basically rule the land. While Barbie becomes more and more involved in the complexity of human problems , Ken educates himself on the wonders of the patriarchy and brings his newfound ideas back to empower the Kens, who threaten to take over the former utopia known as Barbieland.

By this point, Barbie has begun to do a lot more telling and a lot less showing; its themes are presented like flat-lays of Barbie outfits , delivered in lines of dialogue that are supposed to be profound but come off as lifeless. There are still some funny gags—a line about the Kens trying to win over the Barbies by playing their guitars “at” them made me snort. But the good jokes are drowned out by the many self-aware ones, like the way the Mattel executives, all men (the head boob is Will Ferrell), sit around a conference table and strategize ways to make more money off selling their idea of “female agency.”

The question we’re supposed to ask, as our jaws hang open, is “How did the Mattel pooh-bahs let these jokes through?” But those real-life execs, counting their doubloons in advance, know that showing what good sports they are will help rather than hinder them. They’re on team Barbie, after all! And they already have a long list of toy-and-movie tie-ins on the drawing board.

Meanwhile, we’re left with Barbie the movie, a mosaic of many shiny bits of cleverness with not that much to say. In the pre-release interviews they’ve given, Gerwig and Robbie have insisted their movie is smart about Barbie and what she means to women, even as Mattel executives have said they don’t see the film as being particularly feminist. And all parties have insisted that Barbie is for everyone.

Barbie probably is a feminist movie, but only in the most scattershot way. The plot hinges on Barbie leaving her fake world behind and, like Pinocchio and the Velveteen Rabbit before her, becoming “real.” Somehow this is an improvement on her old existence, but how can we be sure? The movie’s capstone is a montage of vintagey-looking home movies (Gerwig culled this footage from Barbie ’s cast and crew), a blur of joyful childhood moments and parents showing warmth and love. Is this the soon-to-be-real Barbie’s future, or are these the doll-Barbie’s memories? It’s impossible to tell. By this point, we’re supposed to be suitably immersed in the bath of warm, girls-can-do-anything fuzzies the movie is offering us. Those bold, bored little girls we saw at the very beginning of the film, dashing their baby dolls against the rocks, are nowhere in sight. In this Barbieland, their unruly desires are now just an inconvenience.

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'Barbie' review: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling dazzle in hilariously heady toy story

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Jessica is a staff writer at Entertainment Weekly, where she covers TV, movies, and pop culture. Her work has appeared in Bustle, NYLON, Cosmopolitan, InStyle, and more. She lives in California with her dog.

Welcome to the Mojo Dojo Ca— er, Barbie Dreamhouse.

Greta Gerwig 's Barbie movie has taken the world by storm since its July 21 theatrical release, grossing over $1.38 billion at the global box office. Margot Robbie , also an executive producer, leads the musical comedy as Stereotypical Barbie, who experiences a full on existential crisis and embarks on a journey of self discovery. Along for the ride is her beau Ken, played by Ryan Gosling .

Kate McKinnon , Issa Rae , Simu Liu , Ncuti Gatwa , Kingsley Ben-Adir, and Scott Evans also portray various Barbies and Kens in Barbie Land, the pink utopia at the center of the film, and the rest of the cast includes America Ferrera , Michael Cera , and Will Ferrell . Here's everything to know about Barbie, including when and where it'll be available to purchase and/or stream.

Who wrote, directed, and produced Barbie?

Gerwig directed the film, which she co-wrote with her partner and fellow filmmaker Noah Baumbach ( Marriage Story , Frances Ha ). Robbie produced the film alongside LuckyChap's Tom Ackerley and Mattel's Robbie Brenner and David Heyman. LuckyChap's Josey McNamara and Mattel's Ynon Kreiz also executive-produced.

Who stars in Barbie?

The cast is stacked: Along with Robbie, other Barbies are played by Dua Lipa, Nicola Coughlan, Alexandra Shipp, Hari Nef, Emma Mackey, Ana Cruz Kayne, Sharon Rooney, and Ritu Arya. Ferrell plays the CEO of Mattel, while Helen Mirren is the narrator. Cera plays Ken's pal Allan, while other notable cast members include Emerald Fennell as Midge, Ariana Greenblatt as a human, Connor Swindells as "an intern or something," and Jamie Demetriou as a "suit."

Check out a bunch of character posters below.

Is there a trailer?

There sure is. Barbie confronts her mortality and gets arrested (as does Ken) in the trailer.

Okay, but "Barbie Girl" by Aqua is on the soundtrack, right?

Kind of? Music producers Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt enlisted quite the starry bunch for the soundtrack, including Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice for the original track "Barbie World," which samples from Aqua's "Barbie Girl." The first single came courtesy of Mermaid Barbie herself, Dua Lipa, with the disco pop track "Dance the Night." The soundtrack also features Lizzo ("Pink"), Charli XCX ("Speed Drive"), Billie Eilish and Finneas ("What Was I Made For?"), Haim ("Home"), Karol G and Aldo Ranks ("Watati"), and Gosling himself ("I'm Just Ken").

Weren't there other versions in the works?

Yes. Barbie was in development for nearly a decade (really). Amy Schumer was initially tapped to star in 2016. That iteration, under Sony, was billed as a new feminist take on the famous '50s Mattel doll. It would have centered on Barbie as she began to realize she didn't fit into her perfect world of Barbie Land. After getting kicked out, she'd find herself in the real world in a fish-out-of-water tale in the vein of Big and Enchanted . Schumer departed the project a year later, initially stating that it was due to "creative differences." (She's since revealed that the early take just didn't feel "feminist and cool." ) Sony courted Anne Hathaway after Schumer's exit, with delays occurring not too long after. Finally, in 2019, the film moved over to Warner Bros., where Gerwig took the reins.

What has the cast said about Barbie vs. Oppenheimer?

With Barbie and Christopher Nolan's atom bomb drama Oppenheimer falling on the same theatrical release date, the internet has been abuzz about a "feud" between the two films — but there are no hard feelings here. Gerwig addressed the supposed rivalry at the Los Angeles premiere of Barbie , telling The Hollywood Reporter on the pink carpet, "It's all love — double up, double up twice. I think you've got to see what the experience is, Barbie then Oppenheimer , Oppenheimer then Barbie . I think you've got to take all of the journeys."

Rae, who plays President Barbie, also offered a diplomatic response and said, "I love that there's solidarity though where people tried to pit us against one another but now it's turned into like a double-feature situation. Obviously you should see Oppenheimer first and then cleanse your palate with Barbie ." Spoken like a true world leader.

When will it be online and/or for purchase?

Come Sept. 12, Barbie will be available for digital purchase and/or rental on participating movie digital platforms, including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, and more. The release date comes a week before the title will be available in IMAX for a limited one-week theatrical engagement beginning Sept. 22, set to feature never-before-seen end credit footage. Finally, it'll be available to stream on Max on Dec. 15. An American Sign Language version will also be available on the platform.

Related content:

• Barbie review: Welcome to Greta Gerwig's fiercely funny, feminist Dreamhouse
• Greta Gerwig on how old Hollywood and disco inspired Barbie
• Ryan Gosling had to 'make peace' with his Mouseketeer past to play Ken in Barbie

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'Barbie' is more than a toy story. Day-Glo film dismantles tropes while celebrating them

It’s not what you think it is.

Of course, the secrecy surrounding what’s really going on with “Barbie,” director Greta Gerwig’s take on the famous, or infamous (depending on who’s talking), doll means that you may not know exactly what to expect when you see the film.

Good. Because no matter what you suspect from the trailers or the endless memes and louder-than-a-jackhammer buzz, even then, it’s not what you think, no matter what you may think you think.

“Barbie” is a fun movie, which seems essential, given that it’s a movie about Barbie. But it’s not just that. It’s over the top, Day-Glo in every way possible, silly and goofy. It’s also smart and thoughtful and depressing in a speak-truth-to-power, zeitgeisty kind of way — a critique of toxic masculinity and more. 

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Greta Gerwig dismantles Barbie tropes while celebrating them

And know this: No matter how you feel about Barbie, no matter whether you think she is a cute rite-of-passage toy or her very existence is a slap in the face to women’s rights and equality, Gerwig, proving herself one of the great directors ( “Lady Bird” is one of the best films of the century ), has beaten you to the punch.

She covers all the bases, not shying away from Barbie tropes and criticisms so much as deconstructing them in front of you, a half-second before your brain can form the phrase, “Yeah, but …” It’s an impressive feat.

Margot Robbie is great as an increasingly multidimensional Barbie, just as good at playing plastic vapidity as burgeoning intelligence and self-awareness. Ryan Gosling is just as good at playing whatever-he-is Ken. (Ken is many things.)

But this is Gerwig’s vision. She co-wrote it with her partner Noah Baumbach, but it's Gerwig’s movie, Gerwig’s take on childhood and the patriarchy and feminism and love and death — boy, death — all wrapped in a package that continually surprises.

So yeah, it’s not what you think it is. It’s better.

What it’s about, on the other hand, is best left discussed in generalities.

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What is 'Barbie' about?

The film begins with a prologue about dolls and how until Barbie came along, they were always baby dolls preparing girls for motherhood. Helen Mirren’s narration, delightful throughout, introduces a Barbie Colossus. The scene is a clear nod to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which also serves notice that there’s a lot going on here.

There really is. Robbie’s Barbie is in fact one of many in Barbieland, where they wield all the power and influence. One Barbie is president, others make up the Supreme Court. They’re doctors and physicists and Nobel Prize winners. Robbie’s is Stereotypical Barbie, what you think of when you think of Barbie. Her job is to be perfect.

The Kens, meanwhile, are basically there to support the Barbies. Gosling’s Ken, in particular, revolves around Robbie’s Barbie.

“Barbie has a great day every day,” the narrator intones, “but Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him.”

Barbieland is quite the place. “Thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved,” the narrator says. At least that’s how the Barbies see things.

Then, during a musical number at a dance party at Barbie’s Dream House, Barbie blurts out, “You guys ever think about dying?”

It is fair to say that no, they have not.

Soon Barbie is having a full-on existential crisis. She seeks the help of Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon, hilarious) who tells her that her feelings are caused by whoever in the Real World is playing with her. She needs to travel there and work things out.

Off she goes, and Ken stows away. They show up in “the country of California” and stand out in Venice Beach. Ken is intoxicated by the power men have here; Barbie gets a rude awakening from Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a tween girl who unloads on Barbie with both barrels, decrying the objectification she has inspired in the Real World.

Sasha’s mom Gloria (America Ferrera) works for the CEO of Mattel (Will Ferrell); she has a warmer relationship with Barbie than her daughter does. As in most movies, when the real world and fantasy worlds collide, trouble ensues in both. Gloria will prove instrumental in trying to fix things; it’s a choice role for Ferrera.

Some of the social critiques are scathing. “I’m a man with no power,” one man says in the Real World. “Does that make me a woman?”

Yet for all its surprises, “Barbie” is also funny; even the dumb jokes are smart, which will make sense in context. At times Gerwig is a little heavy-handed — like the previous joke, actually — and she has a lot of ideas swirling around that she’s juggling.

Good. It’ll be interesting to see how audiences expecting nothing more than a goofy summer trifle will react to the film, which is that, in part, but also so much more.

Where to stream 'Barbie' at home?

"Barbie" is available for rent or purchase on Apple TV, Prime Video, Google Play and Vudu. Buy it digitally for $29.99 or rent for 48 hours for $24.99.

'Barbie' 4.5 stars

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

Director: Greta Gerwig.

Cast: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera.

Rating: PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language.

How to watch: In theaters Friday, July 21.

Reach Goodykoontz at  [email protected] . Facebook:  facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm . Twitter:  @goodyk .

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The hype around 'Barbie' is huge, but so is the debate. Here are 6 reasons the movie is sparking discussion on social media.

• "Barbie" has been in theatres less than a week, after debuting to much hype. 
• Since the movie was released in cinemas on July 21, it has sparked debate on social media.
• Its feminist messaging in particular has been criticized from multiple angles.

The "Barbie" movie dropped in theatres to huge hype, bringing in $162 million in its opening weekend . It's barely been out a week and it's been described as a "full-fledged box office phenomenon" as hoards of viewers around the world flocked to cinemas. 

It's also caused a whole lot of discussion on social media.

For some people, the movie surpassed expectations; for others, it fell flat; and several aspects of the movie have caused controversy and sparked a lot of debate.

Here's what people are talking about the most. (Warning: may contain spoilers.)

In a movie that is supposed to be centered around women, a man is one of the most popular characters.

Allan, a doll who was introduced to the Barbie franchise in 1964 as Ken's friend, is played by Michael Cera in the movie.

He has been referred to as the "unsung hero" of the film in an article by KQED , and as the movie's "sly secret weapon" by Mashable .

"One of the most relatable parts of 'Barbie' was watching Allan quietly struggling with heteronormativity the whole movie," TikToker @nathanmychael wrote in a video . Many viewers agreed with his statement. 

@nathanmychael crying to barbie was not on my 2023 bingo card #barbie #barbiemovie #barbiemovies #margotrobbie #ryangosling #gretagerwig #ken #allan #billieeilish #gay #lgbt #lgbtq #bi #queer #pov #fyp #relatable #newmovie #la #losangeles ♬ What Was I Made For? [From The Motion Picture "Barbie"] - Billie Eilish

But not everyone is happy with the amount of attention Allan is getting. 

"It's a movie about feminism where pretty much all of the main characters are women and somehow everyone's favorite character is still a man," TikTok user @kindsoberfullydressed  wrote in a video, which has received over 1.6 million views.

@kindsoberfullydressed #i❤️micheal #MrCera ♬ Barbie Girl - Lady Aqua

Despite this criticism, they added that Allan is their favorite character from the movie too. "I'm literally part of the problem."

Barbie apologizes to Ken, but no one apologizes to Barbie.

At the end of the movie, Barbie, who is played by Margot Robbie, apologizes to Ken, who is played by Ryan Gosling, for not being romantically interested in him. 

Many people have criticized the apology for reinforcing the idea that it's "mean" for women to draw boundaries with a man , and that they are "expected to play therapist."

"Barbie was the one responsible for picking Ken back up again even though he hurt Barbie just as much if not more," TikTok user @cheesebloque wrote in a video . 

@cheesebloque I AM DISTRAUGHT #gretagerwig #barbiemovie #mattel #barbie #ken #feminism #fyp ♬ What Was I Made For? [From The Motion Picture "Barbie"] - Billie Eilish

Ken isn't the only person who hurt Barbie throughout the movie. At one point, a teenage character called Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) hurls a stream of insults at Barbie, culminating in calling her a "fascist" and making Barbie cry.

"I don't understand why they moved on from that it fr just shattered my heart," one TikToker wrote . Others agreed that they noticed that nobody had apologized to Barbie throughout the entire movie. 

@myispace that wasnt very women supporting women of Sasha #barbie ♬ original sound - <3

One viewer commented that while Sasha was mean, she was a good representation of a young teenage girl. Others suggested that Sasha's apology to Barbie wasn't in her words, but rather through her actions when she turned the car around and went back to save Barbieland.

Some men say the movie is "anti-men."

Some men, including broadcaster Piers Morgan, have argued that the movie carries a "misandrist message."

"If I made a movie that treated women the way Barbie treats men, feminists would want me executed," Morgan wrote in an article published in the New York Post on July 24. 

In r/MensRights, a subreddit with over 350,000 members, one user complained that the movie "seriously kept putting men down, making them look like second-class citizens." 

They said that when they tried to find a movie that had a similar message about women, they couldn't find one. 

But Twitter user @ardcntIy argued that the entire plot of the movie focuses on the problems that occur because men are not taught how to deal with their emotions, which leads them to "cling to the patriarchy." 

—bee (@ardcntIy) July 21, 2023

The movie's feminist message has been disputed by some viewers, who think it's surface level.

Some have said that "Barvie" fails to recognize that experiences differ significantly for different groups of women and that the movie does not address the multiple forms of inequality that exist outside of gender, such as race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation. 

In one video , user @kxmberly_tsitsi accused Hollywood of being "out of touch" with feminism and women's experiences. 

She wrote, "It doesn't properly criticize patriarchy and the message it pushes would've been groundbreaking in the 60s but in 2023 it falls flat and completely ignores any intersectionality.

@kxmberly_tsitsi i had fun watching Barbie but the message was sadly very weak - idk maybe im being too harsh? #barbie #review ♬ what was i made for billie eilish - aidenwatson

But another TikToker argued that while she believes the movie is not doing anything "radical or revolutionary," it is a good introduction to feminism for many. 

"Based on the last year or two years that we have lived through, it is very clear that some people either missed Feminism 101, or are very much in need of a refresher," she wrote in a video .

@jordxn.simone its like wanting doctorate level talks with a community that just learned gender studies is even a class #barbie #barbiegirl #barbiemovies ♬ original sound - jordan

While the ideas presented in the movie may not seem "radical" for some audience members, they could be revolutionary for younger members of the audience. 

In a tweet , user @aishamadeit wrote that America Ferrera's character Gloria's monologue , which some have argued is a very basic representation of feminism, would have hyped her up to "run through a brick wall at 16."

—Aisha (@aishamadeit) July 24, 2023

Some believe the movie's central themes and characters are underdeveloped.

The movie explores multiple themes, including the implications of death, feminism and patriarchy, perfectionism, and identity and individuality. But some people criticized the film for having too many undeveloped storylines. 

At the end of the movie, the creator of Barbie, Ruth Handler, who is played by Rhea Pearlman, tells Barbie, "We mothers stand still so our daughters can look back to see how far they've come." 

In an article in The Daily Beast , entertainment critic Coleman Spilde referred to this as the movie's "most profound line."

But Twitter user @ModernGurlzz , who is known for her film analysis content that she posts on her YouTube channel , where she has over 650,000 subscribers, tweeted that while this line is very meaningful "in theory," it doesn't work given that the movie "utterly neglects to discuss motherhood in a meaningful manner at any other point."

She said that the rift in Gloria and her daughter Sasha's relationship is supposed to serve as a catalyst for Barbie's identity crisis, but both characters are "underdeveloped" and don't interact in a believable mother-daughter way.

—ModernGurlz (@ModernGurlzz) July 25, 2023

The movie focuses a lot on Ken.

In an interview published in the Los Angeles Times , "Barbie" director Greta Gerwig said that she thought many men felt "released by Ken's journey."

But some people are saying that the movie is too focused on Ken questioning his identity. 

One user tweeted that Barbie "felt like a side character" throughout the movie and that Ken felt like the main character, writing, "I hated how everything was made about making him feel better."

Others argued that it is important to address the issues that cause men to lean into patriarchal views, often as a result of feeling lonely and alienated in society. 

The movie's viral tagline, "She's everything. He's just Ken," may have set some viewers up for failure, assuming it would barely focus on Ken, however others thought it was subverting our expectations intentionally.

"She doesn't have to be everything, and he doesn't have to be nothing," wrote one Twitter user , calling the execution of the idea a "pretty nifty move."

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The packaging of “Barbie” is a lot more fun than the tedious toy inside the box. 

Ingeniously, a yearlong barrage of Mattel propaganda was foisted upon us and created a resistance-is-futile Summer of Barbie before anybody knew if the movie was any good. 

There were pop-up cafes , a Forever 21 clothing collaboration and viral Instagram filters galore. 

Running time: 114 minutes. Rated PG-13 (suggestive references and brief language). In theaters July 21.

And then the actual film arrived. To almost quote the Aqua song: Life in plastic — not fantastic.

“Barbie” is an exhausting, spastic, self-absorbed and overwrought disappointment.

Arthouse director/co-writer Greta Gerwig (the superb “ Lady Bird ” and “Little Women”) and co-writer Noah Baumbach (“ Marriage Story “) have churned out a smug tale that doesn’t boast a single sympathetic character. It does, however, have plenty of moral platitudes and pinky-out intellectual jokes.

Midway through this corporate cash grab masquerading as an art installation, a teenage girl shouts at Margot Robbie’s Barbie in a California high school cafeteria: “You represent everything wrong with our culture. You destroyed the planet with your glorification of rampant consumerism — you fascist!”

Barbie, not used to being criticized, cries, “She thinks I’m a fascist?! I don’t control the railways or the flow of commerce!”

That eye-roll-worthy interaction neatly encapsulates the entire enterprise’s high-on-its-own-supply sense of humor that always comes at the expense of character and plot development and turns off anybody who’s trying to have a good time.

Worse, the spat underlines the filmmakers’ delusion that this “Barbie” is something more than just another ploy to sell merchandise.

Gerwig’s movie starts with a cliche. A narrator (Helen Mirren) says, “Since the beginning of time, there have always been dolls,” as a group of little girls surround a giant Barbie and violently smash their old toys to smithereens. It’s sending up the monolith scene from “2001: A Space Odyssey” that has been parodied forever.

Mirren then goes on to tell us of a utopia called Barbie Land, where a diverse array of Barbies and Kens inhabit a matriarchal society in which a Barbie is president (Issa Rae) and the Supreme Court is made up entirely of Barbies. 

They all live in Malibu DreamHouses, go to the cardboard beach, innocently flirt with Kens and dance at slumber parties.

If you’re hoping to experience a multiverse of unique, strong-personality Barbies, you’re better off going to Toys “R” Us after a few martinis. Played by Hari Nef, Dua Lipa, Nicola Coughlan and Emma Mackey, among others, the group members all act similarly and are frustratingly interchangeable with few standout moments.

Every Ken (Ryan Gosling, Scott Evans, Simu Liu and more) is, predictably, a moron.

The narrator adds that Barbie Land citizens believe that, “thanks to Barbie, all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved” out in the real world. 

Each Barbie, you see, has a plastic toy stand-in on Earth. For instance, Kate McKinnon’s Barbie (one of the few bright spots) has hacked-off hair and colored lines on her face because a little girl “played too hard” and tossed her in a box.

But when classic Barbie (Robbie) unexpectedly develops an infatuation with death, discovers cellulite on her belly and gets flat feet, she is forced to venture out into the real world via convertible, boat and rocket ship to set her child owner on the right path.

The real world here, in a bizarre choice, is Los Angeles. What a missed opportunity.

LA, needless to say, doesn’t look or behave all that differently than Barbie Land, and hardly any truly funny fish-out-of-water antics happen in this film.

Barbie meets Will Ferrell’s Mattel CEO, who, in one of many shrugged-away plot holes, is fully aware of Barbie Land and believes that knowledge of its existence poses some kind of threat to America that’s never fully explained.

The writing, across the board, is lazy. Gerwig and Baumbach’s script doesn’t need to be plausible. It’s about Barbies, for God’s sake. But every time it takes a bonkers narrative leap, somebody cracks a joke about what’s happened as if the viewer is a culture-less rube to ever question the film’s logic.

Two strange scenes involving Rhea Pearlman from “Cheers” are real head-scratchers. 

And a mother-daughter pair played by America Ferrera and Ariana Greenblatt are flatly conceived and textureless.

Drama, sort of, comes when Ken becomes obsessed with the real world’s patriarchy and masculinity and brings them back to upend Barbie Land. What fun.

Gosling’s dumb hunk shtick starts out silly but wears thin as we realize that’s all it’s gonna be.

The visuals are better than the storytelling. The art direction is attractive and clever, if loud and too small-scale. I wanted to explore more of Barbie Land and less of Century City and one LA office building.

Yet you always feel that “Barbie” pales in comparison to other exaggerated stranger-in-a-strange-land films, such as “Pleasantville” or “Elf.”

And in the realm of toys, “The Lego Movie” has far more heart, comedy and creativity than this film does.

What “Barbie” achieves is being an empty movie designed for the vacuous social media age, in which the most important part is snapping a photo of the poster.

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