Barbie
Live-action feature film based on the popular line of Barbie dolls.
- Released: 2023-07-21
- Runtime: 120 minutes
- Genre: Comedy
- Stars: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, America Ferrera, Simu Liu, Kate McKinnon, Ariana Greenblatt, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Mackey, Will Ferrell, Issa Rae, Michael Cera, Hari Nef, Scott Evans, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Emerald Fennell, Connor Swindells, Ncuti Gatwa, Rhea Perlman, Sharon Rooney, Ana Kayne, Simu Liu, Issa Rae, Hari Nef, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Demetriou, Luke Mullen, Marisa Abela
- Director: Greta Gerwig
Comments
- z-94815 - 13 June 2024
Beautiful Story
I have watched Barbie many times and i can safely say it is very enjoyable to watch, it's comforting movie scenes really make it what it is, especially the ending, every time i have watched barbie i have never been failed to cry, its such a happy movie with such a deep story, it explains all the struggles and differences we all go through in life, the power and teamwork really shows the viewers a strong idea of female friendship, it has a beautiful message behind it about sticking together and respecting others, it also shows that not everything needs to be perfect which is a strong idea for some people who don't see themselves in a good light. - paul2001sw-1 - 26 May 2024
Superficially smart, essentially dumb
First 'Toy Story', then 'The Lego Movie', first imagined toys can think, and then leaned heavily into the idea of the duality of the existence of sentient toys, used by their owners as actors in a thousand different dramas. 'Barbie' has another layer of duality to feed off: the fact that the eponymous dolls gave many girls a form of independent role-model, albeit one obsessed with clothes and looks. Unfortunately, Greta Gerwig's movie is just a little too cute: the central character is "stereotypical Barbie", another character is "Mr. Mattel", when Margot Robbie's character loses confidence in her own attractiveness, a voiceover tells us that Margot Robbie was the wrong person to cast if you wanted this scene to be convincing. Meanwhile, the world building occurs with all the consistency of an episode of 'The Simpsons'; behind the superficial cleverness and very basic feminist message, there's little here that counts as original insight. - grantss - 11 May 2024
Okayish fun
Barbie lives in Barbie Land with all the other Barbies. Ken is competing with all the other Kens for Barbie's attention. For Barbie it's quite the perfect world. Then Barbie starts to have thoughts of death and bad things start to happen.
A reasonably fun, though wildly uneven and muddled, film. The concept and setting are very imaginative and the continuity of the Barbie Land concept is fairly consistent. The film is quite funny with some top notch jokes and scenes.
Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are perfectly cast as Barbie and Ken and the remaining cast give solid support.
The plot is quite muddled though, going in all sorts of random directions. It would have been okay if it was random for the sake of fun but writer-director Greta Gerwig is determined to throw in divisive messaging wherever she can. It brings down what could have been a fairly good movie and makes for an uneven experience: passages of clever humour and great fun followed by preachy, biased, eye-roll-inducing rants. Even here the messaging is muddled, talking about equality and then advocating the opposite.
Overall, it's okay but nothing more than that.
