Movies Based on Toys and Games, Ranked Worst to Best
Greta Gerwig's new Barbie film may be getting all of the attention this month, but it's far from the first film to attempt to bring a children's toy line to the big screen. While some of those adaptations have been dismissed as nothing more than feature-length toy commercials, others have been successful in spite of their origins. In the gallery on this page, we rank over three dozen such films from worst to best according to their Metascores, which represent the consensus views of leading professional film critics.
All of the films are based on pre-existing toys—including tabletop games and trading cards—though we have omitted any films for franchises that were already well established as television shows (or comics) prior to becoming toys. In addition, we have also excluded any films with fewer than four reviews from critics (our minimum required for calculating a Metascore)—a group that mainly includes direct-to-video features (including, by the way, most of the previous Barbie movies).
Actress turned filmmaker Greta Gerwig followed her first two wildly acclaimed films—Lady Bird and Little Women—with something very, very different: the first live-action film based on Mattel's immensely popular doll line. (Mattel previously made over a dozen animated Barbie films for television and home video.) Co-scripted by Gerwig's frequent collaborator Noah Baumbach, the meta 2023 comedy stars Margot Robbie as (a) Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken as part of a terrific cast that also includes Kate McKinnon, America Ferrera, Issa Rae, Will Ferrell, and Helen Mirren, among others. If it's successful—and early tracking certainly suggests that it will be—expect a sequel as well as a potentially massive Mattel Cinematic Universe that could see everything from Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots to the card game Uno turned into live-action films. (We can't wait to see which actor takes on the role of Draw 4!)
“It's Gerwig's care and attention to detail that gives Barbie an actual point of view, elevating it beyond every other cynical, IP-driven cash grab.” —Devan Coggan, Entertainment Weekly