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Movie Review: ‘Barbie’

NEW YORK (OSV News) – Life in plastic may be fantastic but the tedious ideology-driven comedy “Barbie” (Warner Bros.) is not. Although genuinely objectionable elements are relatively few, moreover, this is distinctly not a movie for the age group to which the figurine of the title is primarily marketed.

Margot Robbie plays the famous Mattel doll that first arrived on store shelves back in 1959. Together with her sidekick Ken (Ryan Gosling), Barbie inhabits a pink-hued feminist paradise where the president, the nine justices of the Supreme Court and all Nobel Prize winners are women.

Troubled and bewildered by hitherto alien thoughts of death as well as by a sudden physical imperfection — a patch of cellulite on her leg — our heroine consults one of her many alter egos, Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon). The problem, it seems, is that whoever is currently playing with Standard Barbie is sad and her sorrow is affecting her toy.

So it’s time to journey to the real world to meet the cause of the difficulty and, presumably, cheer her up sufficiently to restore the status quo. Ken stows away in the back seat of Barbie’s car and thus gets to share in the adventure.

Arriving in Los Angeles, Barbie discovers the tribulations — and Ken the joys — of patriarchy. Barbie also learns to her surprise that, far from being revered as a symbol of female empowerment, she’s reviled as the embodiment of women’s subjugation.

Ken manages to return to Barbie Land first and proceeds to imbue it with male dominance. Thus, by the time Barbie gets back to her natural setting, it’s not only been tainted by warped values but turned topsy-turvy.

Barbie will need the cooperation of all her many eponymous iterations to avert cultural and political disaster. Fortunately, she’ll also have the help of Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a mother-and-daughter duo from the realm of human beings.

As scripted by director Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, the picture bemoans the plight of women while blithely stereotyping men as selfish, childish and aggressive. With the rivalry of the sexes raging, little of the humor (Will Ferrell plays the dizzy CEO of Mattel) and less of the sentiment (Rhea Perlman plays the wise granny who co-founded the company) works.

Despite all the controversy that continues to swirl around her, Barbie has undeniably proved a long-lasting source of enjoyment for youngsters. Her namesake movie, by contrast, is too closely focused on its own agenda to provide older viewers with much entertainment and too freewheeling to be acceptable for little kids.

The film contains stylized physical violence, a few instances each of mild swearing and crass talk, mature wordplay and brief sexual and anatomical humor. The OSV News classification is A-II – adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

Also see: From the archives: Friend or foe: Barbie turns 50

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A Catholic Young Woman’s Take: The Heart of ‘Barbie’ Is Humanity

COMMENTARY: In a touching scene, the hit film explains what true beauty is.

This summer, swathes of pink-clad women flooded into movie theaters to attend the much-anticipated premiere of Barbie , director Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster debut.

Until now, indie films were Gerwig’s bread and butter. Her projects largely center on female protagonists and pursue themes related to femininity: examining female friendship, women as artists, and the progression from girlhood to womanhood. Both Ladybird (2017) and Little Women (2019) performed and reviewed well, but neither came close to the sweeping success of this most recent project. 

According to Deadline , Barbie raked in $162 million just in its opening weekend — about twice as much as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer , with which it shared a release date of July 21. It’s the first woman-directed film to gross a billion dollars at the box office, so it’s little surprise media attention has fallen on it so heavily in the days since. Many conservative, Catholic reactions have been negative, often responding from a place of exhaustion with a media frequently peddling thematic messaging unappealing to a traditionally religious audience. It forms an understandable lack of trust between viewer and director — but Greta Gerwig is the exception, not the rule. 

Her films speak truthfully on the nature of a distinctly feminine heart, and Barbie fits well into her body of work. Its focus on mother-daughter relationship, friendship and family as a primary, enduring motivation, and concluding rejection of a world without suffering should be enough to encourage Catholic audiences to purchase tickets. But its artistic address to young women packs its most thoughtful and poignant punch. 

The film opens on its protagonist, Barbie (Margot Robbie), living a perfect life in her perfect world. Multiples of Barbie and Ken populate the artfully, highly satirized Barbieland. The detail-oriented design of the film sought to recreate the real-life experience of playing with Barbie dolls as a child, down to the shades of pink and how Barbie floats from the second floor to the first rather than taking the stairs.

Barbie’s great affection for Barbieland comes largely from its constancy: There is no change, no sadness. The dolls’ cheerfulness isn’t insincere, but there are no negative emotions or experiences for it to compete with either. Barbie has a childlike confidence in herself and her understanding of the world that has yet to be tested.

Her first sign of divergency comes mid-bespoke song-and-dance routine. “Do you guys ever think about dying?” she asks, still smiling ear to ear.

They haven’t. They can’t even answer her question. But Barbie’s new awareness haunts her the next day, as she burns toast, falls from her roof rather than flying, and – most horrifically — loses her perfectly arched foot. “I would never wear heels if my feet were like this,” she grumbles about her newly humanized gait.

As she continues to malfunction, Barbie loses the imaginative confidence that trademarks every doll in Barbieland. The dolls are kind, gentle and entirely self-assured. When they accept awards, they acknowledge that they deserve them. When Barbie’s feet fall flat, and she spots the first formation of cellulite on her thigh, she experiences embarrassment for the first time in her life. She doesn’t know how to describe the growing, gnawing lack of control she feels as her relationship with her body and the world around her fractures. 

The worry that grips her draws its strength from the film-defining quandary of identity. Barbie wonders what power her emotions have over her and whether her newfound heartbrokenness poisons her very self. “Barbie doesn’t get embarrassed,” a doll reminds her when she confesses her insecurity. Regardless of her resistance to change, our protagonist now balances precariously between who she was supposed to be — Stereotypical Barbie — and terrifying uncertainty in who she is now. It’s a profoundly human, distinctly teenage girl phenomenon. 

Despite her despair at showing signs of humanity, Barbie’s first interaction with a woman in reality is perhaps the film’s most touching scene. Seated on a bench, she makes eye contact with an elderly woman at the opposite end. They just look at each other for a moment before Barbie, quietly awed, says with absolute sincerity, “You’re so beautiful.”

“I know it,” the woman replies, her furrowing brow showing her own honesty.

They laugh together. That moment is all joy. So it stings when Barbie forgets what she saw in that woman, a person showing all the signs of aging she had been so afraid of, and turns a crueler eye onto herself. 

Barbie’s affirmation to the other woman wasn’t cloying or cliché. She didn’t say it to be nice, because Barbies don’t need cheap compliments to convince them of their loveliness. They know it because they know who they are. Barbie’s crisis of identity throws that into disarray. Within 45 minutes of admiring the beauty and dignity of the woman in front of her, she’ll weep over how little of the same she finds within herself. 

Our designated angst-riddled teenager Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt) will say it for us. “What’s her ending?” 

Quickly, decisively, it’s clear that it won’t be a romance with Ken (Ryan Gosling) that sends Barbie contentedly off into the sunset. “She’s not in love with Ken!” Sasha snaps at the Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell), who is eager to suggest that conclusion. She’s sharp and defensive in her reply. But Barbie answers gently. “I’m not in love with Ken,” she echoes simply, shaking her head. 

It’s not an attack against Ken or an invalidation of romantic love. It’s just the truth. The end of her story won’t be romance with a man, just like the preteen and teenage girls watching in the audience. The adolescent chapters of their lives likely won’t end with riding off into the sunset with a husband. Much more often than not — and for the better — they will first learn to love through the profundity of female friendship. Gloria (America Ferrera), the human forming Barbie’s experience of the world, remarks how she never owned a Ken doll. As all children do, little girls get to know themselves through the artistic expression of play, and so, as they ought to be, Barbie(s) and her friends are center stage.

Ruth (Rhea Perlman), Barbie’s creator (both in life and art, having named the doll after her daughter), leads Barbie away from the overcrowded finale into a softly lit, empty space. They engage in one-on-one conversation. Alone, with her creator, Barbie asks the questions that she has been slowly and painfully piecing together. It looks a lot like prayer.

“So being human’s not something I need to — ask for? Or even want? It’s something that I just discover I am?” she says, slowly, her voice thick with weariness and relief.

It’s such a childlike question, really — a return to girlhood. Barbie learns that she is not at war with the sadness or joy or fury or grief welling up in her heart every day. She doesn’t have to resist the rise and fall of an emotional sea breaking in her chest. Her feelings change nothing about her identity. She holds final sway over them, and they must yield to her acceptance or refusal. And still, Ruth reminds her that each emotion is an essential piece of the human experience. “Now, feel ,” Ruth tells her, leading into the final montage of the movie, centered on joy. 

“ Yes ,” Barbie whispers, in a quiet acceptance of all her newfound humanity entails. 

For a teenage girl, life often involves significant emotional turmoil. Young women question themselves, how others perceive them, and it’s no easy feat to realize that every other girl in the room is doing the same. Lack of confidence often begins with distrust of the self, especially during a time when your own feelings and perception of the world seem pitted against you. Suddenly, everyone — including yourself — is all too eager to highlight how you’re falling short.

In an acknowledgement of this experience, Barbie continually turns back to peer within the self. The director’s goal was not to show a Barbie-fied version of tired deliberations on female vocation. Gerwig doesn’t concern herself with telling her female audience what to do. The film’s final, gentle message rather encourages them to discover who they are. Barbie extends a peaceful hand in a cultural frenzy of messaging pulling at the loose threads in adolescent women’s hearts. Because of that, it’s well worth taking your daughter to see it.

VIEWER CAVEAT

Barbie has a PG-13 rating, for suggestive references and brief language.

• catholic movies

Meghan Schultz A former Register news intern and Hillsdale College graduate, Meghan Schultz works in public relations based in Washington, D.C. More of her freelance writing can be found here and at her Twitter, @schultzmeghannn.

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Movie review: ‘Barbie’

Life in plastic may be fantastic but the tedious ideology-driven comedy “Barbie” (Warner Bros.) is not. Although genuinely objectionable elements are relatively few, moreover, this is distinctly not a movie for the age group to which the figurine of the title is primarily marketed.

Margot Robbie plays the famous Mattel doll that first arrived on store shelves back in 1959. Together with her sidekick Ken (Ryan Gosling), Barbie inhabits a pink-hued feminist paradise where the president, the nine justices of the Supreme Court and all Nobel Prize winners are women.

Troubled and bewildered by hitherto alien thoughts of death as well as by a sudden physical imperfection — a patch of cellulite on her leg — our heroine consults one of her many alter egos, Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon). The problem, it seems, is that whoever is currently playing with Standard Barbie is sad and her sorrow is affecting her toy.

So it’s time to journey to the real world to meet the cause of the difficulty and, presumably, cheer her up sufficiently to restore the status quo. Ken stows away in the back seat of Barbie’s car and thus gets to share in the adventure.

Arriving in Los Angeles, Barbie discovers the tribulations — and Ken the joys — of patriarchy. Barbie also learns to her surprise that, far from being revered as a symbol of female empowerment, she’s reviled as the embodiment of women’s subjugation.

Ken manages to return to Barbie Land first and proceeds to imbue it with male dominance. Thus, by the time Barbie gets back to her natural setting, it’s not only been tainted by warped values but turned topsy-turvy.

Barbie will need the cooperation of all her many eponymous iterations to avert cultural and political disaster. Fortunately, she’ll also have the help of Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a mother-and-daughter duo from the realm of human beings.

As scripted by director Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, the picture bemoans the plight of women while blithely stereotyping men as selfish, childish and aggressive. With the rivalry of the sexes raging, little of the humor (Will Ferrell plays the dizzy CEO of Mattel) and less of the sentiment (Rhea Perlman plays the wise granny who co-founded the company) works.

Despite all the controversy that continues to swirl around her, Barbie has undeniably proved a long-lasting source of enjoyment for youngsters. Her namesake movie, by contrast, is too closely focused on its own agenda to provide older viewers with much entertainment and too freewheeling to be acceptable for little kids.

The film contains stylized physical violence, a few instances each of mild swearing and crass talk, mature wordplay and brief sexual and anatomical humor. The OSV News classification is A-II – adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

—John Mulderig, OSV News

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Barbie’s surprising journey

A very flawed movie that begins with the sexless, over-sexualized, and impossibly perfect Barbie ends with that same Barbie making a perfect and unexpected visit.

July 26, 2023 Amy Welborn The Dispatch 29 Print

We might wonder about the point of spending any time writing about or thinking about the meaning of a movie about a doll, but then when we realize that it’s the most popular movie in the world right now, well, perhaps it makes sense to pay attention for a minute or two.

You can pick out any number of themes from Barbie— and this is one of the film’s weaknesses: too many underdeveloped ideas—but this seems to me to be the crucial takeaway:

Barbie left Barbieland.

Again, in more detail:

Barbie leaves her plastic, idealized world behind and embraces the limits, fragility and inevitability of death that is real life—and so should you, dear viewer.

Let’s recap:

(This isn’t a recap of the entire plot, just those points on the particular trajectory on which I’m taking you)

The film begins with a startling scene, a clear evocation of Kubrick’s 2001 : little girls of a past, monochrome era, playing on a beach with baby dolls. The little girls are surprised by the appearance of a monolith, out of which strides a huge, Margo Robbie presenting as the original, black-and-white striped suited Barbie, smiling, confident, beautiful. Awestruck, entranced, the little girls smash their baby dolls and give themselves over to Her.

Next stop: Barbieland! It’s pink and happy and fun, and the Barbies are in charge of everything! Sure, the Kens are around, but they’re just accessories, sent home after the dance, so the Barbies—president, CEO’s, doctors all—can have their girls’ nights in peace.

Has the baby-doll smashing ecstasy led to this utopia? This place where the little girls can imagine—and be—anything?

Plot, plot, plot…

What emerges is that the actual world of actual women is difficult. The hints begin when Stereotypical Barbie—Robbie—begins to experience limits and flaws, culminating in a startling admission that she’s starting to think about…dying. Off she goes, guided by the advice from Weird Barbie (the one whose chopped hair and markered-up face points to other ways Barbies are played with)—that she must find the girl who plays with her, whose angst is clearly filtering down into her up-to-now light-filled life.

Plot, plot, plot….

Barbie (and the stowaway Ken) enter the Real World (California, which fits), encounter her owner, played by America Ferrera, her daughter and the denizens of the Mattel corporation. And so, Barbie discovers that, no, Barbieland is not the real world and life as a real woman is a little different out here. The expectations, America Ferrera laments in her (too on-the-nose) soliloquy, a re intense, unrelenting and unreachable. Women are expected to meet unattainable standards:

You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault. I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.

One can quibble with these words, as I do with two points: First because these unrealistic, unrelenting, ultimately deadly expectations are experienced by men as well in our culture, and secondly, I think the movie pulls back in blaming Barbie—and everything the doll represents and expresses about the power of commercial culture. But in the end, if you’re listening, what you hear is indeed an expression of the dissonance between Barbieland and the real world—and implied is the fact that Barbieland doesn’t help.

Of course, the movie was produced by Mattel itself, so how hard is it going to go? Can a Barbie movie produced by Mattel acknowledge that Barbie didn’t just happen, created as some aspirational proto-feminist figure and then get co-opted by a consumerist, anti-human culture? She’s a part of it, an expression of it, a contributor. Come on Barbie, I couldn’t help but think as I sat there, take some responsibility!

Alas, she did not.

But she did make another journey. And it’s a pretty powerful one. Hence the article you’re reading about a doll.

Along the way, in her sojourn in the real world and her encounter with her creator, Barbie sees the authentic, profound beauty of actual flesh-and-blood life. And these moments are deeply moving: when Barbie encounters an older woman at a bus stop , a woman whose face is kind, wrinkled, bearing the gift of time , and Barbie says in soft surprise, “You’re beautiful.” The woman responds, “I know it.” And Barbie (for the first time?) sheds a tear.

In another spot near the end, Ruth Handler, Barbie’s creator, presents her with images of real women and girls—and it’s beautiful, simple and real. Not very pink at all, either.

After all of this, after a return to Barbieland, Barbie defeats Ken’s absurd take on “patriarchy” and order seems to be restored. But wait, what is Barbie going to do? She’s going to turn from it all. She’s going to leave.

And what does she leave? She leaves what is essentially a satirical, over-the-top representation of what 20th-century feminism left us with: Women, highly sexualized in appearance, but sexless, #Girlbossing the heck out of life, having fun, not suffering at all, always beautiful, perfect, men either accessories or enemies.

The film’s final scene might strike some as odd or inappropriate for a movie about, well, a child’s toy, but is actually perfect. Surprising, even.

Barbie’s made her choice. She’s left Barbieland, knowing what it means to go into the real world: limits, fragility and yes, death. But guess what else it means?

For a movie that begins with the sexless, over-sexualized, and impossibly perfect Barbie inspiring little girls to smash their baby dolls ends with that same Barbie—still lovely, but no longer plastic or flawless—excitedly visiting, yes, the gynecologist.

From Nina Power in Compact:

In the final scene, just when you think Barbie’s off to be a #GirlBoss, it turns out she is seeing a gynaecologist instead. In the transition to the flesh, the smooth space gets complicated. Gerwig’s nod to what makes a woman a woman is quietly subversive. Barbie herself becomes post-Barbie, post-consumerist, and while the film generally splashes about in an enjoyable ironic and semiotic soup, the message is gentle but clear: not reducible to a bunch of signs, women exist and sexual difference is real.

It’s not just that the “smooth space gets complicated.” It’s that the smooth space has become what, in a woman, it was created to be: a place where life is created and nurtured and grown.

A clear 180 from the opening image, isn’t it? Barbie might have begun her life inspiring little girls to reject real life and their unique way of being in the world, but at the end of this part of the journey, Barbie embraces that same way of being, of womanhood that is definitely not plastic, definitely not smooth and definitely not without mystery and pain—and embraces it with joy.

Intentional? Who knows. Either way, not a bad takeaway for a summer blockbuster—about a doll.

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28 Comments

The author asked us to pay attention for “a minute or two”.

56, 57, 58, 59, 60 – ONE MINUTE!!!.

I’m outta here.

Uncalled for and unkind. Also anti-intellectual, oafish and rude. Why bother writing such a pointless insult? It was an inventive and thought-provoking review, by any account.

Responding to the comment above, by Terrance.

1) It’s a silly movie, no more no less.

2) Work on your spelling.

I take it thar You have not seen it .It was not just about women, it was also about a false journey men are forced to take. The patriarchy is just as damaging to men as it is too women. and for a fine example of that may we point out the clericalism that Pope Francis preaches against while the clericalists fight against him at every turn.

I had no plans to watch the film anyway but the beginning scene sounds very disturbing.

Good to know. I haven’t heard any review like this from secular television, print media, or online media. Thank you. I think entertainment (visual art, music, theater, film, dance, literature, etc.) that includes Christian messages is badly needed in the world, including the U.S. The messages need to be subtle, but definitely there for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. The medium needs to feature “A list” artists that are acceptable and loved by “the other side”. (Many of these artists ARE Christians and those who follow them discover this as they read their Tweets and Instagrams.) The arts are a good way to influence people in the direction of God’s eternal plan for mankind. “Church” and “preaching” and “tracts” and “crusades” and “youth groups” and even “Christian rock music” –all the traditional Christian evangelism techniques–just don’t seem to be working nowadays, but people watch, listen, and internalize the arts, which could lead them to a search that ends in finding the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

I am sorry to see this movie thus far raking in the cash. I have read MANY reviews of this movie. My understanding is that it is full of anti-male tropes, make men look like bullying idiots, and I think as such it is inappropriate for small children, especially girls . Women in particular who take their daughters to this are taking a hand into their anti-male indoctrination. Not so helpful as they have a male as a father and likely expect to marry a man some day. Forget the propaganda video here and take in another movie instead.

While all else might be true, I seriously doubt that Barbie is going to a gynecologist to nurture life. Given the people who made the movie, I’m sure she is going there to prevent it.

It’s a movie that is needed for today’s young women. It’s political and I like the positive spin at the end. Haven’t seen it but loved this review. Will encourage others to see it now. Very Christian.

With all due respect, how can you make this assertion without seeing it?

I give this film a Legion of Decency rating of C. That said, even many A-I films of the past ought to have been Cs.

From my observations, it appears that only extreme immodest dress could get a film to be a B. But such dress was “tame” compared to the movie reviewed in this article.

It would have taken very immodest behavior to get a film to be a C. Mostly they were films made outside of the United States.

Even the screenshot above is immodest and ought not to have been publicized.

Back in the 1920s it was recognized that so-called “art” didn’t excuse immodesty.

Yeah, well, Barbie might be a woman, but as a marketing tool pointing to the shelves by the cash register, what do we find? Transgender Barbie! Or, is it Barbarian, or whatever? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/laverne-cox-barbie-mattel-transgender-doll/

This is NOT a movie about anything good in this world.Ms Welborn is struggling really hard here to rewrite a film that is, by no other definition, a celebration of 4th wave feminism. After all that’s been revealed about this disaster, parents please ask yourselves, “Why would I take my child to see a movie that ends with a VERY adult situation like a OBGYN appointment?” Also, the actor playing the doctor is a man pretending to be a woman. Get a clue folks, this film is WOKE GARBAGE!

This was my takeaway from the movie as well. Ultimately, Barbie chooses and embraces humanity with all its complications, pain, and messiness. There is some male bashing, but I think the movie shows that if one gender has too much power, it diminishes the other. I think the makers of the film (Greta Gerwig was raised as a Catholic and Margot Robbie as a Christian) have compassion for humanity and show that life is worth living despite the hardships that we encounter. It is really a very pro life movie whether intended or not. If a doll from a supposed utopia opts to live as a human, how much more does a human conceived as part of the real world deserve to experience life. I think those who are overreacting to the movie are missing the point.

“Overreacting?” That’s your opinion. It’s grossly unfair to say that about the thoughts of others on a film that deserves scrutiny.

And one more thing. Since most girls playing with a Barbie doll are probably between the ages of 4 and 8, how do the parents plan to explain the function and meaning of a gynecologist to them? One would hope the children at this age have ZERO knowledge of what this is. Face the fact that if you are paying to see this film you are supporting the obviously woke agenda which now fills every single movie put out by Disney. What a shame so many parents are so easily duped.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson in today’s Daily Mail:

[photo caption] The movie, starring Ms Robbie alongside Ryan Gosling as Ken, is a satire on the tragic plastic sterility of Barbie the doll and a great ­Mussolini-esque rallying cry for human fecundity

I saw that article by Boris Johnson today. He made some interesting points.

You made a point to discuss the Barbie movie but have you written about the sound of Freedom? If you have I apologize. Thank you

Yes, CWR has run an interview, a review, and several news briefs about “Sound of Freedom”.

But it did confirm that there are only 2 genders: male and female, no attempts at gender change discussed. Thank God. But the power struggle female vs male continues, including diminishing the values of males.

“…only two genders.” I repeat from yesterday: Yeah, well, Barbie might be a woman, but as a marketing tool pointing to the shelves by the cash register, what do we find? Transgender Barbie! Or, is it Barbarian, or whatever? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/laverne-cox-barbie-mattel-transgender-doll/

Two more Movie Review recommendations to the good traditional Catholic readers of CWR by yours truly:

Jump over to the Crisis Magazine website and check out Eric Sammons thoughtful and thought-provoking article entitled:

“A Movie Isn’t Worth Sinning Over”

https://crisismagazine.com/editors-desk/a-movie-isnt-worth-sinning-over

Sammons points out some significant problems with “Barbie” that lesser thinkers miss or gloss over, and he also points out very serious flaws in the “Oppenheimer” movie production.

As the title of his article sets forth, Sammons lays some very serious cards on the table in presenting a case why Catholics should avoid watching either of these movies.

It appears that Sammons did not even see the Barbie movie. He simply pointed to someone else’s review. To call others who liked the movie “lesser thinkers” makes no sense. Watch the movie if you want (I did and thought it was decent) or don’t. But we should all be honest in our reviews and not simply piggy-back on other’s opinions.

You completely missed the point of my comment and the moral-theological reasoning of Eric Sammons in pointing out precisely why people should Not watch movies such as “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”

Of course, Sammons is only basing his views on a sound application of Catholic moral principles, so why should anybody listen to him, right? And my point about lesser thinkers is not about liking the movie. Methinks thou dost protesteth too much.

Neither Sammons nor I reviewed the movie Barbie, because, once again, that is not the point. What was that about honesty again? Mirror time for you. Good luck.

Alas, the edited/more accurate version of my previous comments did not get picked up, so let’s try again for greater clarity:

You completely missed the point of my comment and the moral-theological reasoning of Eric Sammons in explaining precisely why people should Not watch movies such as “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”

Of course, Sammons is only basing his views on a sound application of Catholic moral principles, so why should anybody heed what he has to say, right? And my point about lesser thinkers is not about liking any movie. Methinks thou dost protesteth too much.

Now, Sammons did not review the movie “Barbie” in what would be considered a full blown review after watching it, because, once again, that is not the point, and watching the movie would have made Sammons a sinful hypocrite. Instead, his review of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” is purposely limited to pointing out objectionable elements known to be in both movies that make it sinful to watch such movies.

What was that about honesty again? Mirror time for you. Good luck.

Thank you for the review. I think the Barbie phenomenon is being propelled by its coming in the aftermath of the “Karen” movement…which highlighted privilege and entitlement among white women. Essentially, the Karen movement began to position white women on the “oppressor” side of the “oppressor/victim” construct. This presented an existential crisis for a huge number of American women, whose victimhood is part and parcel to their identity. The depth and expansiveness of this victim identity is betrayed by the way many Catholic/Christian women who would otherwise rail against Hollywood’s leftist bent are willing to give this movie a free pass. All data (which show that it’s men and boys who are foundering) and all conservative rationality would lead otherwise clear-thinking women of faith to oppose this movie. But the ingrained need to be on the “hero/victim” side trumps just about everything. When all arguments fail, the fall back is “don’t take it too seriously…it’s just a movie!” (Do these women say the same about Lightyear?) On the heels of the “Karen” movement, Greta Gerwig gave women (white women, in particular) exactly what they were looking for by placing them right back on the victim side of the oppressor/victim construct. She has greatly increased her wealth in doing so, and if this was her intent she deserves every penny she makes from this movie. She’s very astute. She saw a person dying of thirst and gave her a big glass of ice water.

The way (some) women of faith embrace (or at least refrain from opposing) Barbie has some parallel to the way Christian conservative men embrace Trump. Barbie is clearly a leftist movie, but these Christian women are willing to overlook this because the movie makes them feel “heard”. In the same way, Trump is not a conservative, but (some) Christian conservative men are willing to overlook this because Trump makes them feel “seen”. Among most people, identity will trump ideology and everything else. The Barbie phenomenon and the Trump phenomenon both show this. Whether that’s good or bad is another topic. I just wish conservatives would be a little bit more honest about acknowledging this.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if reports of “Karen” incidents ever take hold in the national conversation again. My thought is that they probably won’t…at least not anytime soon. Not because they’re no longer happening, but because the largest appetite is to keep women on the hero/victim side. I think the big losers from the Barbie phenomenon will be those who are trying to decouple the civil rights movement from the feminist movement; and the trans activists who are trying to place trans people front-and-center in the race to victimhood. In this race, it’s white women who have the numbers and the money. The Barbie phenomenon shows that.

These are my honest thoughts about the Barbie phenomenon, and of course my thoughts are shaped in part by my experiences as are everyone’s. If I’m seeing this wrong or I’m overlooking something, let me know! I’m willing to listen and be convinced.

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How greta gerwig’s ‘barbie’ was influenced by her catholic school roots.

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“Barbie” has been blessed.

Greta Gerwig’s highly anticipated pink-filled comedy “Barbie” has finally driven its magenta-colored convertible into theaters.

The movie is chock-full of religious motifs and allusions — thanks to the filmmaker’s past experiences at St. Francis High School, an all-girls Catholic school in Sacramento, California.

“In the movie, like, when it starts, she’s in a world where there’s no aging or death or pain or shame or self-consciousness, and then she suddenly becomes self-conscious — that’s a really old story,” Gerwig recently told the Associated Press about the parallels between “Barbie” and the Bible. “And we know that story.

“I think I always go back to those older story forms because I went to Catholic school and I resonate with them,” the 39-year-old “Lady Bird” director explained, referring to the ancient biblical tales of Christianity.

There are other divine metaphors that Gerwig uses in her new flick — including a shot that references a famous mural painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.

The mother of two told USA Today about a moment in the feature where Ruth Handler — the creator of the plastic doll — hands Margot Robbie’s Barbie a cup of tea.

The scene is reminiscent of the “exact way that God is touching Adam on the Sistine Chapel,” Gerwig said, noting the fresco that depicts the creation of Adam and is inspired by the verse written in the Bible’s Genesis: “God created man in his own image.”

Robbie, 33, and the “Little Women” screenwriter previously spoke to Vogue and pointed out how the creation story of Adam and Eve is similar to Barbie and her boyfriend, Ken, played by Ryan Gosling in the film.

“Barbie was invented first,” Gerwig dished to the fashion publication. “Ken was invented after Barbie, to burnish Barbie’s position in our eyes and in the world. That kind of creation myth is the opposite of the creation myth in Genesis.”

“The Wolf of Wall Street” star Robbie noted how Gerwig penned “an abstract poem about Barbie” that was akin to the Apostles’ Creed sonnet and helped create the tone for the Mattel Films flick.

The film’s main premise focuses on how an innocent Barbie lives in her dream world, Barbieland, where everything is perfect and untouched.

However, things begin to change in her frothy utopian society — and she must figure out why.

Barbieland is similar to the Bible’s Garden of Eden — a lush paradise that was once perfect but is then ruined by the introduction of sin.

“Barbie” opened in theaters on Friday, July 21, and is already sprouting some bizarre fandom.

A filmmaker has “Barbiefied” celebrities like President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, Princess of Wales Kate Middleton and late UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by using artificial intelligence to morph their faces onto the characters’ pink-adorned bodies.

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Movie review: Barbie

Margot Robbie plays the famous Mattel doll that first arrived on store shelves back in 1959. Together with her sidekick Ken (Ryan Gosling), Barbie inhabits a pink-hued feminist paradise where the president, the nine justices of the Supreme Court and all Nobel Prize winners are women.

Troubled and bewildered by hitherto alien thoughts of death as well as by a sudden physical imperfection -- a patch of cellulite on her leg -- our heroine consults one of her many alter egos, Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon). The problem, it seems, is that whoever is currently playing with Standard Barbie is sad and her sorrow is affecting her toy.

So it's time to journey to the real world to meet the cause of the difficulty and, presumably, cheer her up sufficiently to restore the status quo. Ken stows away in the back seat of Barbie's car and thus gets to share in the adventure.

Arriving in Los Angeles, Barbie discovers the tribulations -- and Ken the joys -- of patriarchy. Barbie also learns to her surprise that, far from being revered as a symbol of female empowerment, she's reviled as the embodiment of women's subjugation.

Ken manages to return to Barbie Land first and proceeds to imbue it with male dominance. Thus, by the time Barbie gets back to her natural setting, it's not only been tainted by warped values but turned topsy-turvy.

Barbie will need the cooperation of all her many eponymous iterations to avert cultural and political disaster. Fortunately, she'll also have the help of Gloria (America Ferrera) and Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a mother-and-daughter duo from the realm of human beings.

As scripted by director Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, the picture bemoans the plight of women while blithely stereotyping men as selfish, childish and aggressive. With the rivalry of the sexes raging, little of the humor (Will Ferrell plays the dizzy CEO of Mattel) and less of the sentiment (Rhea Perlman plays the wise granny who co-founded the company) works.

Despite all the controversy that continues to swirl around her, Barbie has undeniably proved a long-lasting source of enjoyment for youngsters. Her namesake movie, by contrast, is too closely focused on its own agenda to provide older viewers with much entertainment and too freewheeling to be acceptable for little kids.

The film contains stylized physical violence, a few instances each of mild swearing and crass talk, mature wordplay and brief sexual and anatomical humor. The OSV News classification is A-II – adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 – parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13. — John Mulderig, OSV News. John Mulderig is media reviewer for OSV News. Follow him on Twitter @JohnMulderig1.

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Barbie: A film that asks the questions only Christ can truly answer

By Beth Card 2023-07-24T11:03:00+01:00

More than just a parade in pink, Barbie asks some deep questions about what it means to be human, with all its flaws and limitations. But where it lacks answers, Christ provides says Beth Card

Source: Warner Bros

Contains spoilers

It would be easy to watch Barbie and only take away the message that girls should be able to be whoever they want to be without judgment or obstacle. A 90-minute feminist romp with girl power speeches and a chance to see a land where women run the world. Job done.

More on that later if you want it.

But perhaps the film’s bigger message is that life is not perfect. Not the real world or Barbie Land. At the end of the movie, Barbie chooses to be a human, because she has experienced what it is like to cry, to want to make a difference; to have relationships that require effort. She chooses to leave behind a world of fakery and experience something more genuine, even though she knows it will be harder and that, one day, she will die.

We cannot make our world perfect. Whatever you do or don’t do with your life, the only thing that matters eternally is knowing Jesus

There are good aspects to this message. The film tells us that death is a reality and that the world isn’t perfect. It tells us to stop portraying our lives as faultless when we’re actually (frequently) upset about things. It teaches us that it’s OK to question why we’re here, whether we’re meeting our full potential or whether our relationships are good or going anywhere.

A plan and a purpose

But although Barbie accurately portrays the realities of a broken world, ultimately, it lacks biblical hope. As Christians, we know life can be tough, but heaven and perfection await us. We know suffering leads to our sanctification; we know Jesus understands our pain; and we know everything is happening for the glory of God.

The film also speaks to our human design as creators and workers, and our need for a purpose. In Barbie Land, everything is finished; there is no work to do. But Barbie leans towards a life in the real world, as she feels she has a purpose there.

We all need purpose. It’s good to have goals, but placing our ultimate hope in this is risky. You can spend your whole life trying to change society or reaching your dream and it can still be taken away. Only the return of Jesus can truly mend things. Placing our identity in anything apart from God can set us up for disappointment and failure.

Equal in power

The message of Barbie is that the real world is ruled by men. Women don’t hold senior roles at work, and are instead relegated to being pretty and perfect and serving men’s needs. There are obviously elements of truth in this portrayal – as well as elements of exaggeration and a considerable lack of nuance.

In terms of the exaggeration, I can’t help but think that a woman from the Middle Ages (or even the 1950s) would be amazed at the jobs and opportunities that women have today. The examples of inequality shown in the film - an all-male company board, women being ignored and men being respected more – do still happen. At the same time, it isn’t all bad news. The fact we’ve had three female prime ministers speaks to this. 

Inequality is bad for men too. Ken struggles to know his place in Barbie Land. He is defined solely by his relationship with Barbie, something that is acknowledged within the message of the film as unhealthy. 

The female-led Barbie Land shown at the beginning perpetuates the misconception that women are not just equal but  better.  An equal society is good. But frequently, what people actually want is domination in reverse. Although this isn’t how the film concludes, it may well be the message that viewers leave with. Feminism has no room for allowing men to be better at any point, allowing the right men to lead on merit or for women to ever submit. Of course some say this is simply correcting an over-dominance that has existed for centuries, but why correct when we could simply try to live out God’s plan of servant heartedness and putting others above ourselves?

Asking the big questions

Barbie is a film that rightly raises questions about our very existence, and helpfully asks us to really think about why we are here and what our purpose is. But ultimately, it provides only one solution: society, which is too male-dominated, must be changed. Not everything about this idea is wrong. Equality is a worthy goal, but while having a female US president would be a brilliant thing, only Jesus can really mend everything.

We cannot make our world perfect. Whatever you do or don’t do with your life, the only thing that matters eternally is knowing Jesus.

And while we’re comparing, heaven won’t be like Barbie Land – a boring place where everything is perfect. The Bible tells us that we will work, but our work will be fruitful and not laboursome. And it won’t be like Barbie Land because neither women nor men will rule it – Jesus will.

Doing Barbenheimer? Read our review of Christopher Nolan’s most political film to date here

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The Netflix adaptation of David Nicholl’s book uses story and time to reveal how Dexter and Emma are formed by events and choices. It’s the same way that God writes all our stories, says Tony Wilson

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When it comes to identity, it’s easy to be critical of the stereotypes, or the lack of answers provided by  Barbie , but has the Church done any better? We can only understand what it is to be human in light of the larger God story that has shaped our world, says Peter Lynas

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Greta Gerwig's Catholic school upbringing heavily inspired a few scenes in the 'Barbie' movie

• Greta Gerwig says that her Catholic upbringing influenced the way she made the "Barbie" movie.
• The filmmaker told AP News that she "resonates" with "older story forms" because she went to Catholic school.
• This is not the first time Gerwig or the "Barbie" cast spoke about the film's religious references.

Greta Gerwig's Catholic upbringing had a big influence on the way she made the "Barbie" film — and it's evident in a couple of scenes.

Speaking in an interview with  AP News , the filmmaker explained that there are strong parallels between Biblical stories and the movie's setting.

"In the movie, like when it starts, she's in a world where there's no aging or death or pain or shame or self-consciousness, and then she suddenly becomes self-conscious — that's a really old story," Gerwig told AP News. "And we know that story."

Related stories

Gerwig says that she has a tendency to rely on these "older story forms" due to her Catholic upbringing.

"I think I always go back to those older story forms because I went to Catholic school and I resonate with them," she added.

The 39-year-old attended St. Francis Catholic High School, an all-female school in Sacramento, California. She's listed as an alumnus on the school's webpage .

This is not the first time that Gerwig — or the "Barbie" cast — spoke about the film's references to religious art and tales.

In the movie, there's a scene where Barbie meets her inventor, Ruth Handler, that was filmed in a way that references a famous piece of religious art, Gerwig told USA Today on Thursday.

"There's this shot where Ruth hands Barbie a cup of tea, and the way we lined it up is the exact way that God is touching Adam on the Sistine Chapel," Gerwig said.

In an interview with Vogue that was published in May, Gerwig also referenced the creation of the Barbie doll to the creation myth in the Bible.

"Barbie was invented first," Gerwig told Vogue. "Ken was invented after Barbie, to burnish Barbie's position in our eyes and in the world. That kind of creation myth is the opposite of the creation myth in Genesis."

Margot Robbie — who plays the film's titular character — also told Vogue in the same interview that Gerwig even wrote "an abstract poem about Barbie" that was similar to the Apostles Creed to help set the tone of the film.

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In the beginning, there was Barbie

Turns out Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie is a Biblical metaphor after all.

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In a May feature in Vogue , Barbie director and co-writer Greta Gerwig cheekily compared Barbie and Ken to Adam and Eve. “Barbie was invented first,” she said. “Ken was invented after Barbie, to burnish Barbie’s position in our eyes and in the world. That kind of creation myth is the opposite of the creation myth in Genesis.”

The quote snagged some attention, in part because Gerwig has played with theological themes before in her work — most notably in Lady Bird , in which Sister Sarah Joan borrows the wisdom of philosopher and mystic Simone Weil to advise her titular charge. The Genesis comparison does sound a bit like a joke, though, at least when applied to plastic dolls. In the Bible, God makes the first man, Adam, from the dust of the ground, and then knocks him out, takes his rib, and fashions it into a companion for him: Eve, the first woman. They live in a perfect world, the Garden of Eden.

God has one command for his creations: They can eat the fruit of any tree in the Garden except one, the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” Naturally, that’s what they do. (It’s humanity’s first failure in the “you had one job” department.) Immediately they realize they are naked, and they feel ashamed, and after receiving a series of curses having to do with labor (both of the agricultural and natal kind) they are sent out into the cold, hard, not-so-paradisiacal world.

And that’s the story of why life sucks.

While that’s not strictly the story of Barbie — a delightful and often gaspingly funny movie, by the way — it turns out Gerwig wasn’t just having a laugh when she brought up the creation myth in the Vogue interview. Barbie is thoroughly, and more or less textually, a surprisingly wise excavation of one interpretation of the text and its meaning, as well as the meaning of Barbies as products of culture, the gender wars, and feminism more broadly. You know, typical blockbuster stuff.

There’s a history of filmmakers talking a big game when it comes to taking existing intellectual properties (Marvel characters, say, or nostalgia sequels) and “saying something” with them. Occasionally it works (see Black Panther or Rogue One ). More often it is, at best, pretty shallow; consider Ocean’s Eight or Captain Marvel or, wondrously, Cats , which director Tom Hooper described as being about the “perils of tribalism.”

The Barbie movie, explained.

• Why is everyone so excited?
• What is the movie about?
• Why the marketing campaign has everyone talking.
• What is Barbieheimer?
• What does it mean to be Ken?
• Why did Vietnam ban Barbie?
• Why playing with Barbie gets so weird.

Barbie is not the kind of IP that naturally lends itself to cinematic and philosophical musings. But in Gerwig’s hands, along with her co-writer Noah Baumbach, it’s sly and just about as subversive as a movie can be while still being produced by one of its targets (toy manufacturer Mattel, which the movie relentlessly tweaks over discontinued Barbies and Kens) and distributed by another (Warner Bros. Discovery, which gets one expertly barbed zinger). Loaded with movie references from the ’60s beach party genre to the trippy dream ballets of midcentury musicals — and, uh, Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey — it is cinephile wish-fulfillment rolled in nerdiness and covered in pink sprinkles. Should Barbie be a smash hit, Mattel may wish to replicate its success with other IP, but it’s hard to imagine any future films rising to Barbie ’s level of sheer cleverness, rather than pure corporate pandering.

On the 2001 point: The movie (like one of its trailers ) begins at the very beginning, with a scene ripped from Kubrick’s film. In his, a tribe of apes in a barren prehistoric landscape learn to make tools and then are suddenly confronted by a giant, mysterious, towering rectangular monolith. In Gerwig’s, a group of little girls equipped only with baby dolls and tea party accessories are suddenly confronted with a giant towering monolith of their own: a curvy Barbie, which inspires them to smash their boring baby dolls. In voiceover, Helen Mirren announces that, thanks to the creation of Barbie and then her many career-focused iterations (Doctor Barbie, Scientist Barbie, President Barbie, and so on), “all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved” in the real world.

“At least,” she says, as the crowd snickers, “that’s what the Barbies think.”

The Barbies live in Barbieland, an analog for the Garden of Eden, where every day is a sunny and perfect day — especially for our heroine, Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie). Her home is a Barbie Dream House in Barbieland, where the Barbies run all aspects of the world. She has a load of friends, all named Barbie, and a boyfriend named Ken (Ryan Gosling) who hangs out with the other Kens at the beach. He is not a lifeguard, nor is he a surfer; his job, he insists, is “beach.”

One day, in the middle of a party, Barbie suddenly starts thinking about death, for no reason at all (especially because she’s a plastic doll and one that is, as you probably know, virtually indestructible). When a tragedy strikes — I won’t ruin it — Barbie is forced to leave paradise and go to the real world, and Ken hitches a ride. When they get there, they discover that they’re suddenly self-conscious and aware of being looked at (this movie’s version of Eve and Adam discovering their nakedness). The plot soon thickens, because not only does Barbie realize that women do not have the same kind of standing in the real world as they do in hers, but men can leer and jeer and make crude comments and stupid decisions, and it’s just sort of what they do. Meanwhile Ken ... discovers patriarchy.

I should say at this juncture that while Robbie is a reliably excellent Barbie, it is Gosling who absolutely steals the show, in part because the character of Ken is terrific and in part because he’s committed so hard to the bit that just looking at him move his arms is somehow hysterical. Gosling’s face is just a little odd, a little asymmetrical, and he pulls off “big doofus with a big doofus face” and “vaguely sinister idiot” with equal aplomb.

Ken’s discovery of patriarchy (which seems to have a lot to do with the subjugation of women and with horses, as far as he can tell) is the means through which a sort of original sin leaks into Barbieland, though by the end of the film it’s clear that this isn’t a typically shallow Hollywood take on feminism. Sure, Barbies were created to teach girls that they could be anything, but what else did they do? (By the end, we learn that in a truly ideal world, the Barbies and the Kens would live in harmony and equality — and that won’t happen overnight.)

But the path the movie traces is more than a little theologically familiar: a paradise lost, destroyed by the “knowledge” of “good” and “evil,” and a path back to restoration (with some bonus reflections on being created for a purpose by a Creator). And there seems to be some built-in interrogation of the Genesis narrative, too. Would it be better, after all, for Barbie and Ken to have continued living naively in a paradise where Ken is just “and Ken” and everyone seems happy all the time? Or did gaining knowledge of the outside world actually make them aware of their free will and equip them to live better, more fulfilled lives? It’s a question some theologians have approached throughout history, and one that recurs when we think about history: Golden ages often appear that way because we were naive to what was “really” going on back then, not because they were actually better.

Let me not give you the wrong impression here: Barbie is an impressive achievement as a film and far, far funnier than any studio comedy I can remember in recent history. There are perfect jokes about everything from stilettos to boy bands to fascism and Matchbox Twenty; I’m still giggling at some of the gags. Barbie probably isn’t for very young children, though the spectacle could get them engaged, but tweens and up will find something to love.

Yet fun and thoughtfulness can go together; a blockbuster (or a doll) need not be brainless to be fun. Gerwig’s solo directing career thus far (which includes Lady Bird and Little Women ) is a triumph of reimagination, an exploration of what it means to find out who you are and not allow yourself to be shaped by nostalgia and sentimentality while also living with deep, real love. That she managed to infuse the same sensibilities into Barbie is something near a miracle. I can’t wait to go see it again.

Barbie opens in theaters on July 21.

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Reviewed by: Jim O'Neill CONTRIBUTOR

Story based on the Mattel toy doll

Woke messaging in films

A feminist critique of capitalism

Barbie having an existential crisis

Films that appear to be for youngsters, but are NOT

Transgenderism promotion by Hollywood

Hollywood leftist deconstruction of ‘gender roles’ and increasing man bashing in movies

Feminism’s sexist anti-man messaging—painting masculinity as toxic and predatory / males as idiots, bigots or pathetic losers

Is the FEMINIST MOVEMENT the right answer to the mistreatment that some women endure in this sinful world? Answer

Social satire

Films that attempt to contrast fantasy and dark reality

G reta Gerwig’s “Barbie” has a cotton candy wispiness that would be fine for a movie about a doll that comes to life, but behind the pink frosting facade, Gerwig has spun candy that is hard—and sour.

Gerwig, and her partner, Noah Baumbach , who co-wrote the script, might appear to be apt choices to make a film about the odd person out trying to catch a break on the inside while still maintaining the quirkiness of an appealing outsider. Gerwig’s performances as an actress in Whit Stillman’s “Damsels in Distress” and Baumbach’s “Frances Ha” were iconoclastic and daringly funny. Her insouciant embodiments of “innocent as doves” but secretly “wise as serpents” space-cadets in the mold of Zasu Pitts, Billie Burke and Judy Holliday, were a breath of fresh air.

As a director, however, Gerwig’s focus and tone have become stale, dour and accusatory. The wrathful “ Lady Bird ” and the unfaithful (literally and scripturally) “ Little Women ” were both successes, taking her from “low-budget indie” wannabe to well-healed Hollywood A-lister. As such, she not only abides by the rules of the realm, but has become one of its most reliable and outspoken voices.

With “Barbie,” Gerwig does everything bigger, bolder and louder. There is no soft underbelly to this doll. The film is pepper-sprayed with bursts such as: “either you’re brainwashed or you’re weird and ugly; there’s no in-between,” and my favorite, spoken to Barbie by a teenage student (a re-run of the “Lady Bird” speech shouted by that film’s title character to a conservative religious woman, a favorite Gerwig target): “You represent everything wrong with our culture… you destroyed the planet… you set feminism back,” and so on, concluding her “j’accuse” diatribe by calling Barbie “a fascist.” That kind of red-faced hectoring never lets up. Too often I felt as though I was sitting through a “Libs of TikTok” marathon .

The movie’s plot is a terse throw-away. The main doll, “Stereotypical Barbie” ( Margot Robbie ) lives in a fantasy world called Barbieland with all kinds of other Barbies who live in dream houses and drive dream cars. It is a feminist , but peculiarly unfeminine, environment in which the president is a woman, all nine Supreme Court justices are women, health care is provided by women, and businesses are run by women. The men, labeled “superfluous” citizens, are not even relegated to the sidelines; they have no place on the field at all.

A crack develops in Barbieland allowing Barbie to travel from fantasy land to the real world, a contrived plot device and a cheap “Matrix” rip-off, the first of many such “borrowings” from or references to earlier classic films, ironically ones made by decidedly non-feminist, macho filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola and, astonishingly, Robert Evans.

Each Barbie in Barbieland may have a plastic doll counterpart in the real world. Evidently, whatever happens to the doll and her owner in that realm has a concomitant effect on the Barbieland inhabitant. When the main Barbie starts developing human maladies such as flat feet and a bit of cellulite, she does not consult a Barbieland podiatrist or luposucionist (both of whom one would suspect in a perfect Barbie world would be crackerjack practitioners of their specialties), but instead travels to the real world (yes, in a pink Cadillac, pink motorboat, and pinkish rocket ship) to find the little girl whose dark thoughts has brought on her distress. Little does she know that her existential trip, for a doll, will lead her to fall into the clutches of the dark and male infested hands of the toy company that makes her, Mattel.

The Mattel conglomerate is located in Los Angeles, and traveling from one LaLa land to another could be fodder for some good jokes about how real and imaginary places may not be so different (remember the Star Trek movie scenario of the Enterprise landing in San Francisco, a place weirder than any extraterrestrial sphere could be?), but that nerve is never touched. Gerwig and Baumbach do know what side their bread is buttered on. There’s nothing new brought to this battlefield, even with Will Ferrell playing Will Ferrell playing a Ken-like dodo playing a past-his-prime jerk.

With each new performance, Ferrell is morphing into an A.I. version of himself, but in this case he sputters lines that an A.I. program, or even a Barbieland doll, would roll their eyes at.

In the real world, Stereotypical Barbie is absconded by secret service like Mattel minions while a befuddled Ken debates whether to rescue her or seek help. You may have already guessed that the film does not miss the opportunity to further emasculate Ken as he chooses to run back to Barbieland for help. Adding further insult to injury, he never returns for her either.

Meanwhile, Ferrell and his boardroom cohorts, all men in dark suits, prove to be easy, cookie-cutter targets. The strongest corporate retort to Barbie’s criticisms of their non-inclusiveness and all around non-niceness is a timid: “Some of my best friends are Jewish.”

This from Hollywood’s A-list original screenplay team?

Gerwig’s Barbie does not grow into a flesh and blood girl in the same way Pinocchio evolved into a boy through humility and self-sacrifice. She is inordinately cruel to Ken and seems to have a cold core, one that Margot Robbie sometimes brings to the surface, channeling the murderous character she played in the “ Suicide Squad ” movies, and giving her doll an edge that is sharp, if at times a bit rusty. Robbie has an inviting and generous smile which Quentin Tarantino used to enchanting effect in “ Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ,” but she can turn that smile to something sinister and deadly, as she did in the underrated “ Mary, Queen of Scots ,” in which she used her grin as a mask to soften, or conceal, the human monster, and political genius, that was Queen Elizabeth I. In “Barbie,” Robbie can’t seem to get the balance right. She holds onto the Mattel plastic while keeping the vulnerable humanity at bay.

The film begins with Barbie, standing as a tall bathing-suit clad monolith surrounded by a bevy of very young girls who defiantly smash and toss away their baby dolls. It’s not just a cheesy rendition of Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” opening where the apes bang bones they learned to use as weapons, but a cold and cynical cry for emancipation from the binds of what motherhood, and traditional womanhood, represent to the modern Hollywood sensibility.

As the movie unfolds, its makers herald the positives of such liberation, but shy away from its downsides. Barbie nonetheless develops a crisis of confidence, and then one of existence itself. Her anxiety is deep, the result we’re told, of patriarchal oppression, leading Barbie to have “irrepressible thoughts of death.”

When a tale starts, not with life as the Genesis story does, but with death, and that is what the baby destroying scene represents, it is fated to come full circle. Barbie’s “irrepressible thoughts” are about more than chauvinism. Those thoughts cry out for redemption and rebirth.

Despite her eschatological concerns, this living doll has no spiritual dismay and no sense of what she was created for. Does she look to Someone who, before she was formed, knew her? Her self-reliance, cynically referred to as empowerment, blinds her to seeing that “all things in heaven and earth, the visible and the invisible…were created through Him and for Him.” Barbie jumps from battle to battle, emulating the Director’s own personal fight for the rights of marginalized women everywhere, but by never putting on “the shield of Christ ,” she is ultimately unequipped to “fight the good fight.” No wonder she and her real world counterpart have thoughts of despair and death.

Did I mention those thoughts are applauded by film’s end?

You know a movie’s script and production are weak when so much depends on a bevy of supporting and cameo appearances by underused, underwritten, or just miscast performers such as America Ferrera , Michael Cera , Issa Rae , Rhea Perlman , and John Cena who seem mostly befuddled by the polemic drivel they have to speak.

Helen Mirren is inexplicably and shamefully used as a narrator trying to elucidate the film’s mangled background story. Her commentary only makes this hapless doll world murkier and more punishing, declaring that playing with dolls might be fun, but ultimately harms little girls everywhere. Her voice, meant to be authoritative and instructive, is actually authoritarian and beguiling, like that of a matronly garden serpent.

Almost all the performances are amateurish and attention-seeking in the worst way, none more so than Kate McKinnon’s whose lack of comic skill is hidden behind by a tremendous well of self-regard. She plays “Weird Barbie”, not in a knowing and endearing sidekick-style in the vein of Eve Arden or Joan Cusack , but in a shrill and geyser-like fashion that is as jarring as her costume and inconsistent make-up.

There are several Kens, each different looking, but each behaving in basically the same way. Ryan Gosling plays the main Ken, and he almost brings it off. While watching him in all his tanned and bleached splendor, I wondered if his entire performance was nothing more than attempt to humor his director and co-star. He constantly tosses off his ridiculous costumes in the same style he throws away the beach taunts aimed at his co-Kens. Those exchanges, meant to be in-the-know jokes that would go over the heads of kids but tickle the ear of hip adults, are witless and sophomoric in their barely disguised homoeroticism .

Ken tags along uninvited on Barbie’s trip to the real world. She drives, of course, while he straddles the back seat. Unlike Barbie, Ken is captivated by the male energy of Los Angeles. He tries to bring that equine force back to Barbieland and build a society where men sport great biceps and abs, and have a great time drinking beer and dominating their female counterparts. There’s lots of male bonding in the new realm called Kendom, with men co-decorating their houses in horse motifs, exchanging outfits that include fancy furs, and doing bump, grind and male on male cheek-to-cheek kiss ala Busby Berkeley style dance routines on the beach and somewhere in the sky. This is presented as a patriarchy on steroids, a male world out of control.

Gosling’s god-like surface features seem particularly anti-feminist, the kind of physical specimen that you would not expect to find in a land ruled by powerful women, but the type you’d see on the covers of bodice-ripper novels or People’s Sexiest Man Alive issues, or perhaps in a Village People music video. But consistency is not a hallmark in the Gerwig-Baumbach universe. Discordancy is the point. The film’s liberation ethos, sexual and social, is a call, not for peace, forgiveness, and grace , or even enjoyment of what a world of toys can bring to a child, but a Progressive call to arms.

Or worse, it’s a gender studies lecture, where many Barbies and Kens are welcome, but only one voice, a very Feminist voice is allowed to speak, and be heard.

• Wokeism: Very Heavy
• Drugs/Alcohol: Moderate
• Violence: Mild
• Profane language: Minor
• Vulgar/Crude language: Minor
• Nudity: None
• Occult: None

Editor’s Notes

For the narrative arc, Writer/Director Gertwig was partially inspired by the 1994 non-fiction book Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher, which accounts the effects of societal pressures on American adolescent girls. The book has been described as a “call to arms” and highlights the increased levels of sexism and violence that affect young females. Pipher asserts that whilst the Feminist movement has aided adult women to become empowered, teenagers have been neglected and require intensive support due to their undeveloped maturity. Lead actress Margot Robbie stated that the film’s aim is to subvert expectations and give audiences “the thing you didn’t know you wanted.”

NOTE: In June 2023, a “Barbie” French poster went viral for including the tagline “Elle peut tout faire. Lui, c'est juste Ken.”, which literally translates to “She can do everything. He’s just Ken.” However, ken is the verlan slang term for the f-word in French, while c’est (“he is”) is a homophone for sait (“he knows how”), meaning the tagline could be read as “She can do everything. He just knows how to f***.” Analysts concluded that it was likely the pun was intentional, as the slang term is common knowledge among French speakers, though Warner Bros. would neither confirm nor deny whether this was the case.

See list of Relevant Issues—questions-and-answers .

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PLEASE share your observations and insights to be posted here.

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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Movie Review of Barbie

        If you are into the modern culture in America as opposed to traditional values etc., great, go see this movie, if not, then you should probably avoid this movie.  If you type into the Internet: “What is the new Barbie movie plot?” the answer you get back if you pull down the question shown as “Is the new Barbie movie feminist?” its answer is: “It’s complicated. The Barbie movie is being celebrated (and slammed) as a feminist film, with its themes of female empowerment and critiques of the patriarchy.”

        The movie was rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language.

        I don’t comment on anything I have not at least scanned and I watched this entire movie. It was an upbeat fun movie on the whole (especially if you ignored the dialog) and had a few well-choreographed catchy dance routines including Dua Lipa’s new hit single Dance the Night. Unfortunately, if you are hoping to hear Barbie Girl by Aqua you are out of luck due to a law suit brought by Mattel due to, I think, copyright infringement.

       The problem came with stereotyping most of the men, like ken, as basically vain air heads (like some of the older movies used to portray some women, and I guess, to a point, turn around is fair play) that are a little bellicose.  In my opinion, implying to very young ladies that men are simple and of little worth, warps their sensibilities.  Now if a young lady of at least 25 years of age has had a very bad week, moving in her theater chair with the music and cheering in high points in the movie may prove cathartic, just don’t take the dialog or the push for the woke agenda too seriously or just ignore it altogether.

For other opinions more critical as well as specific as to the problems with this film especially for the very very young ladies see the you tube videos at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzbmYzMA6ig and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33DXaH7L49s

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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: Sometimes corporate propaganda can be fun as hell

Aisha Harris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ryan Gosling makes Ken more than "just Ken."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• barbie movie

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Barbie review: A near-miraculous achievement from Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie

While it’s impossible for any studio film to be truly subversive, this mattel-approved comedy gets away with far more than you’d think was possible, article bookmarked.

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Barbie is one of the most inventive, immaculately crafted and surprising mainstream films in recent memory – a testament to what can be achieved within even the deepest bowels of capitalism. It’s timely, too, arriving a week after the creative forces behind these stories began striking for their right to a living wage and the ability to work without the threat of being replaced by an AI. It’s a pink-splattered manifesto to the power of irreplaceable creative labour and imagination.

While it’s impossible for any studio film to be truly subversive, especially when consumer culture has caught on to the idea that self-awareness is good for business (there’s nothing that companies love more these days than to feel like they’re in on the joke), Barbie gets away with far more than you’d think was possible. It’s a project that writer-director Greta Gerwig , co-writer (plus real-life partner and frequent collaborator) Noah Baumbach, and producer-star Margot Robbie were free to work on in relative privacy, holed up during the pandemic away from the meddlesome impulses of Warner Bros and Mattel executives.

The results are appropriately free-wheeling: There are nods to Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Jacques Tati’s Playtime , deployment of soundstage sets and dance choreography à la Hollywood’s musical Golden Age, and a mischievous streak of corporate satire that calls to mind 2001’s cult classic Josie and the Pussycats . But while the absurdity of its humour sits somewhere between It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Pee-wee’s Big Adventure , its earnest and vulnerable take on womanhood is pure Gerwig, serving as a direct continuation of her Lady Bird and Little Women .

The fact that all of this is tied to one of the most recognisable products in existence – and that any success it enjoys will undoubtedly boost Mattel’s stock prices – underlines the fact that it’s largely impossible to embrace art without embracing hypocrisy. Capitalism doesn’t always swallow art whole; occasionally it thrives in spite of it. And that’s a complexity that feels particularly on brand for a director who had her Jo March, in Little Women , declare: “I am so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I’m so sick of it! But – I am so lonely.”

Barbie contains another Gerwig-ian speech, delivered beautifully by an ordinary (human) mum played by America Ferrera, about the hellish trap women have been forced into. Caught between girl-boss feminism and outright misogyny, women now have to be rich, thin, liberated, and eternally grateful without ever breaking a sweat – because when Barbie promised little girls that “women can be anything”, those words got twisted to mean “women should be everything”. Gerwig’s movie begins by playing a brilliant trick on its audience: Helen Mirren’s opening narration is self-congratulatory, a bit of canned PR about Barbie’s “girl power” legacy that grows increasingly tongue-in-cheek. “Thanks to Barbie,” she concludes, “all problems of feminism and equal rights have been solved”.

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We’re then introduced to our Barbie – ie “the Stereotypical Barbie” – who is chipper, confident, blonde, and, most importantly, looks like Margot Robbie. She is eternally adored by Ken ( Ryan Gosling ), whose job is “beach”. Not “lifeguard”, but “beach”. Barbie’s friends all have high-powered jobs: president (Issa Rae), author (Alexandra Shipp), physicist (Emma Mackey), doctor (Hari Nef), and lawyer (Sharon Rooney). Every morning, she steps into her shower (there’s no water), sets out her breakfast of a heart-shaped waffle with a dollop of whipped cream (she doesn’t eat), and then sets off in her pink convertible (she doesn’t walk downstairs, but merely floats). All is perfect. Then Barbie starts having irrepressible thoughts of death.

Barbie’s bid to fix that sudden, scary attack of humanity sees her visit “the Real World”, where she meets the all-male executive board of Mattel (among them Will Ferrell and a wonderfully dorky Jamie Demetriou), who think themselves qualified to determine what little girls like and need because they once had a woman CEO (or two, maybe). Meanwhile, Gerwig uses, through a hysterical farce centred around Gosling and his fellow Kens, the implicit matriarchy of Barbieland to explore how power and visibility shape a person’s self-perception. Gosling gives an all-timer of a comedic performance, one that’s part-baby, part-Zoolander, part-maniac, and 100 per cent a validation for anyone who ever liked him in 2016’s noir comedy The Nice Guys . There are (naturally) some exquisite outfits designed by Jacqueline Durran, some very funny references to discontinued Barbies (have fun reading up on the backstory behind Earring Magic Ken), and a few unexpected pops at fans of Duolingo, Top Gun , and Zack Snyder’s Justice League .

Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in Greta Gerwig’s ‘Barbie’

Barbie is joyous from minute to minute to minute. But it’s where the film ends up that really cements the near-miraculousness of Gerwig’s achievement. Very late in the movie, a conversation is had that neatly sums up one of the great illusions of capitalism – that creations exist independently from those that created them. It’s why films and television shows get turned into “content”, and why writers and actors end up exploited and demeaned. Barbie , in its own sly, silly way, gets to the very heart of why these current strikes are so necessary.

Dir: Greta Gerwig. Starring: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, Will Ferrell. 12A, 114 minutes.

‘Barbie’ is in cinemas from 21 July

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Clever, colorful comedy with sophisticated themes, script.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Promotes idea that feminism is inclusive of all wo

Barbie is curious, empathetic, brave, and kind, an

The main Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosl

A big fight among a lot of characters involves use

Ken asks Barbie to spend the night. When she asks

One bleeped "motherf--," plus a few uses of words

Barbie and Mattel brands are in nearly every scene

The Kens have a lot of "brewskis" (beers), as well

Parents need to know that writer-director Greta Gerwig's all-star take on Barbie has a sophisticated message about feminism and the patriarchy (and, consequently, a screenplay that will likely go over younger kids' heads). The movie follows "Stereotypical Barbie" (Margot Robbie) and her handsome but insecure …

Positive Messages

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

Positive Role Models

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

Diverse Representations

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

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

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

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

Sex, Romance & Nudity

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

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

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

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

Products & Purchases

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

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

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

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Parents Need to Know

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

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (184)
• Kids say (205)

Based on 184 parent reviews

Ruined by Political Messaging and Cheap Potshots

It’s pg-13 and i think that’s about right. but you know your child., what's the story.

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

Is It Any Good?

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

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

Talk to Your Kids About ...

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

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

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

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

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

Movie Details

• In theaters : July 21, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : October 17, 2023
• Cast : Margot Robbie , Ryan Gosling , America Ferrera , Will Ferrell
• Director : Greta Gerwig
• Inclusion Information : Female directors, Female actors, Latino actors, Female writers
• Studio : Warner Bros.
• Genre : Comedy
• Topics : Princesses, Fairies, Mermaids, and More , Friendship , Great Girl Role Models
• Character Strengths : Empathy , Perseverance
• Run time : 114 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : suggestive references and brief language
• Awards : Academy Award , Common Sense Selection , Golden Globe
• Last updated : March 11, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction: Barbie World

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

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

And then things change.

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

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

Plot I: Barbie travels to the real world

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

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

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

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

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

Plot II: Destroying Ken's patriarchy

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

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

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

Conclusion: Question marks

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

It's a puzzling note to end on.

Yours truly, Ken-Medintz

Shakira Gave A Lukewarm ‘Barbie’ Review And Explained Why Her Two Sons ‘Absolutely Hated’ The Movie

Barbie is universally beloved, except in the eyes of The Academy and Shakira . On Monday morning, April 1, Shakira was revealed as the latest Allure cover star. In the accompanying profile , writer Patricia Alfonso Tortolani asked Shakira if she’d watched Barbie . The Colombian icon confirmed she watched the movie, then indulged a “long pause” before giving her full review.

“My sons absolutely hated it,” Shakira said. “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.”

Shakira shares 11-year-old Milan and nine-year-old Sasha with her ex-partner Gerard Piqué . Her sons are featured on “ Acróstico ” from Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran , her first album in seven years.

“I was in the mud,” Shakira told Allure. “I had to reconstruct myself, to reunite all the pieces that had fallen apart.”

She added, “Making this music has shown me that my pain can be transformed into creativity. The songs are full of anecdotes and some very intense emotions I have experienced in these two years. But creating this album has been a transformation in which I have been reborn as a woman. I have rebuilt myself in the ways I believe are appropriate. No one tells me how to cry or when to cry, no one tells me how to raise my children, no one tells me how I become a better version of myself. I decide that.”

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“barbie bootcamp:” a look inside the mattel archive that inspired the film.

As the doll celebrates its 65th anniversary, Mattel execs Lisa McKnight and Kim Culmone look back at what the movie unearthed (see: Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken).

By Nicole Fell , Mia Galuppo March 21, 2024 10:53am

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For longtime fans of all things Barbie — which is currently in the middle of celebrating its 65th anniversary — Greta Gerwig’s Barbie film provided a different level of enjoyment. Filled with references to notable dolls and doll accessories from decades past, Margot Robbie’s Barbie and Ryan Gosling’s Ken wore bespoke ensembles dating back to brand’s 1959 inception.

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The filmmakers behind the $1.44 billion grossing movie were briefed on Barbie’s origin story and were taken to the Barbie archive at Mattel headquarters in El Segundo, Calif.

“We gave them what I call the ‘Barbie Bootcamp,’” says McKnight of first meeting with Robbie, Gerwig and other members of the Barbie team. “Full immersion into the brand.”

In speaking about the company’s process with Jacqueline Durran, the Oscar-nominated costume designer for the film, Culmone says, “My team and I created multiple decks of chapters of Barbie’s fashion history.” The costume designer also did her own research, and the team often went back and forth to provide the designer with physical samples and different versions of Barbie fashion packs.

For McKnight, who has been with the company for nearly 25 years, the Barbie movie was like a partial scrapbook of her own career history. She says, “Sugar Daddy Ken to Video Girl Barbie, some dolls that I worked on, it was just a kick to see them all larger than life.” Sugar Daddy Ken, also known as Palm Beach Sugar Daddy Ken, was priced at $82 upon launch in 2009 and was meant to appeal to adult collectors.

“Barbie was created at a time when women couldn’t even have their own bank accounts and created by a female entrepreneur, working mom,” McKnight said. “It’s a great reminder when you think about how far we’ve come.”

There was also some other unexpected reminders.

“We had a doll that came with a dog that pooped called Pooping Tanner. It came with a pooper scooper.” Barbie featured a life size Pooping Tanner that wandered around the home of Weird Barbie (played by Kate McKinnon). Says McKnight, “I will say, it was a bestseller.”

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