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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Available in theaters on July 21st. 

Christy Lemire

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

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Film credits.

Barbie (2023)

Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language.

114 minutes

Margot Robbie as Barbie

Ryan Gosling as Ken

America Ferrera as Gloria

Will Ferrell as Mattel CEO

Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie

Ariana Greenblatt as Sasha

Issa Rae as President Barbie

Rhea Perlman as Ruth Handler

Hari Nef as Doctor Barbie

Emma Mackey as Physicist Barbie

Alexandra Shipp as Writer Barbie

Michael Cera as Allan

Helen Mirren as Narrator

Simu Liu as Ken

Dua Lipa as Mermaid Barbie

John Cena as Kenmaid

Kingsley Ben-Adir as Ken

Scott Evans as Ken

Jamie Demetriou as Mattel Executive

• Greta Gerwig
• Noah Baumbach

Cinematographer

• Rodrigo Prieto
• Alexandre Desplat
• Mark Ronson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barbie opens in theaters on July 21.

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• There are more than 40 Barbie movies, and we ranked them all
• The best Barbie gifts for fans
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• Ice Spice and Nicki Minaj remade Aqua’s iconic Barbie anthem for the new movie

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Barbie is every bit as good as you wanted it to be

Here's our spoiler-free take on one of the most anticipated movies of the year.

Margot Robbie takes on the role of the OG Barbie as she was born to, although nobody is having more fun than Ryan Gosling, who is absolutely hysterical as Ken. This pitch-perfect casting is top of the movie's many hits, alongside its fabulous soundtrack, killer pink-themed art design, and self-conscious sense of humour.

Directed by Greta Gerwig ( Lady Bird , Little Women ) and co-written with her partner, filmmaker Noah Baumbach ( White Noise ), Barbie is a delight. Its mere existence as a big-budget, star-studded, female-focused Hollywood comedy is almost a miracle – even if it might be a little bit too fabricated for its own good.

The movie follows Barbie on her best day ever, which is every day in Barbie Land, a country where women are the workforce and men just wander around the beach trying to snatch Barbies' attention. One day, Robbie's Barbie finds herself suddenly thinking about death. Her usually high-heel-shaped feet have flattened, she spotted some cellulitis in her thigh and she's having depressing thoughts as she questions the meaning of her plastic life.

Guided by the outcast Weird Barbie (played by Kate McKinnon), Barbie decides to find the root of her problems by travelling to the real world, where she thinks her kind has long fixed everything in women's lives.

However, after following the pink brick road — the references to The Wizard of Oz are abundant in the story — she realises human reality is much more complicated than life in Barbie Land.

Barbie tastes the unfair shame of being harassed ("I feel self-conscious but it's myself I'm conscious of?" she says), deals with some nasty Mattel executives led by Will Ferrell, who want to put her back into a box, and finds out the doll's legacy is actually seen as antiquated and misogynistic by younger generations. Not the best day ever, really.

Related: Best Movies of 2023: 20 recent movies you should watch

Barbie's existential crisis is the emotional core of the story, while Ryan Gosling's Ken is the explosive backbone turning the movie into the year's most sensational comedy.

The character is pure stupidity as he 'beaches' with Simu Liu's Ken, sings sad songs shirtless under the moonlight, and tries to find himself after living his whole existence in Barbie's shadow. Gosling's performance skills are first-class in the glorious, Singing in the Rain -inspired musical numbers throughout the movie. His Ken-ergy is flawless, his commitment to the role unmatched.

Honestly, everybody in Barbie seems to be having the best time, and it's positively contagious.

Greta Gerwig finds the right balance between nailing the satiric take on toxic masculinity and showing a genuine, unconditional love for Barbie's history and her creator Ruth Handler, who has a special role in the movie (played by Rhea Perlman). It's not an easy feat, but it still feels effortless.

As expected of Gerwig, relationships between mothers and daughters are a big theme in the same vein as Lady Bird , while Little Women 's inspiring messages about women finding their path in a patriarchal world resonate with this layered take on Barbie.

The director builds up the story from a collective feminine imagination where Legally Blonde , Clueless and even BBC's Pride and Prejudice TV adaptation are unmissable references.

It's filled with countless movie references, from The Matrix to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and blessed with a gargantuan cast including Issa Rae, Alexandra Shipp, Michael Cera, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Hari Nef, Sex Education 's Emma Mackey and Ncuti Gatwa, singer Dua Lipa, and more. Barbie is Gerwig's biggest, most demanding movie to date, as the Oscar-nominated director continues to explore what it means to be a woman in the world.

Granted, Barbie 's take on feminist theory is fairly basic, which is not a problem since this is a comedic-driven parody about a little girls' doll — we're not looking for a PhD dissertation on gender studies.

As the movie argues, we shouldn't ask women to always be perfect, accomplished or extraordinary, and we shouldn't ask a female-led, female-focused movie to be more than a highly amusing, extremely clever comedy obsessed with colour pink.

Ending up with a version of Feminism for Dummies wouldn't be such a bad thing considering the state of the world sometimes, but Barbie tries to be more than that. The movie makes convincing and smart points not only about femininity, but especially about the foundations of toxic masculinity and how it operates in our day-to-day lives.

Funny stereotypes aside — jokes about Zack Snyder's Justice League will cut deep for some — Barbie argues maybe it's the Kens who need to evolve.

Kudos to Mattel for allowing such a free-spirited, unfiltered tale around their precious doll, even at the expense of turning their fictional all-male executive board into the ultimate representation of how businessmen vampirise women's hopes and dreams.

All in all, viewers can read as much as they want into what Barbie is trying to say about the world and the everlasting — and somehow outmoded — battle of the sexes, but there is one indisputable fact: Barbie is terrifically entertaining. And that's ken-ough.

Barbie is out now in cinemas.

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Deputy Movies Editor, Digital Spy  Mireia (she/her) has been working as a movie and TV journalist for over seven years, mostly for the Spanish magazine Fotogramas . 

Her work has been published in other outlets such as Esquire and Elle in Spain, and WeLoveCinema in the UK. 

She is also a published author, having written the essay Biblioteca Studio Ghibli: Nicky, la aprendiz de bruja about Hayao Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service .    During her years as a freelance journalist and film critic, Mireia has covered festivals around the world, and has interviewed high-profile talents such as Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal and many more. She's also taken part in juries such as the FIPRESCI jury at Venice Film Festival and the short film jury at Kingston International Film Festival in London.     Now based in the UK, Mireia joined Digital Spy in June 2023 as Deputy Movies Editor. 

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“Barbie” Is Brilliant, Beautiful, and Fun as Hell

By Richard Brody

It’s unfortunate that fantasy has glutted the movies and tarnished the genre’s name with the commercial excesses of superhero stories and C.G.I. animation, because fantasy is a far more severe test of directorial art than realism. This is, first off, because the boundless possibilities of the fantastical both allow for and require a filmmaker’s comprehensive creativity. But, crucially, fantasy is also a vision of reality—the subjective truth of filmmakers’ inner life, the world as it appears in their mind’s eye. The great directors of fantasy are the ones who make explicit the connection between their fantasy worlds and lived reality, as Wes Anderson recently did in “ Asteroid City ,” and as Greta Gerwig has done spectacularly in her new film, “Barbie.” Unlike Anderson, who has spent his entire career on the far side of the imagination, Gerwig’s previous features as solo director, “ Lady Bird ” and “ Little Women ”—both ardently crafted, both modestly literal—did little to foreshadow the overwhelming outburst of inventive energy that makes “Barbie” such a thrilling experience. Though “Lady Bird,” Gerwig’s breakthrough feature, is a fictionalized story of her own adolescence, her family life, and her home town, “Barbie”—yes, a movie about a doll made under the aegis of its manufacturer, Mattel —is the far more personal film. It’s a film that’s energized throughout by a sense of artistic freedom and uninhibited creative passion greater than what Gerwig has brought to even her previous projects made outside the ostensible constraints of studio filmmaking.

The underlying subject of “Barbie” is how to play with Barbie dolls and why. Playing with Barbies, after all, is the D.I.Y. version of adaptation, the enactment in private of the kind of free and wild play that Gerwig (who wrote the script with her romantic and creative partner, Noah Baumbach ) enacts in the movie. “Barbie” is about the intellectual demand and emotional urgency of making preëxisting subjects one’s own, and it advocates for imaginative infidelity, the radical off-label manipulation of existing intellectual property. Moreover, it presents such acts of reinterpreting familiar subjects, as a crucial form of self-analysis, a way to explore one’s own self-image and to confront the prejudices and inequities built into prevailing, top-down interpretations of them. “Barbie,” in other words, is a film of the politics of culture and, by extension, of the need for a creative rebellion to reëstrange the familiar for the sake of social change.

The movie begins with one of the most ingenious parodies I’ve seen in a while, an origin story of the Barbie doll based on the opening sequence of “ 2001: A Space Odyssey .” A group of girls is stranded in a barren primordial landscape. A voice-over narration (by Helen Mirren) explains that, since the beginning of time, they had only baby dolls to play with, leaving them nothing to imagine themselves as except mothers. Then came Barbie (Margot Robbie), who, with her many varieties and guises, offered the girls (who now smash their baby dolls to pieces) the chance to imagine themselves as astronauts, doctors, judges, even President, and thus heralded a future of equality and opportunity. It’s in the abyss between this promised utopia and the world as we know it, between the merchandising of professional feminism and the endurance of patriarchal realities, that the movie is set.

“Barbie” contains a potent paradox that is fundamental to its effervescent delights. A single frame of the film packs such profuse and exquisite detail—of costume and settings, gestures and diction—that it’s impossible to enumerate the plethora of inventions and decisions that bring it to life. With its frenetic pace and its grand-scale, wide-ranging inspirations, it plays like a live-action cartoon, and captures the anything-is-possible spirit of classic Looney Tunes better than any other film I’ve seen. Yet its whimsical plot is constructed with a dramatic logic that manages to transform phantasmagorical leaps into persuasive consequences, with the result that the details of the story seem utterly inseparable from, and continuous with, the riotously ornamental visual realms that it sets into motion.

The driving conceit is that Barbie comes to life and enters the real world, but Gerwig grounds that transformation ingeniously by giving Barbie a prior life of her own as a doll. The Barbie played by Robbie, who’s called Stereotypical Barbie, lives in Barbieland along with all the other Barbies who have been put on the market, whether Astronaut Barbie or Doctor Barbie or President Barbie, as well as Barbies of a wide range of ethnicities and body types, all named Barbie, all residing in doll houses, all calling to one another every bright and sunny morning, “Hi, Barbie!,” and offering identical side-to-side hand-wave greetings. Stereotypical Barbie drinks imaginary milk poured from a carton to a cup, eats a plastic waffle that pops from a toaster as a perfectly shaped dollop of butter lands atop it, and—because, as the narrator explains, Barbies can be carried and placed anywhere—glides from her balcony through the air to behind the wheel of her pink fifties-style Corvette convertible.

Stereotypical Barbie has a stereotypical suitor, the hunky blond Ken (Ryan Gosling)—one of many in Barbieland—who courts her with a droll sexual ignorance to match hers. There’s a strong gay subtext to the movie’s well-coiffured and accessorized Kens; in one scene, Ken and another Ken (Simu Liu) get into a dispute and threaten each other to “beach you off.” (A nerdy friend of the Kens, called Allan, played by Michael Cera, is the only non-himbo around.) The narrator makes the distinction—one that proves to be of great narrative significance—that for Barbie every day is a good day, whereas for Ken a day is good only when Barbie looks at him. Ken takes awkward pains to get Barbie to look, but she’s content in her Barbie-centric world. In lieu of a date, she invites him to a girls’-night bash at her house—the best party ever, but then, they all are—complete with a whirlwind-spectacular dance sequence. In the middle of the festivities, though, Barbie embarrassingly blurts out her own sudden premonition of death.

Something troubling is disturbing the pristine perfection of Barbie’s permalife in Barbieland, and she consults the closest thing to a troubled outcast in her midst, Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), to find out what’s going on. Weird Barbie has a punk haircut, a malformed body, and something like face tattoos—the result, it is said, of a human who played with her “too hard.” To get to the source of her disturbance, Barbie will have to make passage to the human world and find her own owner, whose play has perhaps left an emotional mark just as Weird Barbie’s has left a physical one. Travelling between Barbieland and the human world involves transit via, among other Mattel-certified vehicles, Barbie’s convertible, a space rocket, a tandem bicycle, and a Volkswagen camper van. Ken stows away on Barbie’s journey, and the duo eventually lands on the beach in—where else?—Los Angeles, another land of artifices, where Barbie quickly has her illusions burst.

In L.A., Barbie encounters such human-world phenomena as catcalling, old age, anxiety, and the social dynamics of real-life girls, most notably a young high-school intellectual named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), who calls Barbie a “bimbo,” a menace to feminism, even a “Fascist.” Barbie finds her way into Mattel headquarters, where the C.E.O. (Will Ferrell) wants to trap and twist-tie her in a display box. Instead, Barbie escapes, but, while she’s on the run, Ken—who’s read up in the school library about patriarchy—heads to Barbieland and exports the notion there. When Barbie returns home, she finds it transformed into a manosphere, full of Kens slaking grudges against Barbies and Barbies content with subservience to Kens, and she has to plot to restore it to its ostensible original form as a feminist paradise. Spoiler alert: the Ken-centric patriarchy that Barbie finds at home is both appalling and hilarious, with lots of horses (“man extenders,” Ken calls them) and ardent guitar playing “at” Barbie, especially of the Matchbox Twenty song “Push,” which the Kens have adopted as a male anthem.

The trait that enables Barbie to fight to take back Barbieland is the very weirdness that she’d sought to cure. It’s the “hard” play of a human owner—the use of Barbie as an avatar of a real person’s emotional crises—that gives Stereotypical Barbie the perspective to see what’s wrong with Barbieland, the wiles to take action to reclaim it for herself and the other Barbies, and the open-mindedness to see that she herself is in need of personal change. The uninhibited expression of Barbie’s human has taught Barbie, above all, the concept of freedom; and it’s no spoiler to note that the concept, here, meshes with an existentialist tradition that links such freedom to the inevitability of death. (In a magnificent meta-touch, Barbie has an encounter with the creator of Barbie, Ruth Handler, who, in real life, died in 2002; here, she’s played by Rhea Perlman.)

Far from being a feature-length commercial for Barbie, Gerwig’s movie puts in bright critical light the trouble with Barbie’s pure, blank perfection. Instead of projecting their own imperfections or thoughts onto the doll, girls have been socialized to strive for an impossible doll-like perfection in their own lives. Barbie can be anything in Barbieland—a doctor, a President, an astronaut—but only because Barbieland is a frictionless Brigadoon. There’s no Fox News in Barbieland, no political demagogy, no religion, no culture. Any girl who plays with Barbie and imagines that she can do anything will discover, eventually, that she’s been the victim of a noxious fantasy. Playing weird with Barbie means ascribing the tangled terms of one’s own environment to Barbieland, one’s own conflicts to Barbie. It means turning Barbie human—into a character whom a child can use to give voice to an inner life, in the second person, when her first person feels stifled or repressed.

“Ordinary”: pay attention to the arrival, in “Barbie,” of that word, which reverberates like a tuning fork through the entire story, conveying longing for the day when a woman’s life doesn’t demand heroic struggle against societal limitations and contradictory demands. (The movie features a fervent monologue on the subject, built of familiar talking points that are energized by the fast and furious indignation of the speaker, Sasha’s mother, a Mattel employee played by America Ferrera.) The idea inflects Gerwig’s aesthetic, too, in a way that’s made clear, again, in the contrast between her filmmaking and that of Wes Anderson, the current cinema’s preëminent stylist. Anderson’s films borrow copiously from pop culture without making films of pop culture; his rigorous visual compositions set the action at a contemplative distance that keeps one eye on history and the other on the future. Gerwig, by contrast, is out to conquer the moment, and her visual compositions reflect this immediacy. Her images (with cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto) offer, in effect, a mighty sense of style without a corresponding sense of form: they teem and overflow, because they’re meant not to be limited to the screen but to burst out and fill the theatre and take their place in the world at large. She doesn’t borrow pop culture ironically; she embraces it passionately and directly, in order to transform it, and thereby to transform viewers’ relationship to it and to render that relationship active, critical, non-nostalgic. Her art of reinterpreting society’s looming, shiny cultural objects, in the interest of progress, dramatizes the connection between playing in a child’s doll house and on the big screens of the world. ♦

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Barbie review – Ryan Gosling is plastic fantastic in ragged doll comedy

Greta Gerwig’s bubblegum-fun-cum-feminist-thesis indulges Ken but pulls its punches as it trips between satire and advert

A re Barbie dolls demeaning or empowering? Director Greta Gerwig and her co-writer Noah Baumbach opt for the latter theory in this beamingly affectionate and deliriously pink-themed fantasy comedy-adventure produced by Barbie’s corporate manufacturer Mattel, and starring Margot Robbie whose own superhuman blond beauty makes her the only possible casting as Barbie herself. It is maybe down to Gerwig’s confidence and generosity as a feminist film-maker that she gives all the best lines to Ryan Gosling, who is allowed to steal the whole film playing Barbie’s non-genitaled boyfriend, Ken.

Yet the film has to keep second-guessing and pre-empting the anti-Barbie impulse with a stream of knowing references and self-aware meta-gags, which acknowledge that, sure, yes, Barbie’s uber-blond-slim persona is arguably conformist and oppressive, but we know all that, we’re past all that; these charges are redeemed by Barbie’s ethereal innocence and there is in any case now a range of Barbies, diverse in terms of ethnicity and body-image – among whom Robbie is first among equals as Stereotypical Barbie – including a wheelchair-using Barbie. But even this is hedged with a quirky admission that the real world that imposed these changes is still itself imperfect and tokenist.

The result is a good-natured but self-conscious movie, whose comedy is rooted in that very self-consciousness, often funny, occasionally very funny, but sometimes also somehow demure and inhibited, as if the urge to be funny can only be mean and satirical. And so often Barbie winds up playing the bland comic foil to comic characters like the outrageous metrosexual Ken, obsessed with his “beach” habitat and longing for the patriarchy, and to Weird Barbie, the Barbie who has been abusively over-played-with and crayoned-over, always dishevelled on the floor doing the splits, played here by Kate McKinnon.

Barbie herself is living her best life in her perfect Barbie world, partying of an evening with Barbies who are political leaders, supreme court judges and Nobel laureates (including Dua Lipa and Issa Rae), and a castrato chorus of beach-bunny Ken clones (including John Cena and Simu Liu) and Ken’s gloomy beta-male mate Allan (Michael Cera) when suddenly she is assailed with the terrible thought of dying.

Weird Barbie tells her she must journey to the real world outside to sort this out and so she and Ken arrive in scuzzy Santa Monica in time-honoured fish-out-of-water style to discover that this existential anxiety has been psycho-cosmically transmitted to her from Gloria, a former Barbie owner, now a hardworking mom who is an assistant in the Mattel empire: a nice performance from America Ferrera. Gloria has a whip-smart, discontented teen daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) and those squeamish about spoilers or disloyalty might want to look away before the revelation that Sasha starts out fiercely and boldly critical of Barbie before being tamely converted. It is with this conversion that politics is definitively banished.

Ken is thrilled by male dominance in this real world and tries replicating it back in Barbieland, to Barbie’s dismay. Will Ferrell plays the Mattel CEO and chair of the all-male board and Rhea Perlman has a cameo as Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie who reportedly named the doll after her daughter Barbara. (The movie does not acknowledge the alternative theory, that Barbie was named after Barbara Ryan, wife of Mattel’s chief designer Jack Ryan whose life-story gives us an actual #Barbenheimer connection: before designing Barbie for Mattel, he designed missiles for the Pentagon as an employee of aerospace giant Raytheon, an important player in the postwar military-industrial complex.)

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This movie is perhaps a giant two-hour commercial for a product, although no more so than The Lego Movie, yet Barbie doesn’t go for the comedy jugular anywhere near as gleefully as that. In interviews about Barbie, Gerwig has referenced Milton and Powell and Pressburger: judging from this, I would say the influences are Toy Story, Pinocchio and Clueless. It’s entertaining and amiable, but with a softcore pulling of punches: lightly ironised, celebratory nostalgia for a toy that still exists right now.

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

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

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'Barbie' review: Sometimes corporate propaganda can be fun as hell

Aisha Harris

Based on one of America's most emblematic pieces of intellectual property, Greta Gerwig's Barbie starring Margot Robbie, above, was never going to be just a movie, because Barbie was never just a doll. Warner Bros. Pictures hide caption

Based on one of America's most emblematic pieces of intellectual property, Greta Gerwig's Barbie starring Margot Robbie, above, was never going to be just a movie, because Barbie was never just a doll.

At some point long before the film was unveiled to us critics, Greta Gerwig's Barbie became more than just a movie based on one of America's most emblematic pieces of intellectual property. Maybe it kicked off in the wake of oh-so-many memes , or in being pit against another highly-anticipated movie deemed its aesthetic and ideological opposite in a silly box office showdown. Then again, nearly every retailer catering to femmes has jumped on this bandwagon , too, either directly or indirectly. (My inbox and Insta feed are currently flooded with weeks' worth of shameless promos for blazing hot pink and fluorescent items I'll never wear; even my local barre studio is getting in on the action with a forthcoming Barbie-themed class.)

What to know about the 'Barbenheimer' double feature frenzy

In any case, Barbie is officially and unequivocally The Moment™, The Vibe™, The Toy™ so many of us suddenly wish to play with again, even if it's been decades since the last time. It was never going to be just a movie , because Barbie the doll was never "just a doll"; its creator Ruth Handler had grand ambitions for this free-spirited plastic woman, ones which, famously, haven't always aligned with the public's perceptions. Gerwig's offbeat technicolor fantasy (co-written with her partner, Noah Baumbach) builds upon this historic push-and-pull to imagine a more harmonious ideological relationship between the brand and the consumer of today.

In search of tunes for your 'Barbenheimer' pregame? Look no further

Movie Reviews

Go see 'barbie' and 'oppenheimer' in theaters — doubleheader or not is your call.

That doesn't make the movie's existence as a corporate propaganda piece any less fraught – Mattel Films is a producer – but to its credit, Barbie is eager to at least try confronting its own conundrums. And let's be real: sometimes, corporate propaganda can be fun as hell.

Cleverly riffing on the " dawn of man " sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey , the opening scene positions its product as the ultimate game changer in the doll universe, expanding the playtime horizon for young girls beyond the maternal default. The film's cheeky unseen narrator voiced by Helen Mirren channels the ghost of Handler (and, perhaps, Chaka Khan ) by noting Barbie can be anyone and everyone: a doctor (Hari Nef), an author (Alexandra Shipp), a president (Issa Rae), brunette, Black, and so on.

After months of marketing, memes, and a sense of momentousness, we unboxed the Barbie movie: It is both a delight and at times, too much. Warner Bros. Pictures hide caption

After months of marketing, memes, and a sense of momentousness, we unboxed the Barbie movie: It is both a delight and at times, too much.

Her symbolic malleability and ambition have led to a sort-of utopia called Barbie Land, where every version of Barbie lives blissfully in their own perfect Dreamhouse. There are many versions of Ken, too, though he's merely "superfluous," an accessory of lesser importance than Barbie's many flashy outfits or prized convertible. Patriarchy? Where? (We'll find out soon enough.)

The main Barbie is Stereotypical Barbie, played with verve and bite by Margot Robbie; she spends days at the beach and evenings throwing slumber parties, while awkwardly side-stepping the persistent advances of Ryan Gosling's Ken – "just Ken" – much to his chagrin. One night, in the middle of a fabulous, elaborately choreographed ensemble dance number, she's suddenly overcome by "irrepressible thoughts of death" she can't shake off, try as she might. Those thoughts give way to other wonky occurrences that upset Barbie's perfect world, which in turn set her and Ken on a journey to the very imperfect real world. There she searches for answers from her human owners, a jaded tween named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), and her mother Gloria (America Ferrera), a Mattel employee.

'Barbie' is pretty in pink — but will she also be profitable?

Did the 'Barbie' movie really cause a run on pink paint? Let's get the full picture

This rundown only begins to touch on the myriad of ideas and metacommentary funneling throughout Gerwig and Baumbach's Barbie vision, which is both a delight and, at times, a bit much. The jokes are plentiful, and the cast, which also includes Kate McKinnon as – who else? – Weird Barbie and Will Ferrell as Mattel's unnamed CEO, looks as if they're having a blast. This is most true of Gosling, whose handsome himbo, deeply insecure about Barbie's indifference toward him, is the movie's secret weapon and an unsubtle, pitch-perfect rumination on American masculinity. Gosling makes Ken more than "just Ken" – he's an instantly recognizable dude, exaggerated enough to fit in at Barbie Land, and relatable enough to evolve as a character apart from his far more famous and beloved counterpart.

Ryan Gosling makes Ken more than "just Ken." Warner Bros. Pictures hide caption

Ryan Gosling makes Ken more than "just Ken."

American masculinity will never not be ripe for ribbing, but conflict inevitably arises in considering Barbie 's blunt self-critiques, sealed as they are with Mattel's approval. Stereotypical Barbie is rendered exactly as her name suggests: blond, thin, [presumably] straight, and Margot Robbie ... i.e., the first image that likely comes to mind when anyone thinks of Barbie, as she herself proudly admits early on. Pointing this out is subversive, to a point. For all the brand's exaltations about representing everyone – in recent years, to combat plummeting sales , Mattel has expanded the doll's shapes, shades, and facial features – the movie is also admitting that the symbol that still looms large is white and supermodel-esque. And there's a case to be made that Stereotypical Barbie is a sly swipe at superficial white progressivism, and in particular, the #Girlboss era; I wouldn't put it past Gerwig, who's proven an astute thinker and filmmaker in her previous works.

After a review, 'Barbie' movie will show in the Philippines, after all

Yet Barbie 's limitations as a vehicle for substantial commentary are two-fold. For one, the execution is sometimes awkward, like a long, stilted monologue about how "impossible" it is to be a woman because, The Patriarchy. (Nevertheless, this speech elicited claps of approval from my audience, which I saw coming as soon as the character started going in on unrealistic beauty expectations.)

The other rub is inherent – critique can only mean so much when the entity under the microscope also happens to be the one writing (and cashing) the checks. Even the sillier and less overtly self-referential punches come off favorably for Mattel, breathlessly burnishing the brand's legend in nearly the same fashion as Marvel's ongoing exaltations of Stan Lee.

Issa Rae, Scott Evans, Simu Liu, Emma Mackey and Ncuti Gatwa as Barbies and Kens. Warner Bros. Pictures hide caption

That being said, Barbie isn't just a movie that could never fully escape out from under the weight of its artistic compromises. It's a hoot, a feast for the eyes and ears. Sarah Greenwood's production design is sensorially astounding; Barbie Land is conceived as it's appeared in kids' imaginations for decades – both tangible (plastic shower, toaster, or car) and intangible (invisible water, toast, or motor). The makeup team confidently balances an essence of plasticity without drowning in it to the point of the uncanny. There are musical numbers and A+ cameos. (I'd love to get Lizzo to sing-narrate my life, too, please!)

These are the new movies and TV shows we can't wait to watch this summer

And did I already mention Ryan Gosling? RYAN. GOSLING. YES.

It's a movie that sits at an interesting inflection point in moviemaking and movie consumption, when almost every idea seems born from a pre-existing product. While it's easy to balk at – and believe me, I have; many, many times – the truth is, the tension between filmmaking and commerce has and always will be present in the work itself, be it a broad Hollywood blockbuster or the most idiosyncratic and Terrence Malick-y of endeavors. Something like Barbie lays that tension bare and exposed in its unabashed commercialism and heightened sensiblities, so that you can't not think about how its aims may be at odds with its execution.

But that's also part of what makes it such an interesting oddity to witness. It's a Barbie world you'll be more than happy to have visited, even as it confounds.

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'Barbie' ending: Greta Gerwig talks 'emotional' final line, creator Ruth Handler (Spoilers!)

Spoiler alert! The following contains details about the ending of "Barbie" (now in theaters).

There's no putting Barbie back in the box.

After an existential journey to Los Angeles, Barbie ( Margot Robbie ) successfully restores balance to Barbie Land, which is taken over by patriarchal Kens in the film's sharply satirical third act. But like Frodo at the end of "The Return of the King," Barbie no longer feels at home in her cozy, familiar world. Eager for human emotions and experiences , she decides to leave the valley of the dolls and embark on a new life in California.

And with some gentle guidance from her inventor, Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman), Barbie chooses to accept mortality and become a person at the end of the movie , adopting the last name Handler for herself. Greta Gerwig , who directed and co-wrote "Barbie," tells USA TODAY about the real-life Handler and that brilliant closing moment.

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

Greta Gerwig wanted to end the 'Barbie' movie with a 'mic drop'

In the last scene, genial Mattel employee Gloria (America Ferrera) and her daughter, Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), drop Barbie off at an office building for what seems to be a job interview. Anxious but excited, Barbie walks through a waiting room to a receptionist's desk, beaming as she says the movie's final line, “I’m here to see my gynecologist.”

“With this film, it was important for me that everything operated on at least two levels,” Gerwig says. “I knew I wanted to end on a mic drop kind of joke, but I also find it very emotional. When I was a teenage girl, I remember growing up and being embarrassed about my body, and just feeling ashamed in a way that I couldn't even describe. It felt like everything had to be hidden.

“And then to see Margot as Barbie, with this big old smile on her face, saying what she says at the end with such happiness and joy,” Gerwig continues. “I was like – if I can give girls that feeling of, 'Barbie does it, too' – that’s both funny and emotional. There are so many things like that throughout the movie. It was always about looking for the levity and the heart.”

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

Barbie creator Ruth Handler wanted the doll to be aspirational

Ruth Handler, who first appears as a character midway through "Barbie," co-founded Mattel in 1945. She got the idea for Barbie after watching her young daughter, Barbara, play with paper dolls of adult women. Given the popularity of baby dolls at the time, Handler viewed Barbie as an aspirational alternative: a toy to help girls envision lives and careers aside from being mothers and homemakers.

“Ruth saw that little girls wanted to play at being big girls,” says Robin Gerber, author of “Barbie and Ruth.” “She described it as a toy that would allow girls to imagine being whatever they wanted to be.”

The first Barbie was released in 1959 and became an instant success. But the doll was also controversial for her small waist and large bust ‒ features inspired by the German fashion doll Bild Lilli. Handler found Bild Lilli during a trip to Hamburg and used her as a model for Barbie.

“If that doll had smaller breasts, I think Barbie would have had smaller breasts,” Gerber says. “It’s an accident of history.”

In Handler's 1994 book "Dream Doll," she wrote that some Mattel designers were "squeamish" about a doll with breasts, but she stood her ground.

"Every little girl needed a doll through which to project herself into her dream of her future,'' Handler told the New York Times in 1977. ''If she was going to do role playing of what she would be like when she was 16 or 17, it was a little stupid to play with a doll that had a flat chest. So I gave it beautiful breasts.''

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

Handler's breast cancer battle inspired her second career

In a cruel irony , Handler was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1970 and underwent a double mastectomy. She left Mattel in 1974, and two years later, started a new company called Nearly Me, making breast prosthetics for women post-mastectomy.

"She invented inserts into a bra that you could put on after you've had a double mastectomy, so you could still feel like yourself," Gerwig says. "That felt beautiful and poetic. Barbie has always been held up to be a sort of unrealistic physical ideal: impossibly beautiful, and impossible to achieve for a mere mortal. I thought, ‘That is so interesting because the woman who created her physically went through a transformation in a completely different direction.’ "

It's a poignant reminder that "Barbie is something that was invented," Gerwig adds. "(Handler) is not Barbie. Margot's not Barbie. Nobody's Barbie."

Using silicone and foam, the Nearly Me prosthetics were designed to be both comfortable and confidence-boosting. Handler staffed the company almost entirely with women who had undergone mastectomies.

"In the early '70s, women were made to feel like criminals for having had breast cancer. It was very much hidden from your friends," Gerber says. "She went out to major companies like Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale's, and said, 'You have to set up a separate salon for women who’ve had mastectomies, and they will be fitted for these and they will be treated with respect.'

"She had a very clear idea of wanting to not just give women a product, but give them back their dignity."

The 'Barbenheimer’ phenomenon: How a movie meme inspired the 'crazy, weird' double feature

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

Barbie Is Very Pretty But Not Very Deep

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

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

Read More: Our Cover Story on Barbie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Barbie’ on HBO Max, Where Greta Gerwig Makes Clever, Intelligent, Unfailingly Funny Art Out of Corporate IP

Where to stream:.

• Barbie (2023)

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Margot robbie to produce live-action ‘monopoly’ movie, shakira calls out greta gerwig’s ‘barbie’ and says her sons found it “emasculating”, new & current max subscribers — unlock up to 45% off on annual plans.

The phenomenon of 2023 is Barbie ( now streaming on Max , formerly known as HBO Max, as well as VOD services like Amazon Prime Video ), and – review spoiler alert! – it deserves everything it’s achieved. Here’s what happens when capitalist megacorps like Warner Bros. and Mattel hand $130-odd million and free reign over prized intellectual property to an auteur like Greta Gerwig: $1.4 billion in worldwide ticket sales (and counting). The year’s highest-grossing movie (so far). A reinvigoration of the theatrical moviegoing experience (thanks in part to all that Barbenheimer insanity). And if it doesn’t get Oscar consideration, we should revolt (there’s plenty of room in the best picture category, remember). Did we expect this to happen? Maybe – anyone who saw Gerwig’s wonderful Little Women and Lady Bird knew for damn sure she wouldn’t make a glorified toy commercial. And somehow, she and life partner/co-writer Noah Baumbach got away with making a fascinating, trippy and hysterically funny existential-feminist movie about what it means to be human. 

BARBIE : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Barbie opens with an utterly nuts homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey , narrated by Helen Mirren. It shows us little girls smashing baby dolls as Mirren ruminates on the very idea of dollhood itself – its origins, what it symbolizes, how it reflects humanity, stuff like that. (Did we see this coming? No!) Then we get a detailed tour of Barbieland, a pink-soaked plastic meta-reality run by numerous iterations of Barbie: doctor Barbie, president Barbie, astronaut Barbie, etc. It’s a feminist utopia where every night is girl’s night, and the Kens are essentially second-class citizens. Here we meet Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie), who, for simplicity’s sake, we’ll just refer to as “Barbie” from here on out. She’s got the Dream House and the pink vintage Corvette and the impeccable wardrobe and the undying attention of Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling), heretofore simply “Ken,” whose happiness depends wholly upon whether Barbie notices him or not. That night Barbie hangs with Ken but pushes him away – he asks to spend the night, even if he’s not sure exactly why; one assumes a lack of genitalia has something to do with that – so she and her female friends can have a heavily choreographed dance party, during which Barbie suddenly, in perhaps the greatest record-scratch fzwoop! moment in cinematic history, blurts out, “You guys ever think about dying?”

What , we’re inevitably thinking, has just entered this plastic woman’s head? She shakes off the existential dread and goes to bed and wakes up and now everything is, well, off. Not quite the same. Not quite right. The perfection of her usual routine is upset – a burnt waffle, the shower shoots water instead of nothing, stuff like that. Then her feet go flat, instead of sculpted for high heels. And what’s this on her thigh? It’s a weird mark. It wasn’t there before. Curious. Our Barbie, it seems, has been cursed with sudden self-awareness, and now she has many questions. She calls upon the wisdom of Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), who we learn is the Barbie who was “played with too hard,” and now has crayon scribbles on her face, and uneven, chopped-up hair, and is always doing the splits. (I’m giggling just typing this.) Weird Barbie tells our Barbie two things: That mark on her leg is, gasp, cellulite. And in order to repair a sudden rip in space-time that correlates to Barbie’s existential crisis, she must venture out of Barbieland to the real world, and seek out the child who’s playing with her in order to get some answers.

So off Barbie goes, not realizing that Ken is stowing away in the backseat. He really really really wants to tag along, because he’s needy and hilarious and dopey and just wants to spend some time with his dream girl. She sighs and agrees. When they arrive in Los Angeles – well, what would you expect if you journeyed from a perfect utopia to the USA circa 2023? It’d look utterly and completely effed . At first, they’re fascinated, but soon enough, Barbie feels like she’s being stared at with an undercurrent of violence, something that Ken, notably, doesn’t sense. Yes indeed, that’s patriarchy in the air! Barbie soon finds her owner, a sullen tween named Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), the daughter of Gloria (America Ferrara), a Mattel employee and typically frazzled how-do-I-do-it-all American woman who unwittingly caused the aforementioned space-time fissure when she doodled a design for – get this – Irrepressible Thoughts of Death Barbie. You won’t be surprised to learn that Mattel is run by a boardroom full of men led by a CEO (Will Ferrell) who’s more of a goofy doofus than evil, because this movie can’t piss off the suits too much. Meanwhile, Ken decides that what he has to do is take everything he learned in the real world and sneak off to install the patriarchy in Barbieland, which he does, and now Barbie has a major f—ing problem to deal with. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I haven’t enjoyed this much plaything-inspired existential philosophy since Forky became self-aware in Toy Story 4 . (For more on Barbie, consult your school library! Or watch the Barbie episode of The Toys That Made Us on Netflix.)

Performance Worth Watching: Robbie puts in incredible work, holding all this lunacy together. Ferrara nails the inspiring centerpiece monologue. Gosling’s performance is exquisitely modulated. McKinnon steals the hell out of her scenes. So take your pick. 

Memorable Dialogue: Am I hearing it correctly or do the terrifically dimwitted Kens, in their big showstopping musical number, sing the lyric, “My name is Ken, and so am I”? 

Sex and Skin: We do not get to see any formless lumps of flesh beneath any of the Barbies’ or Kens’ clothing. Seems like a line that shouldn’t be crossed.

Our Take: Barbie is a mindf—. A mindf— that carries two thoughts in its head at once, specifically, the problematic nature of Barbie dolls representing female perfection, and the groundbreaking women-can-do-anything-they-want empowerment message that the toyline asserted (and exploited for massive profit, another obstacle Gerwig fearlessly tackles). It’s a movie about the brand, sure, but it’s foremost about womanhood and its role in a man’s man’s man’s man’s man’s man’s world, as well as grander ideas about the nature of identity and self, about impermanence and immortality: She is Barbie. She is a woman. She is strong. She is more than human. She is a toy. She is a brand. She is an icon. She is forever . 

But this Barbie? She’s suddenly fallible. Burdened by Cartesian thought. Subject to the harshness of reality. Newly aware of the complexities of her existence, which now straddles an idealist playland and good old complicated Planet Earth. Gerwig’s aim isn’t emasculation, as some ninnies proclaim, or even necessarily satire or social criticism. Her goal, I’d assert, was to make a Barbie movie that doesn’t suck. I don’t mean to be glib or reductionist, but the mere notion of a movie based on a popular toyline sucks. And it’s on the studio and producers and writers and director to dig themselves out of that deep conceptual hole, which is typically a grave for good ideas, because god forbid anyone ever consider throwing shade at The Brand, or giving half a sliver of an implication that the toy isn’t something that will make every kid happy forever. Barbie is a marvel of the modern world because somehow, Gerwig managed to talk surely nervous boardroom-dwellers and blue-chip-watchers into letting her take a high-profile commercial product and make art out of it. (The added layer of irony? It made everybody hundreds of millions of dollars.)

And so Gerwig made a Barbie movie that’s funny, stays true to the manner in which young girls play with dolls, and playfully-but-seriously ponders the verisimilitude of modern womanhood. It’s driven by ideas, and, beneath the impeccable art direction and razor-sharp writing and on-point performances (and our gales of laughter), the movie has more going on than most high-concept sci-fi or high-minded Oscar bait. At times, it’s a blindingly bright musical, or a grand farce, or a headtrip, or a delicious skewering of the transcendent awfulness that is Matchbox Twenty, but its pictures and words and subtext always function in awesome lockstep. It’s the rare film that’s as intelligent as it is entertaining.

Our Call: Barbie may be an all-timer. STREAM the living hell out of IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

• Margot Robbie
• Stream It Or Skip It
• The Toys That Made Us

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Barbie Movie Review [Spoiler Free]

Barbie’s impact endures and even manages to touch the hearts of those who may not have grown up with the iconic doll.

As a young girl, pink was a colour I couldn’t stand and playing with ‘girly’ dolls was the last thing I wanted to do.

You see, I was a tomboy through and through, having spent most of my formative years around four bachelor uncles. While my friends had Barbies, I had the Power Rangers and instead of wanting to become a successful woman one day, I only had one goal in mind: to become the next Red Ranger.

Fast forward three decades of coming into myself and a live-action Barbie film later, my entire viewpoint has changed and the name Barbie etched into my soul.

That’s the impact the Barbie film, directed by Greta Gerwig, has had on me.

Barbie follows the titular character (or more specifically known as Stereotypical Barbie), played by Margot Robbie, as she embarks on a journey of self-discovery upon realising that there’s more to the world than the repetitive lifestyle of Barbie Land. In joining her on this journey, we also see Ken, played by Ryan Gosling, discovering himself as more than just Barbie’s boyfriend.

Narrated by Helen Mirren, the fantasy, musical-comedy film is filled with fantastic pacing and a story in which everyone, regardless of background, can appreciate and enjoy. Of course, the film also manages to cleverly depict the trials and tribulations of being a woman in a male dominated society, while also portraying the basic essence of manhood, in a tasteful way.

In many ways Barbie isn’t just a film about dealing with an existential crisis after realising that life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It manages to truly personify the very essence of what it means to be human and the stereotypical roles the patriarchal society has given to both men and women, the latter of which is EPICALLY portrayed through the monologue delivered by America Ferrera’s character. The clink of glasses in the audience as soon as she finished only reinforced the notion that this is truly how we feel in today’s world, living with the unrealistic and unachievable expectations that have been placed upon us.

While we see this as commonplace in the real world, which somehow manages to function, living according to one ideology and an inflexible set of rules completely breaks down the perfect haven that is Barbie Land, regardless of whether the importance is placed on men or women.

The way in which this teaches us about the need for balance and understanding that perfection need not be attained in order for one to be worthy is so cleverly told in Barbie .

There’s so much more that can be unpacked in terms of how the story of Barbie was told, but I’d be giving away too much. Just believe me when I say that you need to experience this on your own to truly appreciate the underlying meanings and messages. Plus, there were a good number of laugh out loud moments that you just HAVE to enjoy on your own as well.

For me, personally, the entire story and the way in which it was crafted speaks of several important things but the most important being empowerment.

The main character in the film may be Stereotypical Barbie, but ‘Barbie’ is so much more. It isn’t just one single doll with one set of characteristics. No, ‘Barbie’ is more than a doll. It’s a concept and one that can be anyone and everyone, inspiring and encouraging young girls to dream and be whatever they choose to be. It is this aspect of Barbie and the film that I truly appreciated. After all, teaching the younger generation to pursue their dreams and passions is what I do as a diversity advocate.

It is this idea that Barbie can be anything and represent everyone that really turned me into a fan. Can you believe that the little girl who refused to wear pink now rocks pink nails and dresses from time to time? I suspect that’s because that little girl grew up realising that, like Barbie, she doesn’t need to be perfect and she can be whatever she chooses to be.

Barbie was more than just its story though. The casting for the film was spot on and the cast played their roles perfectly, with a brilliant dynamic, for the most part, between their relationships with one another.

More so than Margot Robbie, I actually believe Ryan Gosling stole the show with his depiction of a lovestruck, yet, unassuming Ken, who believed he didn’t have an identity beyond Barbie (because let’s face it, we all helped create that persona for Ken, who’s just, Barbie’s boyfriend and nothing more).

The way in which Gosling portrayed Ken and his character development throughout the film was simply genius and if he doesn’t get an award for his performance, I think I may just riot.

Of course, there were also more stereotypical performances and less developed character dynamics that I wished were given more time, such as that between America Ferrera’s character and her daughter, played by Ariana Greenblatt.

When it came to visuals, aesthetics and music, oh you can bet that Barbie had that all down pat and did so in a way that made you feel like migrating to Barbie Land. The way in which the visuals and aesthetics tied in with the story, helped to truly sell the concept of the contrast between the perfect lollipop haven of Barbie Land and the rather mundane, almost greyscale world of reality.

This, of course, further helped drive the notion that the perfect life isn’t actually a life at all, which is a concept that is quite thought provoking for a musical-comedy.

Then comes the soundtrack, and what a soundtrack it is. Between the film’s soundtrack and musical numbers, it was difficult to not want to jump up and start to boogie alongside the characters on screen. The entire suite of music helped provide the pacing of the film and gave it that extra something to leave an impact on our minds.

I definitely left the cinema wanting to go out and dance.

Without saying much more in order to avoid spoiling the film, Barbie was simply magical. It will not only leave you both laughing and in tears but have you really thinking about how human society works. Ultimately, it even helps answer that age old question you’ve been asking yourself for years, “what is my purpose?” Trust me, even before watching this film, I think you already knew the answer all along.

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Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is what movie dreams are made of

By sandy c. | jul 20, 2023.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is what movie dreams are made of. An absolute delight from start to finish, Margot Robbie brings Barbie to life in this must-see summer picture. From the vibrant visuals to the soundtrack , Gerwig spared no expense creating this work of art. Need more reasons to watch the movie? Read on.

Barbie transports audiences to Barbie Land, a colorful world where women rule and every day is a party. We meet all variations of Barbies and Kens (and just one Allan) as they go about their perfect day of fake eating, dancing, and Beach. Lots of Beach. Nothing can ruin their vibe or interrupt their choreographed dance number. Well, except maybe an existential crisis. After the random thought of death crosses Barbie’s mind, it’s a downhill of events for the once happy doll.

To restore order, Barbie travels to the real world for answers. In the human world, women are in charge and everyone lives in sweet harmony — or so Barbie has been led to believe. Boy, is she in for a shocker!

If you haven’t watched Barbie in theaters, please note this review contains no spoilers! But do make plans to watch this movie ASAP.

Barbie doesn’t sit us down to preach feminism using tired cliches

Going in, I was excited to see the crazy talented Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. I knew the two would share great chemistry and make a fantastic duo. I wasn’t wrong. I was also expecting the story to be somewhat superficial, a colorful ride with many laughs, but not a strong or meaningful story. I was wrong. Barbie promotes empowerment and inclusivity in a beautiful and refreshing way.

The story doesn’t sit us down to preach feminism using predictable cliches. Instead, Gerwig takes our hand and walks us through it. The messages about the complexity of being a woman come to us in a way that is not depressing or disheartening, but empowering and full of optimism. Making viewers (women, in particular) angry about the state of the world would be the easy way to do things. But through her film, Gerwig asks “what does anger and resentment solve?” Gerwig takes a different route, heavily investing on the audience, knowing we are worth a story full of both style and substance.

The cast of Barbie is pure perfection

Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach thought of it all. The cast is pure perfection. From the amazing Margot Robbie down to John Cena as Ken Merman Doll , every character is a joy to watch. Some of my favorite scene stealers are Michael Cera as Allan (Hey Mattel Films, can we get an Allan spin-off, please?), comedy king Will Ferrell as the CEO Of Mattel, and Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie. You know what? There are just too many to mention!

Ryan Gosling’s lines will make you LOL. He is so fun. Is there any role Gosling can’t flawlessly take on? The rivalry between Gosling’s Ken and Simu Liu’s Ken is gold.

To top things off (as if we need more to declare  Barbie the movie of the summer), the soundtrack is a hit! Thank you, Gerwig, for our new summer playlist. The  Barbie  soundtrack features a fun mix of original songs and classic favorites!

Barbie is insightful and hilarious, two movie elements Gerwig and Noah Baumbach blend perfectly together in this must-see movie that is essential viewing for the modern audience.

Barbie is in theaters Friday, July 21, with showtimes available in most theaters as early as tonight, July 20. The movie is rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language, both of which will go over any young minds, so feel free to bring the kiddos to this one! However, they may not be fully entertained as the target audience are teens and up.

Next. 2023 summer movie calendar and guide. dark

Review: 'Barbie' is not the movie you think it is

In this review, we'll walk through Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" bit by bit, analyzing it along the way. If you consider such summary a spoiler, I'll save you the trouble and tell you what I think now.

I enjoyed watching "Barbie." It was a fun experience. The shots were beautifully designed, the dialogue was witty and Ryan Gosling put on the performance of a lifetime. But Gerwig spends far too much screen time analyzing what it means to make a Barbie movie in 2023, and far too little time actually telling that story.

The result is a smattering cinematic collection of philosophical conversations about the historical relation between Barbie and the feminist movement, broken up by comedic relief from Gosling, Kate McKinnon and Simu Liu, and strung together by the story of how Barbie and her real-world owner use their philosophical conversations to destroy the growing patriarchy in Barbie society.

With that in mind, I don't think the following review spoils the movie, not because I don't think "Barbie" is worth seeing (I think it definitely is), but because the story is not the point of the movie. Gerwig agreed to make this movie so that audiences would think critically about Barbie's role in feminist history and, in turn, think critically about the ever-present role of patriarchy in our society.

On that front, Gerwig achieved her goal, tenfold. On the advertising for Barbie and Mattel front, twentyfold. But on the storytelling and good-movie-making front, not as much.

Introduction: Barbie World

Greta Gerwig's much anticipated "Barbie" starts out exactly as everyone anticipated.

Margot Robbie, Issa Rae and the Barbies wake up wearing pink, floating down from their open-air doll houses, greeting each other with "Hi Barbie!" and "Hi Barbie!" and running their world with smiles and ease. Meanwhile, Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu and the Kens hang about the beach, urgently seeking the Barbies' attention. This is the expected, and rather amusing, Barbie-life-as-usual.

And then things change.

"Do you guys ever think about dying?" Barbie-Robbie wonders aloud at a Dua Lipa dance party. The music cuts out: this is not normal. Then, the next morning, rather than float down from her house, she falls on her face. Then she has flat feet. And then, worst of all, cellulite!

This is where the movie starts in earnest. It is also where Greta Gerwig's highly anticipated happy-go-lucky comedy ends and the history lesson of Barbie and the feminist movement begins – with Ryan Gosling's charisma carrying the audience between drawn-out, philosophical dialogue.

Plot I: Barbie travels to the real world

Barbie-Robbie (and Ken-Gosling) must travel to the real world, find the child that is morphing Barbie's figure and cheer that child up to make everything perfect again.

When Barbie-Robbie and Ken-Gosling adventure into the real world, they discover a new phenomenon: the patriarchy. Male construction workers cat-call Barbie. Policemen ride proudly above the crowd on horses. A mother even asks Ken for the time!

Barbie and Ken react very differently to this discovery. Barbie becomes overcome with confusion and emotion for the first time in her Barbie-life, especially when she realizes Barbie might not have been a positive influence on female minds and the feminist movement. Ken becomes infatuated. The idea that he might be in charge is novel and exciting to playtime's historically impotent side character. So Ken decides to bring the patriarchy back to Barbie World.

Meanwhile, Barbie-Robbie's real-world owner, Gloria (America Ferrera), and Gloria's daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), help Barbie-Robbie run away from Mattel executives (Will Ferrel and company) who want to put her back in a toy box. Barbie-Robbie leads the unlikely trio back to Barbie World, but when they arrive, the place looks nothing like before: the patriarchy has changed everything.

The Kens have left their residences on the beach and have taken over the Barbies' doll houses. Barbies that had formerly been physicists and Nobel prize-winning writers and presidents have all but abandoned their posts to support the new patriarchal order, serving the Kens "brewsky-beer" on command.

Plot II: Destroying Ken's patriarchy

It is now up to Barbie-Robbie and her motley crew of rebels to solve the problem of the patriarchy in Barbie World. After Ferrera's Gloria offers a rejuvenating, earnest and seemingly spot-on speech about the plight of being female in a patriarchal world, the motley crew of patriarchy rebels devises a plan: isolate each spell-bound Barbie and have Ferrera give them a feminist speech until they realize their mistake. Somehow, this works, and one by one, post-lecture, every Barbie returns to her normal feminist self. The takeaway from this sequence seemed to be that a hearty lesson in feminist theory is all it takes to free women from the psychological shackles of patriarchy.

Once all the Barbies returned to their right states of mind, it was time to fix the Kens, which they achieve by playing with the Kens' hearts and turning them against each other. The battle of the Kens leads to by far the best scene in the movie, with Ryan Gosling breaking out in song for "I'm Just Ken." In the midst of the battle, the Kens forget to rewrite the Barbie World constitution, and the Barbies take back control.

I struggle to decipher a deeper point there. Is the Kens losing power a simple expression of male stupidity? I doubt it. Is the Kens' loss of power supposed to represent the modern female experience? That would be strange. The other option, however, is that Barbie's destruction of the patriarchy in Barbie World bears little relation with the struggle to do the same in the real world. Somehow that is even more unsatisfying.

Conclusion: Question marks

"Barbie" ends in something of a spirit world. Barbie-Robbie and the ghost of Barbie's creator, Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman), walk through a pink-lit empty space. Another heady, philosophical discussion ensues about how Barbie is not a person, but an idea – and, therefore, cannot die.

It's a puzzling note to end on.

Yours truly, Ken-Medintz

Barbie (I) (2023)

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‘Barbie’ Ending Explained: What Happens To Barbie, Ken & More

Barbie goes on an emotional adventure to find herself in Greta Gerwig's 'Barbie.' So, how does the highly-anticipated movie end? Let's break down what went down in Barbie Land. Spoilers!

When the movie begins, Stereotypical Barbie’s life is perfect in Barbie Land — until it isn’t. When she starts having thoughts of death, flat feet, and cellulite, she goes to Weird Barbie ( Kate McKinnon ) for answers. Weird Barbie advises Barbie ( Margot Robbie ) that she has to go to the real world and find the girl who’s playing with her. Barbie has to help the girl to help herself and fix the portal from Barbie Land to the real world.

Barbie heads to the real world with Ken ( Ryan Gosling ), and they discover that everything is the complete opposite of Barbie Land. Ken is quickly introduced to toxic masculinity as Barbie gets an education as to how Barbies and women are perceived here. This male-dominated world is not what Barbie expected.

Barbie quickly realizes that America Ferrera’s Gloria is the one playing with her, not her teen daughter, Sasha ( Ariana Greenblatt). Gloria’s memories are the ones Barbie has been seeing in her mind. While on the run from Mattel, Barbie takes Gloria and Sasha to Barbie Land.

When Barbie gets there, Ken’s already gotten a headstart in introducing the patriarchy to Barbie Land. The Barbies are fully controlled by the Kens and have no defense against the patriarchy. The Kens are taking over and undoing all of the Barbies’ progress.

Barbie believes all hope is lost. She doesn’t feel good enough for anyone or anything. It’s Gloria who encourages Barbie to pick herself up. In a game-changing monologue, Gloria explains how women have always had to fight to succeed in a world filled with misogyny. Women always feel like they have to be extraordinary. But simply being a woman — even an ordinary woman — is already extraordinary.

Gloria’s speech snaps Barbie out of her funk. Barbie is determined to stop the Kens from changing the constitution and ruining Barbie Land forever. Gloria’s reality check is the key to un-brainwashing the other Barbies. As Barbie, Gloria, Sasha, and Allan bring the Barbies back to their side, they slowly turn the Kens against each other. This results in an all-out Ken war on the beach.

The Barbies take back Barbie Land. All of the Barbies’ autonomy is restored. Despite all the chaos he caused, Barbie comforts Ken after Kendom goes down in flames. Ken admits he actually became “uninterested” in the patriarchy when he realized it wasn’t just about horses.

Barbie apologizes to Ken for taking him for granted. However, she still doesn’t feel the same way about him. Ken is devastated, to say the least. He believes that he only exists because of her. Barbie urges Ken to discover who he truly is without worrying about her. Just worry about Ken.

Despite saving Barbie Land, Barbie still doesn’t feel like she belongs. Gloria is curious about how Barbie’s story ends. “I don’t think I have an ending,” Barbie admits. Barbie shares a moment with Ruth Handler ( Rhea Perlman ), the inventor of Barbie. Ruth admits she created Barbie so she wouldn’t have an ending. Barbie is meant to keep inspiring.”Humans only have one ending. Ideas live forever,” Ruth says.

Barbie reveals she wants to be a part of the people that make meaning. She wants to become human. Ruth makes sure this is really what Barbie wants. Barbie assures her that she’s ready to take charge of her own destiny and discover her true purpose in life — on her own terms.

The final moments of Barbie feature Gloria and Sasha dropping Barbie off at an office building. It seems like Barbie’s going in for a job interview, but she’s actually there to see a gynecologist for the first time. Welcome to womanhood! She’s going by the name Barbara, after Ruth’s daughter. Let the sequel talk begin!

Does Barbie Have A Post-Credits Scene?

There is no Barbie post-credits scene. However, this is a fun credits reel, filled with epic Barbie doll throwbacks.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie Live-Action Movie: What We Know So Far

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Revealed Robbie in a cover story with British Vogue , “Right, it comes with a lot of baggage! And a lot of nostalgic connections. But with that come a lot of exciting ways to attack it.” Here's what we know about the doll drama so far.

When will the film release?

Barbie hits theaters on July 21, 2023. Warner Bros. announced the news with a first look at Robbie in character, covered in pink.

The Warner Bros. project was first announced in 2019, but numerous other projects—and, not to mention, a pandemic—have kept Gerwig and Robbie busy in the interim. Variety confirms that Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach would finalize the script after completing work on the Baumbach-directed 2022 film White Noise .

Who's playing Ken?

It was announced on October 22, 2021, that Ryan Gosling was in final negotiations for the role of Ken, the well-known romantic interest of Barbie and a wonderful choice for a leading man to star opposite Robbie. Apparently, Gosling initially rejected the role, saying he was too busy, but the delay in production lined it up with a free spot in his calendar. The news came after Gosling wrapped on the Russo brothers' Netflix film The Gray Man , acting alongside Chris Evans.

On June 15, 2022, Warner Bros. Pictures released a jaw-dropping first-look image of Gosling in the infamous role—with bleached blonde hair, a denim vest and a spray tan, no less. However, Gosling is not the only one playing Ken.

Who else is in the cast?

Barbie is a massive star-studded production featuring multiple Barbies, Kens, and humans. After long keeping character details close to the vest, the film shared its full roster on social media.

The doll cast includes: Robbie, Hari Nef ( Transparent ) as a doctor Barbie, Emma Mackey ( Sex Education ) as a Barbie with a Nobel Prize in physics, Dua Lipa as a mermaid Barbie, Ana Cruz Kayne ( Painkiller ) as a Supreme Court Justice Barbie, Sharon Rooney ( My Mad Fat Diary ) as a lawyer Barbie, Emerald Fennell ( The Crown ) as Midge, Issa Rae as a president Barbie, Kate McKinnon ( Saturday Night Live ) as the Barbie who’s “always in the splits,” Nicola Coughlan ( Bridgerton ) as a diplomat Barbie, Alexandra Shipp ( Tick, Tick...Boom! ) as an author Barbie, and Ritu Arya ( The Umbrella Academy ) as a Barbie with a Pulitzer.

The various Kens are portrayed by: Gosling, Kinglsey Ben-Adir ( One Night in Miami ), Scott Evans ( Grace and Frankie ), Simu Liu ( Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings ), and Ncuti Gatwa ( Sex Education ). And there's Michael Cera as Allan.

The human cast includes: America Ferrera, Ariana Greenblatt (young Gamora in Avengers: Infinity War ), Connor Swindells ( Sex Education ), Jamie Demetriou ( Fleabag , The Afterparty ), and Will Ferrell, who’s said to be playing the CEO of a toy company. Let's also not forget Dame Helen Mirren, who's taken the honorable role of narrator.

Other previous reports stated that Marisa Abela ( Industry ) and Rhea Perlman ( Cheers ) are also in the cast. Further details about the roles remain tightly under wraps.

What will the story be about?

Gerwig will pen the script with Marriage Story 's Baumbach, which means this won't be your typical toy-to-television adaptation.

“People generally hear ‘Barbie’ and think, ‘I know what that movie is going to be,’ and then they hear that Greta Gerwig is writing and directing it, and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, maybe I don’t...,” Robbie told British Vogue .

After months—or honestly, years—of keeping mum, Robbie opened up slightly about the film's premise to Vogue . She said that when her production team pitched the idea to Mattell, they told the company, “We of course would want to honor the 60-year legacy that this brand has. But we have to acknowledge that there are a lot of people who aren’t fans of Barbie. And in fact, aren’t just indifferent to Barbie. They actively hate Barbie. And have a real issue with Barbie. We need to find a way to acknowledge that.”

To help Robbie get into character, Gerwig recommended listening to an episode of the podcast This American Life where a woman doesn't introspect. “You know how you have a voice in your head all the time?” Robbie told Vogue . “This woman, she doesn’t have that voice in her head.”

Vogue reports that the Barbie storyline is somewhat inspired by the 1994 book Reviving Ophelia , which Gerwig read as a kid, that details problems girls face when they enter adolescence. “They’re funny and brash and confident, and then they just—stop,” the director told the magazine. While writing the screenplay, she realized that the film would ultimately cover: “How is this journey the same thing that a teenage girl feels? All of a sudden, she thinks, Oh, I’m not good enough .”

Robbie trusted Gerwig, but she had a simple request before singing on. “I’ll follow your vision. Whatever you want this Barbie movie to be, let’s do that. Except I just have one favor,” she recalled telling the director on The Kelly Clarkson Show . “Please, please, please can we have a Dreamhouse where she has a slide that goes from her bedroom down to her pool, because that is my goal in life.” We get it.

Is production for Barbie over?

On July 16, 2022, a few members of the Barbie cast shared a celebratory photo to commemorate wrapping on the film. Both actresses Hari Nef and Sharon Rooney posted the picture to Instagram. The image included Gerwig as well as Robbie and America Ferrera from their last day on set, all yelling at the camera.

Also in the pic were Alexandra Shipp and Ana Cruz Kayne, plus a few other members of the studio ensemble.

“Barbie, a true gift,” Rooney wrote in the caption.

Greenblatt told ELLE of filming Barbie , “Everyone had such a great time making it, and it really shows on camera.” She added that while filming in London, Robbie and Gerwig arranged for the cast to screen films relating to Barbie every Sunday at Electric Cinema in Notting Hill.

What has Greta Gerwig said about the experience?

Gerwig co-wrote the screenplay as well as directing. In an appearance on Dua Lipa's At Your Service podcast post-production, Gerwig said it was actually a nerve-wracking choice to take on the Barbie project.

“It was terrifying. I think there's something about starting from that place where it's like, ‘Well, anything is possible!’” she said. “It felt like vertigo starting to write it. Like, where do you even begin? What would be the story?”

She continued, “I think it was that feeling I had that it would be really interesting terror. Usually, that's where the best stuff is. When you're like, ‘I am terrified of that.’ Anything where you're like, ‘This could be a career-ender,’ then you're like, ‘OK, I probably should do it.’”

The experience ended up being great, even working with the executives at Mattel, who have creative control over the doll fashion line.

“They have given us such trust and such freedom, and I think that is incredibly rare. Whatever we wanted to be, they did not try to micromanage it. I was very much supported in what I wanted to do,” Gerwig explained. “I usually know on a gut level whether something feels right.”

In July, she told Rolling Stone that Mattel was “incredibly open” to feminist critique because “it’s a lie any other way.”

“It felt like we had to give the counterargument to Barbie, and not give it short shrift, but give it real intellectual and emotional power,” she said. “And Mattel was incredibly open to it. I said, ‘We have to explore it, because it’s a lie any other way. And we can’t make it a lie.’ I think they heard it.”

Is there a trailer?

Finally, yes. Warner Bros. shared the first teaser for Barbie on December 16, featuring Robbie's arrival as the iconic doll. It's also a big visual and musical reference to the opening scenes of 2001 A Space Odyssey . “Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been...dolls. But the dolls were always and forever baby dolls. Until...” a voiceover says in the clip.

The footage ends with some blink-and-you'll-miss it glimpses of the over-the-top film, including cast members Ryan Gosling, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ncuti Gatwa, Issa Rae, and Simu Liu.

Another teaser followed on April 4, showing a bigger, colorful look inside Barbie Land and its multiple Barbies (including Robbie, Rae, Shipp, and Mackey) and Kens (like Gosling, Liu, and Ben-Adir). Michael Cera's Allan makes an appearance too. The eye-popping preview ends with Barbie driving towards the “real world” in her bubblegum pink convertible, only to find Gosling’s Ken has stowed away in the back seat, along with his neon roller blades. Watch below.

The main trailer, released on May 25, shows more of Barbie's excursion into the real world. All is going well in Barbie Land when she starts noticing that things are going awry: she falls off of her building and (gasp!) the eternal tip-toe-arches of her feet have gone flat, so she can no longer wear heels. Kate McKinnon's Barbie suggestions she goes into the Real World to find out what's going on. Once Robbie's Barbie arrives to her destination (with Gosling's Ken in tow), shenanigans ensue. Watch below. The trailer teases a new song by Dua Lipa, too.

And then in early July, a clip from the film was released that focused on Gosling's Ken recovering from a brief injury after trying to surf, even though his job is “beach.”

What songs are in the Barbie soundtrack?

Barbie the Album is also dropping on July 21, including a bunch of new and original songs from a variety of A-list stars, including Dua Lipa, Nicki Minaj, Charli XCX, Karol G, Fifty Fifty, Haim, Ice Spice, and more. Ryan Gosling is in the track list too. Check out the list of artists below.

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Your guide to the latest plot twists and surprise endings, now playing at a theater near you!

The film opens with a parody of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, where it is shown, through the voice of the narrator (Helen Mirren) that the Barbie doll has been around since the dawn of girlhood. Random little girls are seen shattering their typical baby dolls in favor of the Barbie.

In the world of Barbie Land, there are multiple Barbies and multiple Kens (Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Ncuti Gatwa, etc), as well as Allan (Michael Cera) and a pregnant doll named Midge (Emerald Fennell). There is a President Barbie (Issa Rae), Physicist Barbie (Emma Mackey), Doctor Barbie (Hari Nef), Writer Barbie (Alexandra Shipp), Diplomat Barbie (Nicola Coughlan), Journalist Barbie (Ritu Arya), and Mermaid Barbie (Dua Lipa), among others. The Kens live dependent on their relationships to their Barbies. The main Barbie (Margot Robbie) goes about her day enjoying her life in Barbie Land with her Ken (Ryan) and with her fellow Barbies. Ryan-Ken has a rivalry with Simu-Ken and they threaten to “beach off” one another. The Barbies and Kens all have a dance party to celebrate how great life in Barbie Land is, until Margot-Barbie comments on if anyone thinks about dying, completely killing the vibe.

Later on, Barbie starts to notice strange things going on in her life, including her heels now touching the ground and her skin having cellulite. She is told by the others ladies to visit Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), who has had her hair cut, her face drawn on, and she does splits. She explains to Barbie that there might be something going on in the real world with the girl who plays with her, and she must set out to find out what is going on with her. Barbie drives her way out of Barbie Land, accompanied by a stowaway Ken.

When Barbie and Ken make it to the real world (Venice Beach), they get into trouble after Barbie punches a guy who smacks her butt. After they get out of jail, Barbie goes off to try and find her owner. Barbie takes a moment to sit on a bench and see visions of a girl happily playing with her, until the girl ends up becoming less joyful, causing Barbie to shed tears. She then looks to her side and sees an old woman (Ann Roth) sitting next to her. Barbie tells her she is beautiful, and the woman says she knows.

Based on her visions, Barbie is directed to a middle school girl named Sasha (Arianna Greenblatt), who says she no longer plays with Barbies because they incorporate unrealistic beauty standards. Meanwhile, after Barbie and Ken split off, Ken ends up learning about the patriarchy, seeing it as something positive.

Barbie ends up at Mattel, the company that makes Barbies. The CEO (Will Ferrell) learns of her presence in the real world, which is overheard by an employee named Gloria (America Ferrera), who is also Sasha’s mother. Barbie ends up in the boardroom of employees, and the CEO tries to convince her to go back into a life-size box to fix everything. She nearly agrees before changing her mind and making a run for it. After Gloria picks up Sasha, she finds Barbie, who is being chased by the CEO and his subordinates. Barbie then learns that Gloria is responsible for her current existential crisis due to Sasha being more moody around her lately. Barbie guides Gloria and Sasha back to Barbie Land, while the guys from Mattel try to find a way to track her down.

When the three arrive in Barbie Land, they find that Ken has brought the patriarchy there, renaming the place “Kendom” and has now indoctrinated the other Kens into behaving more obnoxiously and more “bro” like, causing the rest of the Barbies to become more subservient to them. This extends to the real world where Ken’s change to Barbie’s dream house, a “Mojo Dojo Casa House”, starts selling well. While Barbie tries to appeal to Ken and get him to change his mind, he refuses because he now feels more valued than he did before going to the real world with her. Barbie becomes depressed and feels she is no longer perfect as she was made to be. Gloria and Sasha take her car and leave her when she tells them to go home. A commercial for “Depressed Barbie” plays before Weird Barbie comes to get her friend.

On their way out of Barbie Land, Gloria and Sasha are startled to find Allan has stowed away with them since he is already sick of the Kens having taken over. A group of Kens are building a wall (very poorly) to stop anyone from getting in or out of Barbie Land, and Allan begins to fight them all by himself. Sasha then decides they should go back to Barbie Land and help Barbie because Gloria cares about her, and Sasha expresses support for her mother’s ideas.

Gloria and Sasha return to find Barbie in Weird Barbie’s dream house, along with some discontinued Barbies and Kens. Gloria talks to Barbie, who is still depressed, and gives an impassioned speech about the standards women have to deal with in the real world. This helps snap Barbie out of her funk, as some of the other Barbies also come to their senses and devise a plan to get the Kens to change their minds.

Each Barbie tries to appeal to their Kens’ egos before jumping to other Kens to make them jealous and fight each other, culminating in a dance-off and Ken’s heartfelt “I’m Just Ken” ballad. Ken goes to Barbie and admits that he feels he is defined by his relationship to her, as it’s “Barbie AND Ken”, and not “just Ken”. Barbie apologizes for making him feel that way, but she also does not want to be known as just his girlfriend in Barbie Land. The Mattel guys arrive in Barbie Land, just as the spirit of Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman), the creator of Barbie, appears to speak to her. Ruth tells Barbie that while humans might have an end, her story does not have to. She encourages her to choose her own destiny and holds her hands. Barbie closes her eyes and envisions other women and mothers before making her choice.

Later on, Barbie rejoins Gloria and Sasha in the real world, now going by the name Barbara Handler. The two drop her off at a building, where she tries to make an appointment to see a gynecologist.

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In the world of Barbie Land, there are tons of Barbies with different jobs and unique personalities, while the Kens are mostly dependent on their relationships with their Barbies. One Barbie in particular starts to feel differently from the others, experiencing unusual thoughts of her existence. Weird Barbie convinces her to venture into the real world to find the girl that plays with her and resolve things. Her Ken joins her as they make their way to Venice Beach.

In the real world, Barbie meets Gloria and Sasha, a mother-daughter duo who originally played with her together until Sasha outgrew Barbies due to thinking they present unrealistic beauty standards. The CEO of Mattel catches wind of Barbie being in the real world and tries to put her back in a box to prevent uncertain consequences. Gloria and Sasha take Barbie back home, but Ken has already returned and made it into a "Kendom" after learning about the patriarchy and thinking that the other Kens would feel more valued. This makes the other Barbies into subservient girlfriends, and when Barbie cannot change Ken's mind, she falls into a depression. Gloria and Sasha almost leave until they are convinced by Allan (the only doll without a multiple) to go back and stop the Kens. After an impassioned speech from Gloria, Barbie and her sisters come up with a plan.

The Barbies manipulate the Kens to turn on one another until the main Barbie and Ken resolve their issues, with Ken wanting to feel more valued and not just be seen as her boyfriend. Barbie is then met by the spirit of Ruth Handler, her creator, who encourages her to choose her own destiny.

Barbie chooses to live in the real world as a human, continuing to be close to Gloria and Sasha.

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Columbia University has become the epicenter of a growing showdown between student protesters, college administrators and Congress over the war in Gaza and the limits of free speech.

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