| Warner Bros. | Release Date: July 21, 2023 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
61
Mixed:
5
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
Jul 19, 2023
Jul 18, 2023
Barbie knows it can be construed as a giant Mattel commercial. Look at how it highlights Barbie’s outfits by having them stop in midair for product identification, or how even the discontinued Barbies have houses in Barbie Land. That self-awareness is part of the charm, along with the clever way the plot unfolds and the genuine love Gerwig has for her characters.
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The Film VerdictJul 18, 2023
Gerwig and Baumbach come out on the side of the power of the imagination but never discount the criticisms of this iconic American object. What the film does best, perhaps, is to understand and explain why people make up worlds, be they real systems of oppression or imaginary playsets.
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The PlaylistJul 18, 2023
Gerwig amplifies this feeling of liberation through understanding one’s confinement to Messianic lengths by the end of “Barbie.” Yet her and Baumbach’s screenplay foregrounds countless other intimate choices, too. It’s here where characters can opt to see the complexities of their identity as both complementary and independent. This is existentialism for consideration and consumption alike.
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Jul 18, 2023
Barbie is a magic trick, a stellar example of a filmmaker taking a well-established bit of corporate IP and using it to deliver a message loudly and clearly. That Greta Gerwig’s third solo film as director also manages to be a giddy, silly, and hilarious time is essential to its power, and the challenge of this review is thus trying to explore how the magic trick works, while still preserving the flat-out awe I have at what it achieves.
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PolygonJul 19, 2023
Barbie the doll has to be everything for everyone, and she’s never succeeded. Barbie the movie has been asked to perform the same impossible trick — and just like I still feel a sentimental attachment to Barbie, I feel an overwhelming fondness and admiration for the movie’s daring attempt to make it work.
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The Daily BeastJul 18, 2023
SlashfilmJul 18, 2023
Barbie is an absolute marvel hiding within the plastic pink confines of Barbie, making it a phenomenal reflection of the iconic doll that serves as source material. Gerwig clearly knew the preconceived notions folks would have about the film going into it because they're the same ones lobbied against the doll. Fortunately, she put her best pointed foot forward and delivered one of the best films of the year.
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Jul 18, 2023
Barbie, the toy, see-saws in the culture between extremes: Is she an aspirational figure, or the fastest way to f*ck up a kid’s relationship to her body? A gateway to the imagination, or a slammed door? Barbie, the movie – an exhilarating, generous, deeply handmade comedy about a mass-market product – revels in these extremes.
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Jul 18, 2023
Thanks to the creative efforts of director Gerwig (who co-wrote the screenplay with her partner Noah Baumbach), the absolutely pitch-perfect casting starting with the gorgeous and talented humans Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, and a candy-colored, screen-popping production design that transports us to Barbieland and beyond, this is a truly original work — one of the smartest, funniest, sweetest, most insightful and just plain flat-out entertaining movies of the year.
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Jul 18, 2023
Jul 21, 2023
For those who don’t care as much about the moral of the story, there are many ways to enjoy this film. It’s a good time, and one can easily just vibe on the music and color palette, the goofy humor, and an amusing nostalgic catalog of Mattel toys and accessories without investing too much brain power into the social justice commentary.
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NMEJul 18, 2023
Sprinkled throughout are marketing messages (“Barbie means you can be anything”) that sound like they come straight from a press release. Gerwig is clever enough to deliver these with self-awareness and some sarcastic jokes (Mirren thanking Barbie for ending misogyny is a highlight), meaning the balance between reality and commercial is never lost. For a movie that ostensibly exists to promote a doll, this is laudable.
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Jul 18, 2023
Jul 19, 2023
The neatest trick is how Barbie, starring a pitch-perfect Margot Robbie — and after a minute you’ll never be able to imagine anyone else doing it — can simultaneously and smoothly both mock and admire its source material. Gerwig deftly threads that needle, even if the film sags in its second half under the weight of its many ideas and some less-than-developed character arcs.
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Jul 18, 2023
Barbie never descends into a cheap girls-versus-boys final showdown; it just reckons with the different ways self-image gets sold to us, the weary, willing consumer, even as the world grows savvier and more cynical. That it does so through bright musical numbers, acidic quips, and the right scoop of sentimentalism is all the more impressive.
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Jul 18, 2023
Viewers who have nurtured a loving if complicated relationship with Barbie might feel seen by the end of the film. Whether they’ll feel satisfied is another question entirely — especially when it comes to the film’s letdown of an ending, which was no doubt perfect on the page but lands with a deflating, didactic thud. Then again, that gnawing sense of ambivalence was no doubt precisely what Gerwig’s “Barbie” was aiming for.
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Jul 24, 2023
The fact that an indie director like Gerwig chose, for her third film, to make a lavish blockbuster tied to a major studio’s IP has unsurprisingly caused some to dismiss her as a sellout. But watching her flex her filmmaking skills on this grand a scale, and succeed at creating sparklingly original summer entertainment, has me excited to see whatever Gerwig does next, big or small.
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Jul 21, 2023
Jul 19, 2023
“Barbie” comes roaring out of the gate with an inventiveness and energy the movie perhaps inevitably can’t sustain. Amid all the hype that has made its release an increasingly rare movie-going occasion, director Greta Gerwig’s film proves an admirably ambitious attempt to ponder where Barbie fits in the 21st century – less than it could be, but pretty close to being what it should be.
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Jul 18, 2023
There is plenty in Barbie to be delighted by, even moved by. I have no doubt that the film will be a massive hit, cheered for turning a cynical I.P. project into a loopy treatise on being. But the movie could maybe have been stickier, more probing and indelible, if it had reined in some of its erratic energy and really figured out what it wanted to say.
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The Film StageJul 18, 2023
Jul 18, 2023
It’s true that Barbie does many of the things we’ve been promised: there is much mocking and loving of Barbie, and plenty of skewering of the suits. But none of those things make it subversive. Instead, it’s a movie that’s enormously pleased with itself, one that has cut a big slice of perfectly molded plastic cake and eaten it—or pretend-eaten it—too.
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