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

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

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By Manohla Dargis

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

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

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

‘Barbie’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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

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

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

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

• By David Fear

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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July 16, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Barbie'

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

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‘Barbie’ review: A delightful (and very pink) trip to Barbie Land

Movie review.

Long ago, I had a Barbie. Except she wasn’t technically a Barbie, but a Francie, who I have only just learned was marketed decades ago as “Barbie’s MODern cousin from England.” (It’s nice to start a day by finding out one was unexpectedly sophisticated as a child.) I remember that I loved dressing Francie up and managing her collection of microshoes and pretending she was going to exciting places, to which presumably I was going as well, by extension. The Barbie world was a grown-up one — wildly sanitized and outfit-focused and unrealistic, but grown-up nonetheless — and, for a kid, an irresistible place to visit.

Greta Gerwig’s exuberantly pink new movie “Barbie” both understands that thrill and has sly fun with it. After a wonderfully over-the-top, “2001: A Space Odyssey”-inspired prologue — in which we’re reminded that pre-Barbie, playing with dolls meant taking care of babies — off we go to Barbie Land, where Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) lives a picture-perfect life in her Dream House: hanging with her friends (all of whom are also named Barbie), enjoying the sunshine, smiling indulgently at her generically handsome boyfriend Ken (Ryan Gosling), and appreciating that she lives in a feminist utopia, where the president (Issa Rae), the entire Supreme Court and every face on Mount Rushmore is a woman. Barbies, we are reminded, can do anything .

And yet … that perfection quickly becomes marred. Why are Stereotypical Barbie’s feet, normally perpetually posed in heel-friendly tiptoe, suddenly flat? Why is she (hilariously) blurting out thoughts of death at parties? Why is Ken suddenly and dewily questioning his role? We quickly learn, with some help from Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon, having a ball), that a portal has been opened between the real world and Barbie Land, and that Stereotypical Barbie (oh, let’s just call her Barbie from now on) must traverse that portal. Turns out it’s a real-life mother and tween daughter, Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), who’ve been inadvertently messing with Barbie’s world, and who need to travel back with her to help set things right.  

Gerwig, whose last two movies were “ Lady Bird ” and “ Little Women ,” has been establishing herself as a poignant, funny artist of female coming-of-age, and she’s got just the right touch for “Barbie,” a unique mixture of empowerment fantasy, corporate comedy and offbeat weirdness. (Two words: Proust Barbie.) With co-writer Noah Baumbach, Gerwig crafts a story that pays homage to Barbie’s history (Rhea Perlman turns up, as real-life Barbie creator Ruth Handler ), acknowledges the impossible standards that Barbie represents (“You’ve been making women feel bad about themselves,” Sasha challenges) and has an enormous amount of fun along the way. If there’s a 2023 movie moment that’s more deliciously silly than the interpretive dance performed late in the movie by the black-clad Kens (sample song lyric: “I’m just Ken, and I’m enough / And I’m great at doing stuff”), bring it on.

“Barbie” looks great, as it should, with the costumes and sets of Barbie Land a glorious symphony of sunny color. And the cast is just right. Ferrera gives an utterly charming turn — and effectively delivers a key manifesto midfilm about the cognitive dissonance involved in being a woman in the patriarchy. (Didn’t expect that in a “Barbie” movie, did you?) Robbie deploys a perfect Barbie smile, but lets us see something vulnerable behind it. And Gosling steals the movie by playing Ken as a cluelessly tragic hero. He looks sweetly dignified in an enormous fur coat worn over bare pecs, brings pathos to lines like “When I found out the patriarchy wasn’t about horses I kind of lost interest,” and ultimately signals his own self-realization by wearing a sweatshirt that reads “I am Kenough.”

All this, plus an excellent “The Godfather” joke. Gerwig’s “Barbie” is, delightfully, more than Kenough. Francie would have loved it.

With Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, Will Ferrell. Directed by Greta Gerwig, from a screenplay by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, based on Barbie by Mattel. 114 minutes. Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language. Opens July 20 at multiple theaters.

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‘Barbie’: A candy-colored confection of knowing humor and bitter irony

Greta Gerwig’s meta-movie asks: Is the famous Mattel doll a contradictory cultural touchstone or just a fun, nostalgic toy? (The answer is yes!)

How do you solve a problem like Barbie?

For six decades, the iconic Mattel doll has been the vessel for our aspirations, ambivalence, endless analysis and outright hostility. Beloved by generations of girls and women who played for hours with Barbie and her pals Ken, Midge, Skipper and Allan, using the impossibly proportioned “play-size” version of grown-ups to spin their own life narratives, Barbie is just as despised for perpetuating the worst of an inherently sexist culture, from her simultaneously desexed and hyper-sexualized physique to representing feminism at its most commodified and co-opted.

Is Barbie a vexingly contradictory cultural touchstone or just a fun, nostalgic toy? A vessel for self-expression and agency or an empty totem of sham liberation? Yes! says Greta Gerwig in “Barbie,” wherein the “ Lady Bird ” and “ Little Women ” director has a psychedelically, if occasionally uneven, good time trying to have it all ways.

16 ways we think about Barbie

In this hot-pink mess of a movie, we see Barbie in nearly every incarnation, from Stereotypical Barbie (played by Margot Robbie with a winning combination of sweetness and self-awareness) to President Barbie (underused and reliably amusing Issa Rae), Doctor Barbie (Hari Nef), Lawyer Barbie (Sharon Rooney), Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon, with her hair sheared off and her face marked up) and a flotilla of others, living together in Barbie Land, a delightfully gynocentric cul-de-sac community of sisterly support and undeferred ambition.

“Thanks to Barbie, all the problems of feminism and inequality have been solved,” coos Helen Mirren, who narrates “Barbie’s” clever “2001: A Space Odyssey”-inspired introduction. As Robbie’s Barbie performs her morning ablutions in her legendary Dreamhouse — taking an imaginary shower, drinking imaginary milk, floating down to the first floor without the benefit of the staircase Mattel forgot to give her — it’s clear that Gerwig’s “Barbie” will be a whipped confection of canonical faithfulness, knowing humor and bitterly pointed irony.

The combination mostly works, with a few exceptions. Pulling from such inspirations as “ The Truman Show ” and “Toy Story,” Gerwig — who co-wrote the script with Noah Baumbach — plunges her heroine into an existential crisis brought on by a dimly perceived real world that is encroaching on her plastic, reassuringly monotonous idyll. The plot of “Barbie” centers on Barbie — who’s inexplicably beset by thoughts of mortality and disappointment — setting out to find the person who’s been playing with her, so that the two of them can get back to their baseline of just dressing up and … dressing up again. Ken, her blond, bland maybe-boyfriend played by Ryan Gosling with flawless Malibu-era fatuousness, insists on coming along for the ride. “What if there’s beach?” he pleads when Barbie demurs. “You’re going to need someone professional to help with that.”

How Barbie primed us for a life of conspicuous consumption

The running gag in “Barbie” is that Ken’s job is “beach,” and Gosling leans into that superficiality with lunkheaded charm. Once they enter the real world — also known as present-day Los Angeles — the two dolls discover a weird mirror image. In Barbie Land, Ken comes to life only when Barbie looks at him; here, the gaze is all male, all the time: When it’s directed at Ken, it’s admiring, but when it’s directed at Barbie, it’s leering and predatory. While Barbie pursues her quest, Ken discovers a universe where men are in charge — an exhilarating new order vaguely involving trucks, beer, unlimited political power and horses. Lots of horses.

Barbie’s and Ken’s twin consciousness-raisings make for some genuinely hilarious set pieces in “Barbie,” which doesn’t hesitate to throw a little side-eye at its corporate sponsor. (Will Ferrell plays a smarmy Mattel executive with feckless gusto.) Most of the film’s funniest moments belong to Gosling, who along with his fellow Kens (Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir and others) morphs into an obnoxious, mansplaining dude-bro. (Only the perpetually sidelined Allan, portrayed by Michael Cera with adroitly subtle timing, doesn’t go Full Frat House.) Gosling commits to the bit throughout Ken’s radical makeover — up to and including a surreal Malibu Beach war that rivals the “Top Gun” volleyball scene for homoerotic camp and a dream ballet featuring Gosling singing a note-perfect power ballad called “I’m Just Ken.”

It all gets very meta in “Barbie,” to the point that, when Barbie is observing that no real woman could ever live up to her own idealized image, Mirren interjects to note that Gerwig might have reconsidered having Robbie deliver that particular line. Mirren might also have added that an entire cinematic language has developed around similarly distorted expectations: There’s a moment early in the film, when Barbie drives by a Barbie Land movie theater, that eerily resembles Robbie’s Sharon Tate cruising 1970s LA in Quentin Tarantino’s “ Once Upon a Time in Hollywood .”

The zaniness of “Barbie,” combined with Gerwig’s interest in skewering the patriarchy, sometimes makes the movie a baggy, tonally dissonant viewing experience. But for the most part, she achieves a pleasing balance between the silly and the serious; she makes sure to pay homage to some of Barbie’s most cherished accessories and costumes, all the while keeping up a running commentary on sexism, objectification, consumerism and the double-triple-quadruple bind in which women have historically been forced to navigate the world — while wearing attractive heels. (Gerwig surfaces subversive notions like “Cellulite Barbie” and “Crippling Self-Doubt Barbie”; at one point, she creates an ad for “Depression Barbie,” complete with a family-size bag of Starbursts and binge-watching PBS’s “Pride and Prejudice.”)

Those grievances come to a head in one of “Barbie’s” many speeches, this one delivered by a Mattel executive assistant named Gloria (America Ferrera), who connects the aspirations, ambivalence, endless analysis and outright hostility we’ve heaped on Barbie to the aspirations, ambivalence, endless analysis and outright hostility that weigh down real-life women. Given the hyperventilating anticipation greeting “Barbie,” one could extend that pressure to Gerwig’s movie, which despite its cheery mix of Day-Glo visuals, retro wardrobe, cheesy backdrops and winking laughs, sags into feeling more like a lecture than a lift.

Viewers who have nurtured a loving if complicated relationship with Barbie might feel seen by the end of the film. Whether they’ll feel satisfied is another question entirely — especially when it comes to the film’s letdown of an ending, which was no doubt perfect on the page but lands with a deflating, didactic thud. Then again, that gnawing sense of ambivalence was no doubt precisely what Gerwig’s “Barbie” was aiming for. “It gives you a lot to think about,” a male audience member was heard to remark after a recent screening. He didn’t mean it as a compliment. Mission accomplished.

PG-13. At area theaters. Contains suggestive references and brief strong language. 114 minutes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"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 film review — Greta Gerwig’s day-glo comedy gives Mattel the last laugh

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Review: ‘Barbie’ is a film by women, about women, for women.

This essay contains spoilers for “Barbie.”

When we walked into the AMC Lincoln Square 13 in New York City for the Thursday 3 p.m. viewing of “Barbie,” we found ourselves surrounded by pink. Women wore heels and sparkling jewelry, and young girls in sundresses clutched their Margot Robbie Collectible Barbies . We had come prepared—adorned in our own pink outfits, we happily took photos for a friend group in exchange for a few of our own. People laughed and chatted through the trailers, and broke out in whooping cheers as the movie began. Every seat was filled. The positive energy was palpable. It felt like a party.

In a nuanced approach characteristic of the director Greta Gerwig, whose previous projects “Lady Bird” (2017) and “Little Women” (2019) received critical acclaim, the Barbie movie is a hilarious, vibrant tribute to an iconic doll central to decades of imaginative play. At the same time, the film manages to be an exploration of Barbie’s cultural impact—good, bad and in-between. Through on-the-nose commentary on everything from Barbie’s representation of independent female adulthood to her unrealistic, idealized body proportions, Gerwig makes a movie as layered and paradoxical as the reputation of the doll itself.

Greta Gerwig has made a movie as layered and paradoxical as the reputation of Barbie itself.  

“Barbie” dives head-first into many controversial topics: consumer culture, growing up, parental relationships, gender dynamics and a multitude of other issues—offering commentary while managing to make the doll look great in the process. Mattel allowed the societal perceptions of Barbie to be examined, though the film ultimately reclaims Barbie, because Barbie can be whatever you want, and Barbie supports all women. Whether Barbie’s feminism is direct or ironic, the movie seemed to say, it is guilt-free to buy her.

But for a project that is arguably an action-packed, 114-minute commercial for a doll, the main thematic takeaway from “Barbie” is that life as a real woman is significantly more difficult but resolutely more worthwhile than “life in plastic” could ever be.

For those who have been anticipating the release of “Barbie,” the sold-out theaters and tremendous box office numbers (Barbie brought in $155 million on its opening weekend) come as no surprise—nor does the vibrant appearance of the audience, a result of Mattel’s marketing campaign, which included pre-film partnerships with brands like Gap and Crocs .

The promotion worked because it tapped into an existing market of people who grew up with Barbie. Created in 1959 as one of the first grown-up woman dolls for children, the affordable toy has been a controversial yet beloved plaything for decades. Like many in the audience, the two of us played with Barbies as little girls, and therefore had firsthand access to the complicated influence that such a doll—who is anything she wants to be while always looking perfect—can have on a young girl.

Using the aesthetic history of the doll as inspiration, the first portion of the movie is set in Barbie Land, where self-proclaimed “Stereotypical Barbie” (played by Margot Robbie) and the other Barbies live in a peaceful paradise, partaking in various occupations and leisure activities. Their counterparts, the Kens, do nothing except “beach” and act as platonic companions for the Barbies (when desired). These scenes are packed with clever humor and nostalgia for those who remember playing with Barbies—just like in our games, the Barbies never use stairs, only pretend to drink liquids, and say “Hi Barbie!” to every other doll in sight.

The Stereotypical Barbie’s blissful naïvete is disrupted one morning when she starts to develop self-awareness and anxiety, accompanied by dreaded flat feet and “thoughts of death.” In order to return to how things were, Barbie needs to venture into the “real world,” where she is instantly sexualized and objectified, accused of being a fascist by teenagers and jailed for assault after punching a man who catcalls her.

The main takeaway from “Barbie” is that life as a real woman is significantly more difficult but resolutely more worthwhile than “life in plastic” could ever be.

The movie follows somewhat of a hero(ine)’s journey arc, complete with a car chase and a rise to leadership, as Barbie tries to rid herself of emotional turmoil—and eventually, as she tries to save Barbie Land from Ken (Ryan Gosling), who had a much more enjoyable time in the real world and decided to bring patriarchy back to Barbie Land with him.

But while the dolls and their conflicts (full of inside jokes from Barbie history) are certainly the most fun, vibrant part of the movie, the human characters in the movie—particularly Gloria, a Mattel employee played by America Ferrera, and her daughter Sasha, played by Ariana Greenblatt—shift the focus away from an analysis of dollhood and toward an exploration of womanhood.

As Gloria and Sasha discover that they are at fault for Barbie’s weird behavior, they attempt to help the doll reachieve stability for herself and her community. In doing so, the audience is privy to a moving exploration of what it means to grow up as a woman, from the perspective of both mother and daughter.

The movie is almost painfully upfront about the struggles women face, giving voice to a certain exasperated frustration that may seem overly explicit, but for many responding to the film, just feels true. After Barbie is ready to give in to self-pity and existential dread, Gloria encourages Barbie to forgive herself for her mistakes and imperfections, expressing all the impossible expectations placed on modern women. “It’s too hard,” she says about womanhood, “It’s too contradictory.” Stereotypical Barbie stares at her wide-eyed, and Gloria’s daughter gives her a surprised smile. In giving voice to the emotions that started this journey, Gloria empowers the Barbies to reclaim Barbie Land.

The movie is for everyone to see and enjoy, but ultimately “Barbie” is truly a film by women, about women, for women. 

In the end, Barbie, having seen the gendered challenges of the real world for herself and heard from Gloria the exhaustion that comes with them, still decides to become a human—a woman.

In an emotional scene between the ghost of Ruth Handler, the creator of the doll, and Barbie herself, they discuss what it would mean for Barbie to leave dollhood behind. Handler holds Barbie’s hands and tells her to “feel.” The scene fades into a montage of videos of young girls and grown women, laughing, talking, playing and enjoying their lives. The videos feature women involved in the process of making the movie. When Barbie opens her eyes again, she has tears on her face (so did many in the audience).

For us, this felt very reminiscent of St. Ignatius Loyola’s Contemplation on the Incarnation , which asks the retreatant to imagine the three Divine Persons gazing down on the earth full of people and considering what stimuli imbue their senses. These scenes, of so many different people and emotions, flash before Barbie, and she is overwhelmed with the joys and sufferings of the world, with women at the forefront.

The movie ends with Barbie, newly human and clad in her designed-for-the-partnership pink Birkenstocks, going to the gynecologist. This joke wraps up all the references to dolls not having any genitals (which Barbie ostensibly receives when she makes the choice to become human), while, we think, stressing the importance of reproductive health and bringing to the big screen public discourse about a taboo topic. Like every part of the movie, Gerwig pushes boundaries of conversation through humor that is written to make women, in particular, feel seen.

At its core, the Barbie movie is a much needed tribute to womanhood. This is evident in one of the most subtle but moving scenes from the film, which occurs early in Barbie’s trip to the real world, when she sits at a bus stop, crying because nothing seems to be going her way. She looks over and sees an old woman, played by the famous costume designer Ann Roth (aging doesn’t exist in Barbie Land). Barbie smiles at her and says, “You’re beautiful.” The woman smiles serenely and replies simply, “I know.” In retrospect, this deeply humane and moving encounter prefaces Barbie’s decision to join the real world. It seems as if Barbie is recognizing the magnitude of everything a real woman is, and everything she later chooses to be.

The female characters Barbie meets in the real world show her that women manage to exist in a world that is so often against them, and do so best when working together. The movie is for everyone to see and enjoy, but ultimately “Barbie” is truly a film by women, about women, for women. It is a film we certainly will be seeing again.

Brigid McCabe was an editorial intern at America Media in 2023. She studies History and American Studies at Columbia University.

Laura Oldfather was an editorial intern with America Media in 2023. She studies Theology and Journalism at Fordham University. 

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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 Evan Rachel Wood Was ‘Actually Tripping’ During ‘I Am the Walrus’ Scene in ‘Across the Universe’ Ian McKellen Hospitalized After Fall from West End Stage, Expected to Make ‘Speedy and Full Recovery’

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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• How Greta Gerwig Got <i>Barbie</i>—From the Clothes to the Dream House—Just Right

How Greta Gerwig Got Barbie —From the Clothes to the Dream House—Just Right

Barbie is a movie that benefits from multiple screenings. On every viewing, you’ll catch something different, whether it’s a big idea or a tiny detail. When it hits theaters on July 21, every person who has ever dressed a Barbie up is bound to recognize some outfit or prop from their childhood, whether they played with the doll in the 1960s or 1990s . And even the Barbie agnostic will find something to pick up, whether it’s references to the technicolor musicals of Old Hollywood or a famous scene from The Matrix .

Filmed primarily at a studio in London, the story of Barbie begins in a pink wonderland called Barbie Land where there’s an all-female Supreme Court, and, as Helen Mirren’s narrator tells the audience, “all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved.” The Barbies celebrate their good fortune with nightly slumber parties. It’s a lived-in fantasy world that relies primarily on physical sets rather than CGI. To build out Barbie Land, writer-director Greta Gerwig decided to create a coherent set of rules that would govern how it looked and functioned. In order to do that, she dove into the history of Barbie, the history of movies, and the history of fashion. For a cover story on the new film , Gerwig, producer and star Margot Robbie, and creatives at Mattel spoke to TIME about how they dreamt up all the details in the film.

The Barbie team attended a Barbie bootcamp

Over the course of 2018 and 2019, Gerwig, Robbie, and folks from Robbie’s production company LuckyChap went through an immersion course designed by Mattel. The unofficial Barbie bootcamp began with the doll’s origin story —Barbie was created by Ruth Handler—and took a tour through some of Barbie’s best outfits over the years.

More from TIME

Read More: How Barbie Came to Life

This research served as inspiration for the story. Handler’s relationship with her daughter Barbara (after whom Barbie is named) manifested as a plot point involving a mother and daughter in the film. “A Barbie movie is only ever going to be a mother-daughter movie on so many levels because it was Ruth Handler and Barbara—that was the relationship,” says Gerwig.

Gerwig and filmmaker Noah Baumbach, her co-writer and partner, also had to build a world from scratch. They came up with rules for Barbie Land to keep everything coherent. “You see a seamless universe that all makes sense, and that’s because there were these very specific boundaries about what could and couldn’t happen,” says Kate McKinnon, who plays one of the Barbies. One such rule? Barbie Land is a utopia, so nothing can be cluttered. There is no trash. “Nothing is dirty in the world, even when it gets its most chaotic,” says McKinnon. “I was struck by that.”

Barbie’s 1950s origins inspired the Dream House aesthetic

Given that Barbie first came to market in 1959, Gerwig and Oscar-nominated production designer Sarah Greenwood decided to run with a midcentury modern aesthetic for Barbie’s Dream House and many of her fashions. Barbie lives on the sort of suburban cul de sac idealized in that era.

The Dream Houses were built without walls so the actors had to be attached to wires to make sure they didn’t topple off the top floors of their homes when they got out of bed. But the cast says everything else in their Dream Houses was surprisingly functional: They would sit on the retro chairs and hang out talking between takes. “We all just wanted to kick it in each other’s living rooms because they were so fabulous,” says Alexandra Shipp, who plays an author Barbie.

Read More: Why It Took 64 Years to Make a Barbie Movie

Skipper’s house is the only one on the block that’s purple instead of pink. Leaves are growing out of the roof, and a swing is tied to a protruding branch. Technically it is the Chelsea Tree House—nearly an exact replica, scaled up to fit human actors.

In fact, everything in Barbie Land is built to a specific scale to look “toyetic.” “The scale is not life-like,” says Lisa McKnight, the executive vice president at Mattel whose job is specifically to oversee the marketing of Barbie and dolls. For instance, Barbie the character’s Corvette is just a little too small for Robbie, just as Barbie the doll’s convertible is a little too small for her: The windshield only comes up to her chest.

Gerwig was influenced by Old Hollywood

Gerwig’s team didn’t just study midcentury furniture trends. The filmmaker also revisited the films of Old Hollywood to capture the look of those stories. Rather than using a green screen to ensure that there were only bright blue skies in idyllic Barbie Land, Gerwig’s team hand-painted the backdrops to look like old soundstage musicals. In an early scene, Ken tries to interact with a set backdrop with disastrous results.

Read More: Barbie’s Got a New Body

Many of the props on set were also painted by hand, from the trees to the pool that sits outside of Barbie’s Dream House and contains no water. “I remember even the bark of the palm trees had different shades of brown, green, and even pink,” says McKnight.

Barbie is filled with dance numbers that are heavily influenced by 1940s and 50s Technicolor musicals like Singin’ in the Rain . During filming, Robbie’s production company LuckyChap hosted a film festival of sorts playing movies that influenced Barbie.

But Gerwig didn’t limit herself to one era. The movie is stuffed with references to all sorts of films ranging from Rocky to 2001: A Space Odyssey to Clueless.

The devil in the tiny, pink details

Barbie Land comes to life in the details. Gerwig obsessed over it all, and the props that populate the fantastical space imbue it with a surprisingly lived-in quality, like a Barbie version of the book Moby Dick on a side table. All the letters in Barbie’s mailbox have been scribbled upon in a nonsense language, like a child might write.

Barbie devotees know that Pantone 219 is Barbie’s very specific shade of pink. A giant Pantone 219 chip sits outside the Barbie conference room at Mattel. But the set used so much pink paint—in that specific color as well as secondary and tertiary shades—that it precipitated a worldwide shortage . The sheer number of pinks in every shot presented their own challenge. “I don’t think we have seen or will ever see a film with more pink in it,” says producer David Heyman, who helped build another famous fantasy world with the Harry Potter film series . “And then how to handle that photographically—thank goodness we had Rodrigo Prieto, who was able to balance all that and create a beautiful and rich palette.”

Out now: T IME’s new special edition about Barbie is available at newsstands and here online

The soundtrack is filled with today’s top artists, but even the singers were chosen with intention. Issa Rae , who plays President Barbie, points out that Barbie’s image among adults has been buoyed in recent years by Nicki Minaj, who has adopted the name “Barbie” as one of her personas. Minaj, along with Ice Spice, are the ones remixing Aqua’s old “Barbie Girl” song in a wink to Barbie’s influence on music throughout the years. “My Barbie association is Nicki Minaj,” says Rae. “So it’s dope that she is a part of this movie in some way.”

Barbie’s fashion is (almost) always on point

Beyond the Barbie immersion course, Gerwig and Baumbach did their own deep dive to dig up even more details about particularly strange or controversial outfits or dolls Mattel produced over the years. Robbie’s Barbie and Ryan Gosling’s Ken donned collector’s items that we won’t spoil for superfans. And, yes, some of the stranger toys show up in the movie too. The marketing rollout has already revealed that the pregnant Midge doll who quite literally popped a baby out makes an appearance in the film. (Emerald Fennell has the honor of portraying the unusual toy.)

Read More: What to Know About Midge and Allan, the Deepest Cuts From the Barbie Movie

Oscar-winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran was charged with replicating some of Barbie’s most iconic looks. She had a direct line to Kim Culmone, the head of design for fashion dolls at Mattel, who in turn would dive deep into the archives to provide the filmmaking team with references. Every bathing suit and camp shirt was handmade and silk screened and completely custom. “Whether it’s 1950s ladylike attire or a Western Barbie and Ken look or the rollerblades, those looks stick out to me as really toyetic,” says Culmone. “And that was important because even though we were putting Barbie in the real world, there was always a commitment to serve the fans of Barbie with these toyetic references.”

But the specific touches are what truly made the set a work of art. At one point during the movie, Ken walks around in a pair of boxing shoes that are made specifically for smooth surfaces, which is fine because there’s no real grass, gravel, or dirt in Barbie Land.

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Write to Eliana Dockterman at [email protected]

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.

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.

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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’ review: margot robbie’s mattel movie is lousy.

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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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Barbie Review: Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig Make Art Out of Playing with Dolls

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is bursting with so many ideas that it becomes impossible for them to all land. But Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling’s star power soars.

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Barbie is not the movie you think it is. And as it arrives in cinemas this week atop a pink tsunami of creativity from Greta Gerwig , I’m not even sure it’s the movie she and co-writer Noah Baumbach first imagined. Or rather, it’s just not that one movie, but several which have been squished together with buckets of glitter glue. Despite being only 114 minutes, this is very much a sprawling epic in hot pink miniature, within which resides vignettes, meta asides, and tonal switchbacks that explode with the type of ingenuity that suggests spontaneity and improvisation. It even at times feels like a Saturday Night Live sketch, often with the inconsistent humor to match. 

While the marketing of the film has orbited around the type of uncanny casting that feels like the hand of fate—in this case Margot Robbie as Barbie—as well as its good vibes, Beach Blanket Bingo aesthetic, almost everything you’ve seen in the trailers is relegated to the movie’s first 25 minutes. And that’s a good thing since the sugar rush of the earliest sequences in Barbieland is so severe that consuming it for a half hour is like one of those novelty Instagram-friendly ice cream shops you’ve seen; dazzling in a screen grab, but a Diabetes diagnosis after the third bite. 

No, the actual film Gerwig made is so much weirder than just fun, fun, fun under a pink pastel sun. Her film is exceedingly ambitious, funny, thought-provoking, and a bit all over the place. No matter your takeaway though, you can rest assured Gerwig did not play with her toys the way Mattel would normally condone in one of their 30-second TV ads, which is an undeniable victory for what surely started as a toy commercial. 

Indeed, this tension between the toyetic responsibility of managing the Barbie brand and an indefatigable determination to subvert the plastic blankness of the product is one of the movie’s greatest strengths. The vanilla corporate-speak that’s colored reams of PR announcements you’ve seen over the years is baked into a vibrantly self-aware (and self-critical) gaze. This starts at no less than the dawn of time–or at least Stanley Kubrick’s approximation of it —with Helen Mirren narrating the creation of Barbie like she was God’s gift to the world, as opposed to Mattel’s annual present to shareholders. Gerwig and Mirren then almost immediately pivot into recounting all the product mistakes and commercial deadends from Mattel’s past with a gossipy glee usually reserved for tell-all memoirs.

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It is through this voiceover we’re also introduced to Barbieland, a metaphysical construct/paradise where all the Barbie dolls that were ever made (and sometimes discontinued and hidden away) live in splendor. Here every day is the perfect day, and each Barbie is content in the knowledge that their existence has made the “Real World” a better place where young girls have grown into strong women unencumbered by any obstacles from the men in their lives. Right.

Among the Barbie ranks is President Barbie (Issa Rae), Doctor Barbie (Alexandra Shipp), and even Mermaid Barbie (Dua Lipa). However, our story pertains to the classic Stereotypical Barbie, which even Robbie describes herself to be. She is perfect, blonde, and always happy. Except for brief moments where she starts to think about death. And then gets flat feet. Also, to her horror, there’s something out there in the real world called… cellulite?

Eventually Robbie’s protagonist realizes she is having dark thoughts because a child she once belonged to in the Real World has gotten older and is likewise having anxieties more complex than a doll’s usual bandwidth. So she sets out to cross boundaries (and dimensions?) to find the girl. She’s even joined, much to her chagrin, by a cloying and needy semi-boyfriend, Ken ( Ryan Gosling ), who simply wants to be anywhere Barbie is. Yet when both enter our reality, their desires and needs begin changing drastically, especially as it becomes clear that Barbieland’s utopian ideal for women is far, far, far from the reality of a world where even Barbie’s makers at Mattel are an all-male boardroom dominated by a hysterical Will Ferrell.

The intelligence of Gerwig’s approach to the material is that this outline of the film’s first act conceals nearly everything she is really up to as a storyteller and stylist. She and production designer Sarah Greenwood, as well as costume designer Jacqueline Durran, bask in the opportunity to create life-sized recreations of Barbie’s dream house and clothes, complete with a pink slide Robbie uses and a blue swimming pool she does not (like all liquids in Barbieland, including the ocean, it’s actually plastic). However, these wonderfully artificial designs are their own kind of colorful holiday wrapping paper, which obscure much grander ideas.

That Barbie has always been a lightning rod in the cultural debates around feminism, women’s ability to succeed in the workforce, and how a patriarchal system influences the way young women see themselves (especially when compared to a stick-thin doll) is not only addressed by Barbie but is actually the point of the movie. While Gerwig somewhat sidesteps Barbie’s own thornier history with helping establish patriarchal standards at an early age, the filmmaker uses Barbie’s timeless effervescence to go to some challenging places for a mainstream comedy. Some will bemoan she needed to use an IP to do it, but Gerwig doesn’t waste the opportunity.

She embraces it in a film that is often jubilant, whimsical, and free-wheeling. The movie employs thick satirical gags, magical realism, fourth-wall breaking winks to the audience, and big swings at sentimentality. I cannot say all the elements work. The equally cartoonish nature of the Real World Barbie and Ken enter is so broadly drawn that it undercuts late-in-the-game grasps at emotional catharsis. When everything is heightened to the point of farce, the dramatic elements themselves feel synthetic, and the punchlines at Mattel’s expense in these sequences likewise come off like a CEO’s toothless self-deprecation.

That said, the casting never misses a step. Robbie is, of course, incandescent in the role of Barbie. Imbuing the icon with a childlike innocence, particularly during the movie’s first half, her character is by design introduced as kind of a blank canvas. Like a doll, she is at first whatever you might project on a seeming ideal. But as the movie goes along, Robbie slowly layers the performance with textures of regret, shame, anger, and eventually an identity completely divorced from a toy line.

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Yet despite being called Barbie , it is shocking how much of the film really belongs to Gosling’s Ken. With washboard abs and a goofy grin, Gosling plays Ken as a doofus, yes, but his puppy dog desperation to be held in Barbie’s gaze conceals a subtle, and eventually shocking, depth.

At first glance, Ken is a smitten third-grader trapped in an adult’s body, however Gerwig and Gosling slowly reveal Ken is actually a man trapped in a land where there was never a patriarchy. What that reversal can mean when Ken enters the Real World is just one of the many meaty ideas Gerwig and Baumbach layer into the script, taking the film into unexpected directions—although sometimes at the expense of a clean narrative that by the end becomes more Ken’s story than Barbie’s. Yet Gosling is so damn good, especially when he devours a kind of Golden Age Hollywood musical showstopper at one point, that you can’t help but be won over.

Ultimately, Barbie is an impressive studio construct where Gerwig has figured out how to color outside the lines. She stuffs the 12-inch box that Mattel gave her with ideas, flourishes, and twists until it bursts into a kaleidoscopic rainbow of confetti. The aftermath makes for a bit of a candy-colored mess, and the film is still ensnared in some of the corporate boasts it’s eager to subvert, but the remnants on the floor are an unmistakable original. This really is art. 

Barbie is in theaters on Friday, July 21.

3.5 out of 5

David Crow | @DCrowsNest

David Crow is the movies editor at Den of Geek. He has long been proud of his geek credentials. Raised on cinema classics that ranged from…

Epic Barbie Theory Reveals the Ancient Philosophy Behind the Movie’s Big Twist

Barbie may seem candy-colored and perfect, but the entire conceit is incredibly philosophical.

Barbie is a toy that exists through imagination, a collective illusion we all buy into of a gorgeous, fun-loving blonde who can be a politician, a scientist, and a veterinarian, and still have time to go on a date with Ken at the end of the day. That’s why it makes perfect sense that Barbie lives in an imaginary dream world where the pools are plastic and the mirrors have no glass.

But why is this? Does Barbie live in a perfect utopia? An unusually philosophical new fan theory suggests that Barbie’s world isn’t just ideal according to Barbie — it’s also ideal according to one of the greatest thinkers who ever lived. Intrigued? Grab your pinkest pair of shoes and a philosophy textbook, and let’s dive in.

BarbieLand is ideal because it exists not as an actual town but as the Platonic ideal of the town.

Redditor u/aslfingerspell argues that BarbieLand isn’t just an alternate reality where Barbie is real, it’s also a world that embodies Plato’s Realm of Forms — a land where everything exists not as a literal thing but as the Platonic ideal of itself.

Platonic ideals are essentially the core essence of a thing. Your smartphone isn’t always the same thing because it is constantly changing with every passing moment (a scratch here, a software update there), but at its core is the abstract concept of “smartphone.” Barbie is the Platonic ideal of a woman in society: professional, beautiful, and having it all. So of course she would live in a world where everything is just as abstract, perfect, and ineffable as her.

There’s no water in the shower because that would never be as perfect as the idea of a shower. There’s no real toothpaste because Barbie doesn’t brush her teeth, she evokes the concept of teeth brushing. (When Inverse called Barbie “The Platonic Ideal of an IP Movie,” we meant that it evokes the core concept of the subgenre — a work dedicated to an existing property — without the pitfalls and realities of other examples.)

The theory points to one main aspect of Barbie as the biggest piece of evidence: every Barbie is the only one of its kind. Margot Robbie plays Stereotypical Barbie, who presumedly would exist in our world as hundreds of thousands of dolls, each being played with a different girl. Yet, in BarbieLand, she exists as herself, the platonic ideal that is at the core of all those dolls.

You may make fun of Ryan Gosling’s Ken saying his job is Beach, but it’s the perfect encapsulation of this concept. His job isn’t something tangible, because nothing in BarbieLand is tangible. His job is the concept of Beach, just as his identity is the concept of Ken. He can’t swim, but he doesn't have to: he just has to embody the concept of Beach. (The waves are plastic anyway.)

His job is Beach. The Platonic ideal of Beach.

So how does this change the way we think of Barbie ? It explains why the changes in BarbieLand affect the real world. When the platonic ideal of the Dream House becomes the Mojo Dojo Casa House, the toys that evoke the Dream House ideal now evoke the Mojo Dojo Casa House ideal.

But its greatest effect on the film is hiding in plain sight. Though Ken and Barbie are boyfriend and girlfriend, they aren’t physically affectionate at all. Though they are close, their relationship is entirely platonic . Of course, they can’t really be romantic — they can only evoke the concept of romance: the labels, the appearance, but not the actual thing.

Maybe this is why Barbie is the blockbuster behemoth it is. It’s not about the origin of Barbie, it’s not about the real-life Barbie the toy is based on , it’s about the Platonic ideal of Barbie, the “Stereotypical Barbie” we imagine when someone says the name. It’s about the concept of Barbie that everyone has experience with, whether that’s through complex play situations or just through the cultural zeitgeist.

Barbie is now playing in theaters.

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Inside the Barbie Dreamhouse, a Fuchsia Fantasy Inspired by Palm Springs

By Chloe Malle

Photography by Jaap Buitendijk

Barbie’s Dreamhouse is no place for the bashful. “There are no walls and no doors,” says Greta Gerwig via email. “Dreamhouses assume that you never have anything you wish was private—there is no place to hide.” That layered domestic metaphor has proved rich fodder for the filmmaker, whose live-action homage to the iconic Mattel doll hits theaters July 21.

Barbie’s bedroom features a heart-shaped bed dressed in a sequined coverlet. 

To translate this panopticon play world to the screen, Gerwig enlisted production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer , the London-based team behind such period realms as Pride & Prejudice and Anna Karenina. The two took inspiration from Palm Springs midcentury modernism, including Richard Neutra ’s 1946 Kaufmann House and other icons photographed by Slim Aarons . “Everything about that era was spot-on,” says Greenwood, who strove “to make Barbie real through this unreal world.”

Her all-pink living area opens onto the swimming pool.

Neither she nor Spencer had ever owned a Barbie before, so they ordered a Dreamhouse off Amazon to study. “The scale was quite strange,” recalls Spencer, explaining how they adjusted its rooms’ quirky proportions to 23 percent smaller than human size for the set. Says Gerwig: “The ceiling is actually quite close to one’s head, and it only takes a few paces to cross the room. It has the odd effect of making the actors seem big in the space but small overall.”

The actor Margot Robbie as Barbie, descending the slide of the life-size Dreamhouse that was erected at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in England.

Erected at the Warner Bros. Studios lot outside London, Barbie’s cinematic home reinterprets Neutra’s work as a three-story fuchsia fantasy, with a slide that coils into a kidney-shaped pool. “I wanted to capture what was so ridiculously fun about the Dreamhouses,” says Gerwig, alluding to past incarnations like the bohemian 1970s model (outfitted with trompe l’oeil Tiffany lamps) and  the 2000 Queen Anne Victorian manse , complete with Philippe Starck lounge chairs. “Why walk down stairs when you can slide into your pool? Why trudge up stairs when you take an elevator that matches your dress?” Her own references ranged from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure to Wayne Thiebaud ’s paintings of pies to Gene Kelly’s tiny painter’s garret in An American in Paris.

On the second floor, Barbie’s walk-in closet features toy-box display cases pinned with outfits.

For Barbie’s bedroom, the team paired a clamshell headboard upholstered in velvet with a sequined coverlet. Her closet, meanwhile, reveals coordinated outfits in toy-box vitrines. “It’s very definitely a house for a single woman,” says Greenwood, noting that when the first Dreamhouse (a cardboard foldout) was sold in 1962 it was rare for a woman to own her own home. Adds Spencer: “She is the ultimate feminist icon.”

A view of the Dreamhouse reveals the living and dining areas on the first level and the walk-in closet on the second.

In Barbie, as in previous films like Little Women and Lady Bird, Gerwig set out to realize a whole world. “We were literally creating the alternate universe of Barbie Land,” says the director, who aimed for “authentic artificiality” at every opportunity. As a case in point, she cites the use of a hand-painted backdrop rather than CGI to capture the sky and the San Jacinto Mountains . “Everything needed to be tactile, because toys are, above all, things you touch.”

Everything also needed to be pink. “Maintaining the ‘kid-ness’ was paramount,” Gerwig says. “I wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much.” In other words, she continues, she didn’t want to “forget what made me love Barbie when I was a little girl.” Construction, Greenwood notes, caused an international run on the fluorescent shade of Rosco paint. “The world,” she laughs, “ran out of pink.” 

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‘barbie’ becomes biggest warner bros. movie ever at global box office, beating final ‘harry potter’ pic.

Greta Gerwig's movie has eclipsed the $1.342 billion grossed by 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2,' not adjusted for inflation.

By Pamela McClintock

Pamela McClintock

Senior Film Writer

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There’s no end to Barbie ‘ s magic tricks.

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The records broken by Barbie — starring Margot Robbie as Mattel’s famous fashion doll — are numerous. The box office blockbuster notched another major milestone Aug. 16 when passing up Christopher Nolan ’s The Dark Knight to become the biggest Warner Bros. movie ever in North America .

And last week, Barbie passed up Illumination and Universal’s runaway blockbuster The Super Mario Bros. Movie at the domestic box office to become the top-grossing title of 2023 in North America. It’s expected to pass up Super Mario Bros. ‘ global gross of $1.36 billion in the coming days to become the top worldwide earner of the year. That would put Barbie at No. 15 on the all-time list of top-grossing movies.

Once it achieves that milestone, Barbie will next set its sights on strutting past Frozen II‘ s worldwide war chest of $1.43 billion to rank as the top-grossing movie of all time — whether live-action or animated — from a female director .

Gerwig is already the highest-grossing female director of a live-action movie at the worldwide box office, as well as the highest-grossing female director of all time at the domestic box office .

While the movie was mostly done by the time the duo arrived on the Warner lot, Abdy is said to have played a key role regarding certain last-minute production decisions. (And De Luca and Abdy oversee distribution and marketing.)

It’s hard to say whether Barbie can ultimately hit $1.5 billion globally, but analysts aren’t ruling anything out.

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Join America's favorite storyteller on an epic journey to the heart of Washington DC. This cinematic tour de force will take viewers to the frontlines of the American Revolution, World War I... Read all Join America's favorite storyteller on an epic journey to the heart of Washington DC. This cinematic tour de force will take viewers to the frontlines of the American Revolution, World War II, the Civil Rights movement, and more. Join America's favorite storyteller on an epic journey to the heart of Washington DC. This cinematic tour de force will take viewers to the frontlines of the American Revolution, World War II, the Civil Rights movement, and more.

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Inside ‘Barbie’s’ Pink Publicity Machine: How Warner Bros. Pulled Off the Marketing Campaign of the Year

By Rebecca Rubin

Rebecca Rubin

Senior Film and Media Reporter

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Unless you’ve been trapped in a plastic toy box, there’s no escaping the Barbie -core movement that’s sweeping the globe — and potentially  contributing a nationwide shortage  of the color pink.

The marketing department at Warner Bros. has been working in overdrive to entice the masses for Greta Gerwig ’s cotton candy-colored fantasy “Barbie,” which has been everywhere this summer. A key factor has been a dizzying array of partnerships with products that range from a bright fuchsia Xbox ( for STEM Barbie ) to this $1,350 Balmain cropped hoodie (for Disposable Income Barbie).

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The efforts of the extensive and expensive marketing campaign — which rival studio executives estimate to cost $150 million, not including the $145 million production budget — are already paying off.

“Barbie,” starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as life-size versions of the popular Mattel dolls, crushed box office expectations with $165 million in North America and a stunning $337 million globally. With the help of “Oppenheimer,” which debuted to $80.5 million, this weekend boasted the biggest collective box office turnout of the pandemic era, as well as the fourth-biggest in history. It’s an especially big deal at a time when Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford have struggled to save the box office.

In wake of its record-breaking debut , Warner Bros. president of global marketing Josh Goldstine spoke to Variety about the buzzy memes, must-have costumes and “Barbenheimer” phenomenon that led to this summer’s very pink smash hit.

When did you start to notice the “Barbie” marketing was resonating in a big way?

We had a lot of internal discussions about “What’s the right first piece of material?” and “When is the timing of it? How much of the story should we give away?” Each time we released something, the movie was getting to a new level of engagement in the culture.

Pink was a big part of the campaign. How did you decide to lean into that color palette?

Barbie Pink has been such a part of the brand. This movie has a wonderful girl-power element, and pink became the color of the movie. We saw it start to resonate in the culture very early in the long process. The concept of Barbie-core coming to life in fashion kept going. It didn’t have its moment; it sustained and kept growing and growing with the movie.

How much of the marketing was manufactured and how much took off organically?

We saw it as a breadcrumb strategy, where we gave people little elements of the movie to stimulate curiosity and that created conversation. In every campaign, there are elements of earned media [like social media buzz] and paid media [such as a trailer spot]. We believed this brand had the opportunity to generate some exciting earned media. Some of the choices we made stimulated that. Then it did totally take on a life of its own.

A movie of this scope and scale usually costs $100 million to $150 million to market. Did you go over budget?

I won’t comment on the budget. The reason people think we spent so much is that it’s so ubiquitous. That’s a combination of paid media and how many partners came to play with us. Because it pierced the zeitgeist, it has the impression that we spend so much. In fact, we spent responsibly for an event movie.

Can you talk about how some of the less-obvious partnerships, like Crocs or Flo from Progressive Insurance , came together?

Some of those were licensing deals with Mattel and some are brands that made their own decisions to be part of the color schema of the movie. Fashion, frankly, jumped onto the bandwagon. Brands wanted to become part of this because they saw the film was finding its way into culture in such a dynamic way. It stopped becoming a marketing campaign and took on the quality of a movement.

How rare is it that so many brands wanted to partner with the studio on a non-franchise movie?

I’ve been doing this for 35 years. This is one of the most unique experiences I’ve ever had.

Who came up with the Malibu Barbie Dreamhouse for rent on Airbnb?

That was a promotion our team did working with Airbnb. We had a partnership with a giant mansion in Malibu that was given a massive makeover and turned into a modern-day Malibu Dreamhouse. They had great aerial photography of it. It was a “Dreamhouse” in the Barbie sense of the word, but it was also just an incredible Malibu mansion that got this crazy makeover.

What was your favorite less-flashy aspect of the campaign?

Were you concerned that parodying “2001,” which is a film that was released in 1968, would go over the heads of people who actually play with Barbies?

Yes, that was absolutely a concern. We wanted to challenge people. We wanted to make something thought-provoking. People had preconceptions. We thought that, by shaking them, we could create a tremendous amount of curiosity.

How did you come up with the various taglines, like “If you love Barbie, if you hate Barbie, this movie is for you”?

That was a collaboration with our director. It was a thought that she had and we refined it with her. We wanted to recognize there were legions of Barbie fans, but that Barbie had quite a history and there are people who felt like Barbie wasn’t for them. This was a movie that understood that and was acknowledging it. Listen, the word “hate” is a tricky word for marketing and we don’t usually use it. But in this case, it allowed the tent of people to experience this movie and to realize that it understood the journey that Barbie has been on for the last 45 to 50 years.

How important is TikTok as a marketing resource?

We did promotional work with them, but a tremendous amount is organic. In a really exciting way, this whole “Barbenheimer” phenomenon created a series of conversations and engagements. It’s paid off in the sense that both movies are hitting the high side this weekend.

Have you seen the memes and joke s about the relentlessness of the “Barbie” marketing team?

Someone took a picture of a pink sunset and thanked the work of the Warner Bros. marketing department. I thought that was pretty amusing.

What has it been like to see people decked out in pink and dressed up in costumes to watch the movie in theaters?

Wearing pink became a way of acknowledging their connection to the movie. My wife just came back from taking my 86-year-old mother-in-law to the movie. She was sending me pictures of a sea of pink in the theater. It’s a way of being part of this really wonderful collective experience.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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Margot Robbie Takes You Through the 'Barbie' Dreamhouse in New Set Tour Video

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'IF' Makes an Impressive Global Box Office Milestone a Reality

Brad pitt's formula 1 movie gets a high-profile update, the daily planet comes to life in new 'superman' set images.

Life in plastic is fantastic in a new set tour from Barbie , shared by Architectural Digest . In the video, Margot Robbie , who plays the movie's lead Barbie, takes the audience into the massive set that was built for Greta Gerwig 's latest movie. As the home of Barbie, the house is made out of things that look beautiful, but are not necessarily useful or practical. Paintings represent things such as the sky or the contents of the refrigerator, while bright shades of pink make the environment a sight to behold. Only Barbie could have a slide that led directly into her pool.

The film will put Barbie in a very peculiar situation , with the character suddenly having very existential doubts in her head. While everything seems to be perfect in her world, with all the parties and musical numbers, Barbie still feels like there's something missing, and that there has to be more to life than being a perfect doll. When she voices her concerns to her partner, Ken ( Ryan Gosling ), he feels confused as to why Barbie would want to leave their lifestyle but, as always, he is very supportive of his girlfriend. It's finally time for Barbie to leave the dream house in order to have new adventures in the real world.

Barbie's new ideas about the meaning of life do not sit well with the people from her village, who are very comfortable with how things work in the dreamy community. The citizens of the town are other variations of Barbie and Ken, named after their favorite hobbies or the roles they play in society. For example, Dua Lipa and John Cena will star as Mermaid Barbie and Merman Ken, respectively, establishing a variant of the couple that has shiny fishtails instead of legs. Added to that, Emma Mackey is set to star as a Barbie who specializes in the knowledge of physics.

RELATED: 'Barbie' Global Tour Will Take Margot Robbie & Ryan Gosling to Eight Cities Around the World

Barbie Will Face a Corporate Villain in Her Real World Adventure

Just like Barbie's new ideas aren't welcome in her home , the fact that the actual dolls from the package are alive out there somewhere will turn out to be a huge surprise for the people of the real world. Will Ferrell will be in charge of playing the Chief Executive Officer of Mattel. After finding out that there's a living and breathing version of his product running freely on the streets, he'll want to get to the bottom of the mystery. Let's just hope Barbie and Ken's roller skates are fast enough to get them out of trouble before it's too late. The summer of Barbie is already here.

You can check out Margot Robbie's tour of the set from Barbie below, before the movie opens in theaters on July 21:

• Barbie (2023)
• Margot Robbie