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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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By Inkoo Kang

By Justin Chang

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

This essay contains spoilers for “Barbie.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barbie Is Very Pretty But Not Very Deep

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

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

Read More: Our Cover Story on Barbie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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We Shouldn’t Have to Grade Barbie on a Curve

This article was originally published on July 21, 2023. On January 23, 2024, Barbie was  nominated for eight Oscars , including Best Picture. Be sure to also read our analysis of the movie’s ending .

Barbie was born in 1959 — the creation of Ruth Handler, who was one of the founders of the furniture company turned toy manufacturer that became the Mattel empire. Handler, or so the story goes, noticed that her child Barbara liked to imagine grown-up lives for her paper dolls instead of treating them like babies to mother. The doll Handler proposed, and which she named after her daughter, was aspirational, a vision of the future (albeit one with anatomically impossible proportions). The first Barbie may have been a statuesque model in a bathing suit, but subsequent versions would be chefs, pediatricians, beekeepers, flight attendants, soccer players, astronauts, and, yes, presidents. Barbie gives the wildly popular doll her most challenging role yet: that of a big-screen protagonist played by producer and star Margot Robbie, who finds herself in the midst of a surreal existential crisis. Director Greta Gerwig has tended to talk about her film in spiritual terms , citing the Apostles’ Creed and the creation myth in Genesis. By that measure, Handler is the closest thing that the ultrapink realm of Barbie Land has to a God.

There’s another facet of the Barbie origin tale, which is that Handler came across a doll called Bild Lilli while in Europe and ripped it off, settling with the German company responsible for the toy after they sued. Barbie may be a pop-culture icon and an emblem for the inconsistent impulses stuffed into the concept of female empowerment, but more than anything else, hers is a story about money, and it’s impossible to separate what she means for women from her existence as a business proposition. To be fair, Gerwig’s Barbie doesn’t try to, or at least it incorporates a bumbling all-male Mattel C-suite led by Will Ferrell into its world-hopping adventures. The suits try to corral Barbie after she makes her way to the real world with her platinum-blond Ken (Ryan Gosling) in tow, but they’re only one of the obstacles she has to contend with. Others include persistent thoughts of death, the abrupt intrusion of cellulite into a previously PVC-smooth existence, scathing critiques of her brand from Gen-Zers, and sexism. Safe to say that the film, which has an all-Ken fantasy dance number, an ad for a sweatpants-wearing Depression Barbie, and America Ferrera as a Mattel employee named Gloria delivering a variation of the “cool girl” monologue from Gone Girl , is much weirder than you’d ever expect a Barbie motion picture to be. It’s just not enough.

The impulse to grade Barbie on a curve because it’s based on a toy line, or to focus on what it was able to get away with under the auspices of a corporate brand, feels unfair to Gerwig, whose debut, Lady Bird , and ebullient take on Louisa May Alcott’s most famous work earned her a place as one of the country’s most compelling filmmakers. Barbie is still very much a Gerwig movie — the ending in particular recalls what she did with Little Women — but in a way that suggests Gerwig and her co-writer and husband, Noah Baumbach, embarked on a writing exercise as a lark. It has worthwhile aspects, like Robbie, who in addition to looking the part, is as capable of heartbreaking earnestness as humor, and who sometimes effortlessly achieves both at once (having fled from a scornful teen who declared her a fascist, she weeps, “I don’t control the railways or the flow of commerce!”). Gosling comes close to stealing the movie as a Ken who lacks any sense of purpose outside of his mandated devotion to Barbie; he’s a floppy himbo whose every posture is an act of physical comedy. Barbie Land itself is a meticulously constructed kingdom filled with nods to current and former doll owners, from the printed interior of Barbie’s fridge to the appearances by discontinued dolls to the open structures and unused staircases of the Dreamhouses in which the Barbies (played by an array of actors including Nicola Coughlan, Hari Nef, Issa Rae, and Alexandra Shipp) live.

But then there’s everything else, beginning when Robbie’s Barbie — known within Barbie Land as Stereotypical Barbie, the one who looks like what you picture when you hear “Barbie” — starts glitching and Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) sends her to find out what’s up with the girl who’s been playing with her in the real world. Like the rest of the Barbies, Robbie’s doll believes that “all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved,” but she quickly discovers that outside of their plastic utopia, everything is run and defined by men. If it’s surprising to find Barbie holding forth on the plague of the patriarchy and the contradictory expectations faced by women, it’s more surprising to discover that the movie doesn’t ultimately want to do much more than talk itself in circles about these themes. The film acknowledges that telling girls they can be anything is simplistic when the world doesn’t always agree and when getting through the day sometimes feels like an achievement in itself. But it’s not a rebuke of corporatized feminism so much as an update that concludes with a character suggesting an “Ordinary Barbie” and another affirming that idea could make a lot of money — the film’s shrugging sigh of “it’s complicated” and “I’m tired.”

There’s a streak of defensiveness to Barbie , as though it’s trying to anticipate and acknowledge any critiques lodged against it before they’re made, which renders it emotionally inert despite the efforts at wackiness. To be a film fan these days is to be aware that franchises and cinematic universes and remakes and other adaptations of old IP have become black holes that swallow artists, leaving you to desperately hope they might emerge with the rare project that, even though it comes from constrictive confines, still feels like it was made by a person. Barbie definitely was. But the trouble with trying to sneak subversive ideas into a project so inherently compromised is that, rather than get away with something, you might just create a new way for a brand to sell itself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Available in theaters on July 21st. 

Christy Lemire

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

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Film credits.

Barbie (2023)

Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language.

114 minutes

Margot Robbie as Barbie

Ryan Gosling as Ken

America Ferrera as Gloria

Will Ferrell as Mattel CEO

Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie

Ariana Greenblatt as Sasha

Issa Rae as President Barbie

Rhea Perlman as Ruth Handler

Hari Nef as Doctor Barbie

Emma Mackey as Physicist Barbie

Alexandra Shipp as Writer Barbie

Michael Cera as Allan

Helen Mirren as Narrator

Simu Liu as Ken

Dua Lipa as Mermaid Barbie

John Cena as Kenmaid

Kingsley Ben-Adir as Ken

Scott Evans as Ken

Jamie Demetriou as Mattel Executive

• Greta Gerwig
• Noah Baumbach

Cinematographer

• Rodrigo Prieto
• Alexandre Desplat
• Mark Ronson

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‘Barbie’ Review: Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling Compete for Control of High-Concept Living Doll Comedy

Greta Gerwig loads plenty of food for thought in a hot pink pop fantasia, poking fun at patriarchy and corporate parent Mattel in her treatment of the iconic “girls can do anything” doll.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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Check out the brain on Barbie ! Sure, she’s just a doll, but that doesn’t mean she has to be an airhead. Therein lies “Lady Bird” director Greta Gerwig ’s inspired, 21st-century solution to bringing one of America’s most iconic playthings to life on the big screen. Combine that with the casting of Margot Robbie in the title role, and “Barbie” is already starting out on the right, perfectly arched foot. So what if this high-concept comedy falls a bit flat in the final stretch?

That’s an admirable achievement, given understandably protective corporate parent Mattel — though let’s be honest, in the year 2023, it would be a shock (and box office suicide) if “Barbie” arrived without some kind of female-empowerment message baked in. This one checks all the right boxes, while making Ryan Gosling ’s dumb-dumb Ken the butt of most of its gender-equity jokes. Boasting fresh tracks from Billie Eilish and Lizzo, the result is a very funny kids’ movie with a freshman liberal arts student’s vocabulary that tosses around terms like “patriarchy” and “appropriation” — pretty much everything but “problematic,” which the movie implies without actually calling Barbie’s legacy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Movie Review: She’s Perfect Barbie. He’s Scene-Stealing Ken. Their life in plastic looks fantastic

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ryan Gosling, left, and Margot Robbie in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

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This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Margot Robbie in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Kingsley Ben-Adir, from left, Ryan Gosling and Ncuti Gatwa in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP).

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Kate McKinnon in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows, from left, Emma Mackey, Simu Liu, Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and Kingsley Ben-Adir in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Issa Rae, from left, Scott Evans, Simu Liu, Emma Mackey and Ncuti Gatwa in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Margot Robbie, from left, Alexandra Shipp, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt and America Ferrera in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Simu Liu in a scene from “Barbie.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

For someone who’s 11.5 inches tall and weighs under 8 ounces, poor Barbie’s had to carry an awfully heavy load over the years on that slender, plastic back of hers.

Welcomed as a trailblazer in 1959 — An adult doll! With actual breasts! — she was nonetheless branded an anti-feminist a decade later when women’s rights marchers chanted “I Am Not a Barbie Doll,” referring to her unrealistic body type (and perhaps ignoring the fact that she was single, a homeowner and a career woman).

As years went by, Barbie had her hits (adopting a more inclusive body type, running for president) and misses (exclaiming “Math class is TOUGH!” — ouch). Through it all, this lightning rod in tiny pink heels remained uniquely talented at reinventing herself.

Which is why it makes sense that now, writer-director Greta Gerwig takes Barbie in more than one direction – in every direction, really – in her brash, clever, idea-packed (if ultimately TOO packed) and most of all, eye-poppingly lovely “Barbie,” the brand’s first live action movie.

Is it a celebratory homage to Barbie and her history? Yes. Also a cutting critique, and biting satire? Yes, too. The film is co-produced by Mattel, and they must have felt skittish about some elements — perhaps not Will Ferrell’s reliably buffoonish Mattel CEO, but a far more serious scene where a young girl accuses Barbie of making girls feel bad about themselves. The movie’s also about gender dynamics, mothers and daughters, insidious sexism ... and more.

But the neatest trick is how “Barbie,” starring a pitch-perfect Margot Robbie — and after a minute you’ll never be able to imagine anyone else doing it — can simultaneously and smoothly both mock and admire its source material. Gerwig deftly threads that needle, even if the film sags in its second half under the weight of its many ideas and some less-than-developed character arcs.

In any case, boy — or should we say, girl — life in plastic looks fantastic.

A head-spinning opening credits sequence begins with a Barbie history lesson, narrated by Helen Mirren. Then it’s off to Barbie Land, where Barbie lives in her flamingo-pink Dreamhouse, surrounded by other Barbies in theirs.

Other Barbies? Well, we know how many Barbie versions exist on store shelves, and Gerwig and her writing (and life) partner Noah Baumbach take this one step further: If they’re all Barbies, that means “Barbie” is all of THEM. There’s no one Barbie — although Robbie, who plays Stereotypical Barbie (and also produced the film), is the focal point.

And every day’s perfect for Stereotypical Barbie, who wakes in her heart-shaped bed, waves to neighbor Barbies, and heads to the shower, which is dry (there’s no actual water, wind, sun or gravity in Barbie Land.) Her day’s outfit awaits, perhaps a Chanel number, protected by shiny plastic as in a Barbie box. Then she swoops down her hot pink slide to the pool-with-no-water. The sky above is painted blue, the mountains purple. Gerwig was inspired by old soundstage musicals. Architectural Digest even did a piece on the house.

Equally stunning is “Beach” — a place, and also the name of Ken’s career. (Sorry Ken, we should have mentioned you before the 11th paragraph, but we had so much to say about Barbie). The beach is also apparently where Ken lives, because, have you ever heard of Ken’s house? In any case, a very blond Ryan Gosling gleefully chews the scenery — or, inhales it — and is never better than when conveying Ken’s forced enthusiasm with an edge of desperation plus a sprinkle of menace. Also, when dancing.

Speaking of dancing, one night at Barbie’s “giant blowout party,” she suddenly starts thinking about … death. The next morning she has bad breath, and OMG, her famously arched feet go flat! Also gravity happens, so she falls off her house.

After consulting with Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon — who else?) Barbie heads to LA to solve a tear in the boundary between Real World and Barbie Land, singing the Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine,” her signature road song. (The film’s high-powered soundtrack features Dua Lipa, Nicki Minaj, HAIM, Lizzo, Billie Eilish, and many others.) There, she and Ken encounter a world with a wrinkle: Men have the upper hand. No all-female Supreme Court here! Hmm, thinks Ken.

On the run from Mattel, Barbie encounters Gloria (America Ferrera), mother of tween Sasha, who has mixed feelings about Barbie, not to mention Mom. In her spare time, Gloria sketches ideas for new Barbies — as in Thoughts of Impending Death Barbie (not to be confused with Depression Barbie.) Gloria helps rescue Barbie and also proves of crucial help when they later discover that Ken and the other Kens — Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir and others — are up to no good.

There’s so much more, and we’re over our word limit — which may just be the feeling Gerwig had when trying to fit her ideas under two hours. And all her actors: It would’ve been great to see more Issa Rae as President Barbie, Emerald Fennell as pregnant, discontinued Midge, and Michael Cera as Allan-who-can-wear-Ken’s-clothes. In any case, the snappy pace starts to lag.

Not to discount Ferrera’s eloquent monologue, in which Gloria educates newly conscious Barbie about the landmines women face trying to navigate social rules that don’t seem to apply to men, like how to be a mom and also a professional, the need to be “thin” but call it “healthy,” and other things.

And if, Gloria concludes, all this is true for a doll just trying to represent a woman ... what does that mean for the rest of us? Which is, perhaps, the essential Barbie dilemma — she’s always been judged by rather impossible standards.

Nevertheless, she persists. All 11.5 inches of her. And now she’s Movie Star Barbie.

“Barbie,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release, has been rated PG-13 “for suggestive references and brief language.” Running time: 114 minutes. Three stars out of four.

MPAA definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

In Barbie , Doll Meets World

By Lisa Wong Macabasco

It seemed like an impossible task: In a time of growing anti-consumerism and the increasing irrelevance of gender , Greta Gerwig signed up to spin a feature-length film out of what many see as a shallow and retrograde, if not downright sexist, consumer product. Could our patron saint of modern cinematic womanhood pull off this high-wire act?

Barbie is well aware of these critiques—and it makes hay of them, especially in its snappy first act. The jokes and cameos come fast and furious, tongue hard in cheek and winks aplenty. “What started as a lady in a bathing suit turned into the idea that women can be anything,” narrator Helen Mirren intones in the film’s Kubrick-inspired prologue, the camera surveying Barbies of different professions and colors over the decades. “Because of Barbie, all the problems of feminism have been solved!”

The rosy splendor of the eternally upbeat Barbie Land, where the film begins, is a joy to behold, from the cul-de-sac of Barbie dream houses to Ken (Ryan Gosling, never funnier) and Stereotypical Barbie’s (Margot Robbie) matching costumes. But all is not well in the land of pink. Thoughts of mortality suddenly creep into Barbie’s mind. Her perpetually arched feet fall flat, and a sprinkling of cellulite surfaces on her thighs. Wild-haired, legs-akimbo Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) breaks the news: There’s a fissure between the Barbie World and the Real World, and Barbie must journey to the latter to fix it. (Yes, Barbie is yet another alternate-realities blockbuster.)

The rest is, for the most part, as smooth and pleasant as a ride in Barbie’s engineless convertible. Yet a handful of moments exhaust with gratuitous zaniness, and unnecessary plots and gags eventually bog down the buzz. The cast is also perhaps too chock full, giving some characters dismaying short shrift (more Jamie Demetriou, please).

The biggest shock—and spoiler—is perhaps the reveal that Barbie is actually a treatise on gender inequality. It’s mostly of the second-wave-feminism variety, however (Barbie is a boomer, after all, first hitting shelves in 1959), with sweeping ideas about women gaining power in public and private within existing systems, occasionally at the total exclusion of men. (Sorry Kens, no men allowed at the nightly girls night in Barbie Land—or on the Barbie Supreme Court.) America Ferrera, a harried but loving mother in the Real World who ends up communing with the dolls, is tasked with a rousing but somewhat generic speech enumerating the intractable binds women face in today’s society, just in case you missed the message. A spoonful of Barbie makes the feminism go down.

Setting aside the question of whether an air-conditioned multiplex in peak summer is the best setting to ponder feminism, however, Barbie makes an admirable effort to introduce the concept to wide swaths of audiences the world over. Still, presenting a satisfying vision of it remains a tricky endeavor, as we’ve painfully come to realize in real life . And as the film progresses, the many threads of plots and ideas get tangled like so many Barbies in a toy box, the jokes turning sour and stinging. “I’m a man with no power—does that make me a woman?” a male character asks, a quip that elicited groans in the screening I attended. 

But Barbie tells you what it is from the jump, with the massive Mattel logo jolting you into the picture. The movie is unabashedly yet another product of corporate America (spot the Warner Bros Discovery logo elsewhere in the film), designed to reinforce the brand as a fun, constantly evolving totem of womanhood and perhaps convince a new generation of Barbie fans of the toy’s continued relevance—even if that means dealing in broad stereotypes, simple binaries, and outdated-on-arrival jokes about genitalia.

Making a movie about feminism when your corporate overlords can’t bring themselves to say the word seems like an impossible task—as is one doll brand reflecting all women, or one toy appealing to all girls, or one movie speaking to the multiplicities of contemporary gender identity, or indeed writing critically about a bubbly summer film that scores of viewers are bound to enjoy without hesitation.

To be sure it feels like a wet blanket to criticize perhaps the most breathlessly anticipated movie of the summer, especially the rare one directed by and starring women and not geared toward rock-em-sock-em-loving boys and men. People who watch Barbie seeking mindless-entertainment refuge will enjoy that there’s more depth here than the typical summer pap. But those looking for a lucid perspective of progress to cheer are sure to leave unsatisfied. I hoped that the final message would at least nod to dismantling gender norms or point to their increasing obsolescence—maybe too much to ask of a summer blockbuster. But I suspect Barbie will end up like Barbie the doll—great fun for a short time, with a legacy that seems likely to change in the years to come.

By Hannah Jackson

By Kathleen Baird-Murray

By Kate Lloyd

Listen to Margot Robbie talk Barbie on this episode of The Run-Through here.

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Bill Maher’s ‘Barbie’ Movie Review Is a Total Embarrassment

By Marlow Stern

Marlow Stern

You may have heard that Bill Maher hated the Barbie movie — an all-too-predictable outcome for a 67-year-old crank who some HBO exec thinks is “edgy” because he spends so much of his airtime railing against “wokeness.” You’d think someone whose film acting CV includes winners like Pizza Man , Tomcats , and Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death would have a bit more self-awareness; then again, this is not one of Maher’s strong suits.

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OK, "Barbie": I was hoping it wouldn't be preachy, man-hating, and a #ZombieLie – alas, it was all three. What is a Zombie Lie? Something that never was true, but certain people refuse to stop saying it (tax cuts for the rich increase revenues, e.g.); OR something that USED to be… — Bill Maher (@billmaher) August 7, 2023

Well, apparently Maher can’t “read data” very well. He appears to have misread (or deliberately misinterpreted) a recent report commissioned by Deloitte and the Alliance for Board Diversity concluding that 46.5 percent of board seats in Fortune 100 companies were made up of women and minorities (not just women). Of all Fortune 500 companies, the report concluded that only 22 percent of board seats were given to women and minorities, while 78 percent of board seats in the Fortune 500 were held by white men. Women also only make up about 12 percent of the world’s billionaires, their bodies are currently being legislated against across the U.S. (and world), and, according to a Pew Research Center analysis , the gender pay gap in the U.S. has remained relatively stable over the past two decades, with “women earning an average of 82.2 percent of what men earned.” Hell, in Maher’s own arena of late-night television, there are a grand total of zero female hosts after Amber Ruffin’s Peacock show was recently downgraded to a series of specials. And, unlike the fictional realm of the Barbie movie, there’s never been a female president in the U.S.

After Crushing on Tyler, the Creator, Jerrod Carmichael Is Uncertain About Their Friendship

Shakira's sons thought 'barbie' was 'emasculating,' and she kinda agrees, jerrod carmichael had a crush on tyler, the creator, so he invited the rapper to the emmy awards.

Maher concludes his review of sorts by saying that, despite everything he wrote, the Barbie movie “is fun, I enjoyed it — but it IS a #ZombieLie.” Look, let’s call this what it is: a 67-year-old man tweeting out an angry, hashtag-filled review of the Barbie movie to make headlines. And we haven’t even touched on the most embarrassing part of it: At one point, Maher brands the Barbie movie “so 2000-late” — a nod to a Fergie line from the Black Eyed Peas’ 2009 anthem “Boom Boom Pow” where she raps, “I’m so 3008/You so 2000 and late.” And he dropped this cringeworthy, decade-plus-old line in a screed about the Barbie movie being out of touch. I think it’s time to log off, sir.   

Perhaps the first reactionary troll to publicly lose their mind over the Barbie movie was Ben Shapiro , a Hollywood nepo baby (the son of a TV exec and a composer) who has apparently harbored a grudge against the industry ever since he was rejected from a writing gig on CBS’ The Good Wife . Shapiro made a YouTube video called “Ben Shapiro DESTROYS The Barbie Movie for 43 Minutes” (caps are his) that saw him burn Barbie dolls over a barbecue and decry its “wokeness” — an embarrassing display even for him.

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Theres no blacks at the oscars but Felicity Jones at least sounds kind of black — Bill Maher (@billmaher) February 23, 2015

Then again, Maher couldn’t be a worse messenger when it comes to misogyny. He’s a sexagenarian who, when he isn’t dropping the N-word , has gleefully called women “bimbos” on his show. And, as one of Maher’s exes, Karine Steffans, who is Black, once said of him , “Bill wants someone he can put down in an argument, tell you how ghetto you are, how big your butt is and that you’re an idiot. That’s why you never see him with a white girl or an intellectual.”

No wonder he found the Barbie movie so triggering.

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Margot Robbie Thought 'Barbie' Script Was Too Good To Ever See The Light Of Day

Senior Reporter

Margot Robbie once worried the “ Barbie ” script was too good to ever find its way out of the box.

In an interview with BAFTA reported by IndieWire on Tuesday, the “I, Tonya” actor said she was so impressed by Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s screenplay that she thought it would “never see the light of day.”

Robbie remembered thinking, “Ah! This is so good,” but that studios were “never going to let us make this movie.” Luckily, the project got the green light from toy giant Mattel and began filming in March 2022.

While “Barbie” hype reached new heights after the first full trailer for the film dropped last week, the cast and creative team are keeping plot details close to the chest.

Asked for a scrap of the storyline, Robbie warned BAFTA, “Can’t tell ya!”

Though “Barbie” seems bound to be a blockbuster now, the Mattel doll’s movie was almost shelved back in 2017. Comedian Amy Schumer was initially picked to write and star in the film but said that she left after realizing the studio, which was then Sony, “didn’t want to do it the way I wanted to do it.”

Gerwig’s version of “Barbie” cast a diverse collection of actors as the titular toy and her companion Ken. Dua Lipa , Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon and Hari Nef will all play versions of Barbie, while Ryan Gosling is just one in a crew of Kens that includes Simu Liu , Scott Evans, Ncuti Gatwa and Kingsley Ben-Adir.

Fans should find their finest pinks before “Barbie” steps into theaters on July 21, 2023.

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Pamela Paul

‘Barbie’ Is Bad. There, I Said It.

By Pamela Paul

Opinion Columnist

We can all agree 2023 was a good year for the movies. Critically and commercially, several movies did well, and only one of those successes took place within the Marvel cinematic universe. Even the 10 Oscar nominees for best picture, announced on Tuesday, included nine actually good films.

Is it safe now to call “Barbie” the outlier? Can I say that, despite winsome leads and likable elements, it didn’t cohere or accomplish anything interesting, without being written off as a) mean, b) old, c) hateful or d) humorless?

Every once in a while, a movie is so broadly anticipated, so welcomed, so celebrated that to disparage it feels like a deliberate provocation. After “Barbie” so buoyantly lifted box office figures, any criticism felt like a willful dismissal of the need to make Hollywood solvent after a season of hell. And it felt like a political statement. Disliking “Barbie” meant either dismissing the power of The Patriarchy or dismissing Modern Feminism. You were either anti-feminist or too feminist or just not the right kind.

Few dared rain on Barbie’s hot pink parade.

Those who openly hated it mostly did so for reasons having to do with what it “ stood for .” They abhorred its (oddly anachronistic) third-wave feminist politics. They despised its commercialism and dreaded the prospect of future films about Mattel properties like Barney and American Girl dolls. They hated the idea of a movie about a sexualized pinup-shaped doll whose toy laptop or Working Woman (“ I really talk! ”) packaging couldn’t hide the stereotypes under the outfit.

For those who hailed it, there was a manic quality to the “Barbie” enthusiasm, less an “I enjoyed” and more of an “I endorse.” How fabulous its consumer-friendly politics, its I-can’t-believe-they-let-us-do-this micro-subversions, its prepackaged combo of gentle satire and you-go-girl gumption. They loved it for reclaiming dolls and Bazooka-gum pink, its Rainbow Magic diversity, its smug assurance that everything contained within was legitimately feminist/female/fine. They approved of the fact that Weird Barbie’s quirks could X out Stereotypical Barbie’s perfection on some unspoken political balance sheet. That by being everything to everyone, a plastic doll could validate every child’s own unique and irrepressible individuality. To each her own Barbie!

And now there is a new Barbie cause to rally around: the Great Oscar Snub and what it all means — and why it is wrong. Neither Margot Robbie nor Greta Gerwig was nominated for her most prominent role: best actress or best director, respectively. “ How is that even possible ?” one TV host exclaimed.

“To many, the snubbing of the pair further validated the film’s message about how difficult it can be for women to succeed in — and be recognized for — their contributions in a society saturated by sexism,” CNN explained . Ryan Gosling, nominated as best supporting actor for his role as Ken, issued a statement denouncing the snubs and hailing his colleagues.

But hold on. Didn’t another woman, Justine Triet, get nominated for best director (for “Anatomy of a Fall”)? As for “Barbie,” didn’t Gerwig herself get nominated for best adapted screenplay and the always sublime America Ferrera get nominated for best supporting actress? A record three of the best picture nominees were directed by women . It’s not as if women were shut out.

Every time a woman fails to win an accolade doesn’t mean failure for womanhood. Surely women aren’t so pitiable as to need a participation certificate every time we try. We’re well beyond the point where a female artist can’t be criticized on the merits and can’t be expected to handle it as well as any man. (Which means it still hurts like hell for either sex — but not because of their sex.)

Margot Robbie had far less to do in “Barbie” than she did in “I, Tonya,” for which she justifiably got an Oscar nod . In this movie, she was charming and utterly fine, but that doesn’t make it a rare dramatic achievement.

With “Barbie,” Gerwig upped her commercial game from acclaimed art house to bona fide blockbuster. She was demonstrably ambitious in her conception of what could have been an all-out disaster. She got people to go back to the movies. All of these are successes worthy of celebration. But they are not the same as directing a good film.

Surely it is possible to criticize “Barbie” as a creative endeavor. To state that despite its overstuffed playroom aesthetic and musical glaze, the movie was boring. There were no recognizable human characters, something four “Toy Story” movies have shown can be done in a movie populated by toys.

There were no actual stakes, no plot to follow in any real or pretend world that remotely made sense. In lieu of genuine laughs, there were only winking ha-has at a single joke improbably stretched into a feature-length movie. The result produced the forced jollity of a room in which the audience is strenuously urged to “sing along now!”

A few reviewers had the gall to call it. The New York Post described it as “exhausting” and a “self-absorbed and overwrought disappointment,” a judgment for which the reviewer was likely shunned as a houseguest for the remaining summer season.

In our culture of fandoms, hashtags, TikTok sensations, semi-ironic Instagrammable cosplay, embedded anonymous reviews, sponsored endorsements and online grass-roots marketing campaigns, not every critical opinion is a deliberate commentary on the culture or the virtue-signaling of an open letter. Sometimes an opinion isn’t some kind of performance or signifier.

There’s a crucial difference between liking the idea of a movie and liking the movie itself. Just as you could like “Jaws” without wanting to instigate a decades-long paranoia about shark attacks, you can dislike “Barbie” without hating on women. Sometimes a movie is just a movie. And sometimes, alas, not a good one.

Source photographs by Paperkites and rusak/Getty Images

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Pamela Paul is an Opinion columnist at The Times, writing about culture, politics, ideas and the way we live now.

Shakira triggers left when sharing her two boys take on ’emasculating’ Barbie film

Singer and songwriter Shakira has stirred up massive controversy with her critical take on the movie “Barbie.”

Speaking with Allure magazine for a profile published this week, Shakira slammed the film for emasculating men.

Thank you @Allure_magazine for such a fun shoot! A pleasure working with all of you and our amazing colombian photographer, Emmanuel Monsalve. Read the cover story here https://t.co/hEvanykcbo pic.twitter.com/6uZbE12qFu — Shakira (@shakira) April 1, 2024

“My sons absolutely hated it,” she began. “They felt that it was emasculating. And I agree, to a certain extent. I’m raising two boys. I want ’em to feel powerful too [while] respecting women. I like pop culture when it attempts to empower women without robbing men of their possibility to be men, to also protect and provide.”

“I believe in giving women all the tools and the trust that we can do it all without losing our essence, without losing our femininity. I think that men have a purpose in society and women have another purpose as well. We complement each other, and that complement should not be lost,” she added.

The interviewer then asked, “Just because a woman can do it all doesn’t mean she should?”

“Why not share the load with people who deserve to carry it, who have a duty to carry it as well?” Shakira responded.

Her words triggered two distinct responses. The first response was anger and yelping from mainly leftists.

women can protect and provide as well. this is an unbelievably disappointing statement and completely misses the point of the movie. — (@WHITEH0TPEPPERS) April 1, 2024

Shakira: My boys need all movies (including female drive ones named Barbie) to portray Masculinity & Femininity the way they’ve done for the past 100 years or else they’ll feel small and irrelevant. — John Handem Piette (@JohnHPiette) April 1, 2024

So she took 2 YOUNG BOYS (no older than 12) to a movie based on a popular doll aimed and targeted towards young girls and women, and was surprised when said young boys felt emasculated, on top of HER not understanding the message? Oh she tanked — Vic (@V1CT0RlOUS) April 1, 2024

How can Shakira’s sons be that old to know how to spell emasculating let alone feel that way if they just didn’t like the movie. Also doesn’t she have millions of dollars in back taxes to pay Spain? Why doesn’t she teach her kids not to commit tax fraud. — Dolly Madison ✌ (@dollymad1812) April 1, 2024

This is y she’s flopping pic.twitter.com/ig1psHTpbU — (@moonmonkey6969) April 1, 2024

The second response, this one mainly from conservatives, was one of praise and respect.

“#Shakira point of view re #Barbie movie comes very natural to Hispanic women,” Fox News’ Rachel Campos-Duffy tweeted . “We are a culture of confident, hard-working women who fully embrace their femininity & maternal role (largest % of stay at home moms) while loving men & desiring for them to flourish within their masculinity and provide for their families. The sexes were designed by God to be complimentary. ❤️”

See more responses below:

Shakira said aloud what most boy moms are thinking. — Nicole Saphier, MD (@NBSaphierMD) April 1, 2024

She nailed it and is correct. The “new society” has pushed men into the corner, and vilified everything masculine. — Bear’s Archer (@SagLeo4) April 1, 2024

This used to be what everyone felt. It didn’t even need to be said, now we are shocked when someone has the balls to say it publicly! — Dr. Steve Turley (@DrTurleyTalks) April 1, 2024

Beautiful take… totally agree. I enjoy being my own strong woman, but I like big strong arms at home. These girls do, too, I would bet a bazillion $$$$ — Kimberly Henry (@KimdbdHenry) April 1, 2024

Great message, good for her. Especially as a mom of a boy myself, I don’t understand how there aren’t more boy moms saying the way we talk about men is unacceptable. — Nicole Maher (@nicoledmaher) April 1, 2024

What would the director of “Barbie” think about Shakira’s words? She’d probably be against them as well.

After the film dropped last year, director Greta Gerwig claimed she saw the men around her sobbing when one of the film’s characters, Gloria (played by America Ferrera), delivered a speech about the double standards that women face every day.

“When America was giving her beautiful speech, I was just sobbing, and then I looked around and I realized everybody’s crying on the set. The men are crying, too, because they have their own speech they feel they can’t ever give, you know?” she said.

“And they have their twin tightrope, which is also painful. There’s something about some of these structures that are just, you know, ‘Somebody make me stop!’ That’s sort of, I suppose, the feeling behind Ken,” she added.

‘Barbie’ director claims character’s speech made men around her cry, Twitter says ‘bring back manly men’ https://t.co/fRqSEEb5yo pic.twitter.com/FBzTcQxtjK — BPR (@BIZPACReview) July 30, 2023

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Shakira bucks woke culture, shares why her sons hated the movie 'Barbie' — and why she agrees with them: 'Emasculating'

Hit pop signer Shakira is not a fan of the movie "Barbie."

The 2023 film, which has grossed nearly $1.5 billion and won numerous awards, received critical acclaim. But the movie was also controversial because of its political overtones and its progressive view of men and women. The script, according to the Wall Street Journal's review of the movie , "is like a grumpier-than-average women's studies seminar."

That progressive — woke , even — view of men and women is why Shakira's sons "hated" the movie, she told Allure in a new interview .

"My sons absolutely hated it. They felt that it was emasculating. And I agree, to a certain extent," Shakira revealed.

"I'm raising two boys. I want 'em to feel powerful too [while] respecting women," she explained. "I like pop culture when it attempts to empower women without robbing men of their possibility to be men, to also protect and provide. I believe in giving women all the tools and the trust that we can do it all without losing our essence, without losing our femininity. I think that men have a purpose in society and women have another purpose as well. We complement each other, and that complement should not be lost."

Shakira's perspective is not politically correct. But it's also not a surprise.

The "Hips Don't Lie" singer was raised Catholic, and she spent her early life in Colombia, where she was born. She is Hispanic, and Hispanic culture is generally more conservative and traditional, honoring and celebrating the differences between men and women.

Indeed, her traditional view of gender roles was solidified in a follow-up question from an Allure reporter.

"Just because a woman can do it all doesn’t mean she should?" that reporter asked Shakira.

"Why not share the load with people who deserve to carry it, who have a duty to carry it as well?" the singer responded.

For most of human history, this view of men and women was perfectly acceptable; it was the norm, in fact. But only in an age when American culture finds it difficult to define, "What is a woman?" can Shakira's perspective be labeled "problematic."

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Barbie’s muddled feminist fantasy still bows to the patriarchy

Gosling’s charm and Gerwig’s mixed messages mean the real winner is Mattel’s male CEO, and dude-dominated capitalism in general

I t’s a shame about the weather but, in the eyes of many, the summer of 2023 is at least furnishing a triumph of feminism, and it’s been cinema’s privilege to host it. Supposedly, Greta Gerwig’s fantasy comedy Barbie is ushering womankind on to the true path to sisterly empowerment . Really?

It sounds plausible, at least at first. “She’s everything. He’s just Ken,” reads the film’s tagline. Gerwig proclaims Barbie to be “most certainly a feminist film”, and it has frightened some male pundits out of their wits. Toby Young has accused it of “unapologetic misandry”, while the Critical Drinker considered it “114 minutes of spiteful, bitter, mean-spirited, borderline unhinged hatred of men”. And, briefly summarised, the film does indeed sound like an almost ridiculously over-the-top feminist homily.

Barbieland, the fantasy world in which females rule the roost, is a paradise. Its womenfolk are wonderfully nice; its menfolk are acceptable only because they’re subjugated. In the real world, where men are on top, they’re stupid, incapable and offensive. When masculinity penetrates Barbieland and threatens to ruin it, women use their superior intelligence to re-establish their hegemony, before helping their grateful menfolk to relinquish their toxicity. Yet somehow the film’s actual import turns out to be the opposite of its apparent message.

It has been widely remarked that Ryan Gosling as Ken, Barbie’s boyfriend, steals the show from Margot Robbie as Barbie. No mean feat, since Ken is there to demonstrate that masculinity is foolish, yucky and reprehensible. Somehow, however, Gosling’s performance countermands his brief. A supposed parody of chauvinist iniquity comes across instead as a winsome display of male charm. Masculinity becomes more beguiling than abhorrent, and Ken’s eventual repentance therefore almost ironic.

Since men are to be portrayed as silly, the patriarchy has to be incompetent. When corporate America tries to put Barbie back in her box, it is defeated by its own inanity. Ken and his peers’ regrettable competitiveness and aggression prove self-destructive, and make them easy meat for the Barbieland counter-revolution. But this vulnerability drains the supposed oppressors of any degree of threat. The male ascendency, already sneakily attractive, turns out to be harmless as well.

Woman’s lot, on the other hand, remains as knottily problematic as ever, and Robbie’s challenge is consequentially an uphill one. Unlike Ken, Barbie is to be permitted no real flaws which might round out her character but undermine her gynocratic sanctity. Instead, she’s left to embrace a vision of the female mission that’s mired in banality and confusion.

At the film’s climax, America Ferrera’s Gloria, the LA mom whose angst has catapulted Barbie into the real world, presents her with a stirring litany of womanly woes. Its gist is that as long as the dudes are in charge, dames are doomed whatever they do. Gosh, it’s hard to be a woman. Reportedly, Ferrera’s rendition left everyone on the set in tears , even the men. Yet this speech sits uncomfortably alongside Barbie’s official slogan: “You can be anything.” Is aspiration a female fundamental, or an unfair imposition?

Whatever. Gloria’s outpouring is all it takes to galvanise the gals into vanquishing the guys. Awkward contradictions in the gameplan are casually sidestepped. The film virtually acknowledges this with a knowing but fatal joke. Helen Mirren’s voiceover dares to point out the mismatch between celebrating the female right to eschew perfection and choosing Robbie as a leading lady. Quite.

Women are counselled to discard illusions and confront real life, but what this might mean in practice remains unclear. Barbie consults a mystic oracle in the shape of the ghost of Ruth Handler, the Barbie doll’s inventor, but all she learns is that she’s allowed to be real. This turns out to mean she can visit a gynaecologist, but that’s pretty much it.

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Where a real path forward is actually discernible, it turns out to be disheartening. Male domination is overcome not by open engagement but by feminine wiles, an approach that seems neither progressive nor likely to be especially productive. Rather, it fosters the fear that things won’t be changing any time soon. Men are expected to abandon masculinity once women show them its folly, yet the film has inadvertently advertised its apparently irreversible appeal.

So, what are those bevies of pink-bedecked filmgoing females supposed to make of all this? They will see seductive but dubious stereotypes embellished rather than subverted. Muddled messaging may dispel rather than stimulate any impulse to crusade. What might therefore leave the most residual impact is Sarah Greenwood’s luscious production design . A clear call to action does in the end emerge: go forth and buy the products of the film’s sponsor, Mattel, and its galaxy of commercial partners.

If Barbie constitutes a triumph, it’s a triumph not of feminism but of the patriarchy’s so far most unassailable scion – capitalism. Women have been spending millions to watch a giant advertisement more likely to bewilder than inspire them. And now they’re spending millions more on the merch . Mattel’s (male) chairman and CEO, Ynon Kreiz, has plenty of cause to be pleased. But feminists? Perhaps not so much.

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Shakira went to see the ‘Barbie’ movie with her two sons. What did the singer think?

Tough crowd.

In a new interview with Allure magazine, Shakira was asked her opinion about the “Barbie” movie, and the pop star admitted she wasn’t a fan.

Neither were her two sons (with ex Gerard Pique), Milan, 11 and Sasha, 9,

“My sons absolutely hated it. ...They felt that it was emasculating,” Shakira told the magazine. “And I agree to a certain extent.”

READ MORE: Shakira seen on a golf cart in Kendall soccer park

The Oscar-nominated film, which stars Margot Robbie as the iconic Mattel doll opposite Ryan Gosling as Ken, was widely praised as both pro-feminist and fun. But the blockbuster, set in pink-tinged “Barbie Land,” also sparked controversy , with some haters calling it “woke” and anti-male.

Shakira’s opinion seems to fall somewhere in the middle.

The Colombian singer went on to tell the outlet that she believes both sexes have “a purpose in society” and “complement” one another.

“I like pop culture when it attempts to empower women without robbing men of their possibility to be men, to also protect and provide,” said the “Hips Don’t Lie” singer.

READ MORE: Shakira’s alleged stalker arrested in Miami Beach

Talk about empowered. The 47-year-old entertainer, who moved back to Miami from Barcelona last year, seems way over her ex, soccer star Gerard Pique.

“I was in the mud,” admitted Shakira of their very public split amid cheating rumors. “I had to reconstruct myself, to reunite all the pieces that had fallen apart.”

Allure notes in the article that Shakira, long known for her lithe dance moves and drop-dead gorgeous looks, is a “paradox.”

“Women deserve all the power, all the agency, and all the sexiness they wish to embody or express,” it says of its cover girl. “And yet it doesn’t betray her brand of feminism to expect men to man up.”

©2024 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Hope on the Street’ On Prime Video, A Docuseries Where J-Hope of BTS Celebrates Dance As A Force In His Life

Where to stream:.

• Hope On The Street

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11 best new movies on netflix: april 2024’s freshest films to watch, iheartradio music awards 2024 live stream: time, channel, where to watch live online, shakira calls out greta gerwig’s ‘barbie’ and says her sons found it “emasculating”.

The title of Hope on the Street ( Prime Video ) cleverly aligns the professional nom de guerre of BTS’s j-hope with the title of his new solo single and the rapper, singer and dancer’s professed adoration for street dancing. Directed by Jun-Soo Park with creative input from j-hope himself, the six episodes of Hope on the Street will release weekly on Prime and feature j-hope and special guests like South Korean dance champion Boogaloo Kin as they pop and lock on a global scale, hitting Seoul, Osaka, Paris, New York City, and j-hope’s hometown of Gwangju, where a young Jung Ho-seok learned his earliest moves.    

HOPE ON THE STREET : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?  

Opening Shot: “I started out dancing,” j-hope tells his interviewer. “Dancing’s what opened up the doors for me. So I thought I should look back on the dances I’ve done before.”

The Gist: Before he made his Big Hit debut as a K-pop idol, before he became a highlight of BTS’s contingent of rappers, and before he hit the Hot 100 as a solo artist with the Becky G collabo “Chicken Noodle Soup,” j-hope was just a kid who loved to dance. “I had forgotten all about it,” he says early on in Hope on the Street . This is maybe a little bit of an exaggeration, considering the supercut of furious BTS dance moves that plays as he says it. But the point is, this docuseries lets j-hope reflect on where life has taken him. What was his mindset, back when he debuted? What is it now, as he begins his mandatory military service? (J-hope was on active duty as of April 2023). And was it dance that made him who is today? 

The answer, of course, is yes. And in a lead segment to Hope on the Street ’s brief introductory episode, j-hope dances solo through the converted shipping containers of Seoul’s Common Ground shopping mall for a feature of his new single “On the Street.” In cutaway interviews, the K-pop star describes his motivations for crafting the docuseries around dancing. And as an entree into the scope of Hope , brief vignettes feature footage of j-hope and his friend and mentor Boogaloo Kin as they cut it up in locales like Seoul, j’s hometown of Gwangju, Paris, Osaka, and New York City.

J-hope also puts his flying limbs on pause for a little time to philosophize. Take the popular hip-hop dance form of locking, for example. “My life is similar to the locking dance,” he says in his hotel suite interview. “There are times I have to lock things up, and there are other times I have to loosen up, take things more easy.” Truer words, j-hope. Truer words. 

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? An entire ecosystem of programming has developed around the members of BTS as they take the superstar boy band into hiatus mode, complete their mandatory military service, and explore solo projects. Hope on the Street director Jun-Soo Park helmed In the Box , which documented the making of j-hope’s solo album and the run-up to his performance at Lollapalooza 2023, as well as SUGA: Road to D-Day , both of which stream on Disney+. And BTS danced and sang their way down memory lane in the recent film/documentary Yet To Come .    

Our Take: The early going of Hope on the Street is certainly an effective tease for the full run of the six-ep docuseries. The raw, almost iphone-like footage that captures practice in the studio is lively when set against the basic interview segments and the more professionally-shot sequences that showcase j-hope and Boogaloo Kin dancing on the streets of Osaka, or up and down a staircase in Paris. But j is also genuinely excited to connect each location Hope visits to a specific dance style that inspired him, and perform with heavy hitters of that form. So it’s popping in Osaka – that’s the forte of local favorite Akihito “Gucchon” Yamaguchi – and locking in Seoul. Paris is all about house (“house has always been my inner rhythm” – j-hope facts!), while New York is for hip-hop alongside legendary street dancer Henry “Link” McMillan. And once Hope on the Street returns to Gwangju, anyone who has memorized BTS member biographies will also recognize the guys in Neuron, the dance crew where our featured idol cut his teeth. About dudes like DXNG WXX and MISHKA, j-hope just refers to them admiringly as “ Ssaem ,” or teacher.  

Sex and Skin: Nothing like that, but the bold looks and oversized cuts of streetwear fashion dominate Hope on the Street . Do you dig the shimmery blue number 34 Nike dri-fit jersey j-hope rocks in a few segments here? The BTS fan army has already done background research on the garment. And get ready to see the Supreme logo. A lot.

Parting Shot: The credit roll in Hope on the Street becomes a cool concluding segment in itself. J-hope is back in his giant Nike jersey as a single take catches him dancing through a Seoul alleyway while production credits are splashed like graffiti on the surrounding walls.  

Sleeper Star: Hak-nam Kim, better known by his stage name Boogaloo Kin, brings a veteran presence to Hope as a renowned dancer in his own right and mentor to j-hope. “Passing down the dance moves that I’ve learned, studied, researched, and practiced myself to this generation and the next, in the correct way, is my current motivation.”  

Most Pilot-y Line: The Hope intro brings the prompts – “Who am I?”; “What future do I want?”; “What is dance?” – and answers its own question. “Dance is life; life is dance.”  

Our Call: Hope on the Street is definitely a STREAM IT if, as a BTS head, you can’t get enough of the wave of content that presents the boy band’s members in solo settings. But in a larger sense, anyone who’s a fan of street dancing as a dynamic form will find plenty of moves on display.  

Johnny Loftus ( @glennganges ) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.

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