Barbie

Barbie is a 2023 satirical fantasy comedy film directed by Greta Gerwig from a screenplay she wrote with her husband, Noah Baumbach. Based on the fashion dolls by Mattel, it is the first live-action Barbie film after numerous animated films and specials. Starring Margot Robbie as the title character and Ryan Gosling as Ken, the film follows them on a journey of self-discovery through Barbieland and the real world following an existential crisis. The supporting cast includes America Ferrera, Michael Cera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell.

A live-action Barbie film was announced in September 2009 by Universal Pictures with Laurence Mark producing. Development began in April 2014, when Sony Pictures acquired the film rights. Following multiple writer and director changes and the casting of Amy Schumer and later Anne Hathaway as Barbie, the rights were transferred to Warner Bros. Pictures in October 2018. Robbie was cast in 2019, and Gerwig was announced as director and co-writer with Baumbach in 2020. The rest of the cast was announced in early 2022. Principal photography occurred primarily at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden, England, and at the Venice Beach Skatepark in Los Angeles from March to July 2022.

Barbie premiered at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on July 9, 2023, and was released in the United States on July 21. Its concurrent release with Universal Pictures' Oppenheimer was the catalyst of the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon, encouraging audiences to see both films as a double feature. The film grossed $1.448 billion and achieved several milestones, becoming Warner Bros.' highest-grossing film, the highest-grossing film of 2023 and the 14th highest-grossing film of all time at the time of its release.

Plot

A "stereotypical" Barbie resides with many different versions of herself in Barbieland, a matriarchal society created by the collective human imagination, along with Kens and a group of discontinued models treated like outcasts due to their unconventional traits. While the Kens spend their days playing at the beach, considering it their profession, the Barbies hold prestigious jobs in law, science, politics, media, and so on. Ken ("Beach Ken") is only happy when he is with Barbie, and he seeks a closer relationship with her, but she rebuffs him in favor of other activities and female friendships.

One evening at a dance party, Barbie is suddenly stricken with worries about mortality. Overnight, she develops bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet, disrupting her routines and impairing the aura of classic perfection experienced by the Barbies. Weird Barbie, a disfigured doll, tells Barbie to find the child playing with her in the real world to cure her afflictions. Barbie travels to the real world, with Beach Ken joining her by stowing away in her convertible.

After arriving in Venice Beach, Barbie punches a man for groping her, and is briefly arrested. She and Ken are then both arrested after not paying for new clothes. Alarmed by the dolls' presence in the real world and remembering the "Skipper incident", the CEO of Mattel orders their recapture. Barbie tracks down her owner, a teenage girl named Sasha, who criticizes Barbie for encouraging unrealistic beauty standards. Distraught, Barbie discovers that Gloria, a Mattel employee and Sasha's mother, inadvertently caused Barbie's existential crisis after starting to play with Sasha's old Barbie dolls and drawing Barbies with dark emotions and thoughts. Mattel finds Barbie and attempts to put her in a toy box for remanufacturing, but a mysterious elderly woman named Ruth helps her escape. Gloria and Sasha arrive just in time to rescue Barbie from Mattel's executives, and the three travel to Barbieland with the executives in pursuit.

Meanwhile, Ken learns about patriarchy and feels respected for the first time. He returns to Barbieland to persuade the other Kens to take it over. The Kens begin to indoctrinate the Barbies into submissive roles, such as agreeable girlfriends, housewives, and maids. Barbie arrives and attempts to convince the Barbies to be independent again, but becomes depressed when she fails. Gloria expresses her frustration with the conflicting standards that real-world women are expected to follow, and her speech restores Barbie's confidence.

Aided by Sasha, Weird Barbie, Allan, Writer Barbie and the discontinued dolls, Gloria uses her knowledge from the real world to deprogram the Barbies from their indoctrination. The Barbies then manipulate the Kens into fighting among themselves, which distracts them from enshrining male superiority into Barbieland's constitution, allowing the Barbies to regain power. Having now experienced systemic oppression for themselves, the Barbies resolve to rectify the faults of their previous society, emphasizing better treatment of the Kens and all outcasts. Barbie and Ken make amends, acknowledging their past mistakes. When Ken bemoans his lack of purpose without Barbie, she encourages him to find an autonomous identity. Barbie, who remains unsure of her own identity, meets with the ghost of Ruth Handler, Mattel co-founder and creator of the Barbie doll, who explains that Barbie's story has no set ending and her ever-evolving history surpasses her roots.

After bidding goodbye to the other dolls and Mattel executives, Barbie decides to become human again and return to the real world. Sometime later, Gloria, her husband, and Sasha take Barbie, now going by the name "Barbara Handler", to her first gynecologist appointment.

Cast

Tanner, a discontinued toy dog known for his defecating feature, makes a non-speaking appearance as one of the discontinued characters living with Weird Barbie.

Development

The concept of a live-action Barbie film was in development at Cannon Films in the mid-1980s. Renewed development on a film based on the Barbie toy line began in September 2009, when it was announced that Mattel had signed a partnership with Universal Pictures and producer Laurence Mark, but nothing came to fruition. In April 2014, Mattel teamed with Sony Pictures to produce the film, which would have Jenny Bicks writing the screenplay and Laurie MacDonald and Walter F. Parkes producing through their Parkes+MacDonald Image Nation banner. Filming was anticipated to begin by the end of the year. In March 2015, Diablo Cody was brought onto the project to rewrite the screenplay, and Amy Pascal joined the producing team. Sony ordered further rewrites by Lindsey Beer, Bert V. Royal and Hillary Winston, who submitted separate drafts.

In December 2016, Amy Schumer entered negotiations for the title role with Winston's screenplay. She helped rewrite the script with her sister, Kim Caramele. In March 2017, she exited negotiations, initially saying it was due to scheduling conflicts with the planned June 2017 filming; she revealed in 2023 that she left due to creative differences with the film's producers. That July, Anne Hathaway was considered for the title role; Sony hired Olivia Milch to rewrite the screenplay and approached Alethea Jones to direct as a means of interesting Hathaway in signing. Jones was attached to direct by March 2018.

In August 2018, Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz hired film executive Robbie Brenner, who was later appointed head of Mattel Films. Sony's option on the project expired in October 2018, and film rights were transferred to Warner Bros. Pictures, causing Hathaway, Jones, Macdonald, Parkes and Pascal to leave the project. Margot Robbie entered early talks for the role, and Patty Jenkins was briefly considered as director. Kreiz was determined to cast Robbie after meeting with her; both he and Brenner felt that Robbie's appearance resembled that of a conventional Barbie doll and were impressed by her ideas. Initial meetings occurred at the Polo Lounge located in The Beverly Hills Hotel. Brenner eventually partnered with Robbie's production company, LuckyChap Entertainment, and Robbie's husband Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara were enlisted as producers. Robbie's casting was confirmed in July 2019.

In her capacity as a producer, Robbie pitched Barbie to Warner Bros. herself. During the green-light meeting, she compared the film to Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993) and also jokingly suggested that it would gross over $1 billion. Later on, she approached Greta Gerwig—whose previous films, particularly Little Women (2019), Robbie enjoyed—to screenwrite. Gerwig was in post-production for another film, and took the assignment on the condition that her husband, Noah Baumbach, also write the script. Gerwig would sign on to also direct the film in July 2021. Robbie said the film aimed at subverting expectations and giving audiences "the thing you didn't know you wanted". In August 2023, Variety revealed that she would earn "roughly $50 million in salary and box office bonuses" as star and producer.

Writing

As writers, Gerwig and Baumbach were given full creative freedom. They worked on the screenplay during the 2020–2021 COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns at their house in Long Island. Baumbach felt he understood the film's purpose once Gerwig had shown him the first scene, identifying the "element" as "embracing mortality and sadness and sickness and everything that it means to be human". Gerwig was also inspired by the real-life story of Barbie creator Ruth Handler. Gerwig's film treatment consisted of an abstract poem on Barbie influenced by the Apostles' Creed. For the narrative arc, she was partially inspired by the non-fiction book Reviving Ophelia (1994) by Mary Pipher, which accounts the effects of societal pressures on American teenage girls. She also found inspiration in classic Technicolor musicals such as The Red Shoes (1948) and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), and said: "They have such a high level of what we came to call authentic artificiality. You have a painted sky in a soundstage. Which is an illusion, but it's also really there. The painted backdrop is really there. The tangibility of the artifice is something that we kept going back to." The script also contains candid criticism of Mattel, which created skepticism among Mattel officials when they received the first version. However, Kreiz decided to trust Gerwig. Brenner noted that "being safe in this world doesn't work" as she interpreted Barbie to be a "bold" and "trailblazer" figure. As a result, Will Ferrell's portrayal as the Mattel CEO was meant to be an allegory for corporate America. Kreiz praised Ferrell and said that while Mattel officials took their brands seriously, they did not take themselves seriously. Gerwig and Robbie had felt the film was "most certainly a feminist film", but Mattel officials rejected the description because of the inherent sexism and misandry. Gerwig and Robbie informed the studio that they would explore the controversies and problematic parts of Barbie, but also convinced the studio that they would respect the product.

Gerwig was also influenced by her childhood experiences with Barbie. Her mother discouraged her from purchasing such dolls, but eventually allowed her to. Opting to acknowledge the controversial nature of the Barbie doll, Gerwig chose to create a film where she would be both "doing the thing and subverting the thing", in the sense that she would be celebrating the feminism behind Barbie while also noting the controversial beauty standards associated with it. She was also fascinated by the idea that humans created dolls, which in turn imitate humans, feeling that "we're in constant conversation with inanimate objects" while also conveying an affirmative message to the audience to "just be yourself and know that that's enough". The film deliberately juxtaposed contradictory messaging, such as critiquing consumerism yet glamorizing plastic products; and in the film's ending, where Barbie desires to be more than just a plastic doll. Gerwig made the film as an "earnest attempt to make amends" between affirming women's worth and conveying the impossibility of perfection, which some perceived to be standards associated with Barbie.

Reflecting upon the maximalism of Barbie, Gerwig said the "ontology of Barbie" was similar to what she perceived as William Shakespeare's maximalism, which she enjoyed in his works. She grounded the film in what she described as a "heightened theatricality that allows you to deal with big ideas in the midst of anarchic play". She also described the film as being anarchic, unhinged, and humanist. She felt the film originated from the "deep isolation of the pandemic", opining that the line in which Barbie says "Do you guys ever think about dying?" exemplifies the film's anarchic nature. She also found the idea of Barbie being "constrained in multitudes" as "all of these women are Barbie and Barbie is all of these women" to be "trippy" and felt as a result, Barbie did not need to have her own personal life, as she was attuned to her environment. She also described the story as mirroring a girl's journey from childhood to adolescence, though she did not deem it to be a coming of age film and felt that the film ultimately "ends up, really, about being human".

Primarily, she began her writing by interpreting Barbie as living in a utopia and eventually experiencing reality, where she would have to "confront all the things that were shielded from them in this place [Barbieland]". She also drew parallels to the story of Adam and Eve and taking inspiration from John Milton's Paradise Lost, particularly being inspired by the concept that there is "no poetry without pain". To underscore the tragic elements of Barbie and Ken facing the real world, she focused on elements of dissonance. As such, she chose to keep a scene featuring Robbie's Barbie telling an older woman that she is beautiful after being requested to remove it, as she felt that the scene epitomized "the heart of the movie". She also desired to provide a "counterargument" to Barbie by featuring a scene in which Barbie learns that some women do not like her, and felt it gave the film "real intellectual and emotional power". As such, a scene is featured in which Barbie is being stared at inappropriately on the Venice Beach, which Gerwig chose to feature as she felt it was a universal experience, being especially relevant for actors. She was inspired by an audition she did in which she wore overalls and felt that she did not perform well in.

The ending of the film features Barbie saying the line "I'm here to see my gynecologist", with Gerwig describing it as a "mic drop kind of joke". She had chosen to include the line as she had wanted to instill confidence in younger girls, as she had been embarrassed about her body when she was younger. Barbie also explores the negative consequences of hierarchical power structures, with Gerwig saying that she extrapolated that "Barbies rule and Kens are an underclass" and felt it was similar to the Planet of the Apes. Ken has low self-esteem and seeks approval from Barbie, which Gerwig identified as a good source for a story. Gosling compared Gerwig's vision to Milton Glaser's I Love New York logo, as he felt Gerwig created the film's characters as a way of understanding the contemporary world. Ken has the only power ballad in the film, and Gerwig had identified it as the moment in which she felt the film transcended what a Barbie film traditionally should have been.

Casting

Gerwig and Robbie searched for actresses with "Barbie energy", a trait they described as "a certain ineffable combination of beauty and exuberance". In October 2021, Ryan Gosling entered final negotiations to play Ken in the film. America Ferrera, Simu Liu and Kate McKinnon were cast in February 2022. Liu auditioned for the film after his agent raved about the script being one of the best they had ever read. In March 2022, Ariana Greenblatt, Alexandra Shipp, and Emma Mackey were revealed to be in the cast. Will Ferrell joined the cast in April, along with Issa Rae, Michael Cera, Hari Nef, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Rhea Perlman, Ncuti Gatwa, Emerald Fennell, Sharon Rooney, Scott Evans, Ana Cruz Kayne, Connor Swindells, Ritu Arya and Jamie Demetriou. In April 2023, a trailer revealed that John Cena had joined the cast. It was later reported that Cena had spontaneously been offered a part in the film after paying for Robbie's meal in London during production. Helen Mirren narrated the film's trailer and the film itself. Robbie and Gosling were each paid $12.5 million for their participation as actors.

Olivia Colman filmed a cameo but it was cut from the film. Robbie wanted Gal Gadot to play a Barbie in the film, but Gadot was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts. Gerwig wanted her frequent collaborators Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan to make cameo appearances, but neither was available; Gerwig later revealed that during a visit to the set, Chalamet said he should have been in the film. Additionally, Bowen Yang, Dan Levy and Ben Platt were considered to play Kens. Jonathan Groff was the first choice for Allan, played by Cera, but turned it down. Matt Bomer auditioned and was offered a role but ultimately turned it down due to the production schedule. Ben Affleck was initially set to cameo during the beach fight sequence but scheduling conflicts with Air (2023) resulted in him having to back out and his role in the film was rewritten for Cera.

Filming

Principal photography began on March 22, 2022, at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden in England and wrapped on July 21. Among the notable locations was the Venice Beach Skatepark in Los Angeles, California. Rodrigo Prieto served as cinematographer. Prior to filming, Gerwig organized a sleepover with the female cast members for them to establish positive relationships, also feeling that it "would be the most fun way to kick everything off". She opted to use filming techniques from the 1950s (as Barbie had been a popular toy since 1959) to create a period-accurate look. She also watched Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946) to understand how pre-digital visual effects were used to create theatricality. To highlight the tragic nature of Barbie and Ken facing the difficulties of the real world, she directed Robbie and Gosling to act as if they were in a drama.

Post-production

Editor Nick Huoy returned to collaborate with Greta Gerwig, having also cut Lady Bird and Little Women. Finding the tone of the film was a playful experiment working collaboratively with Gerwig and VFX supervisor Glen Pratt and VFX producer Nick King. Pratt focused on blending the practical with the digital. Practical miniatures were built, scanned and captured with photogrammetry inspiring the creation of hundreds of digital miniatures to populate Barbieland vistas, set extensions, backdrops and full CGI shots. Pratt worked with visual effects studios Framestore on Barbieland scenes and UPP on the invisible effects deployed in the real world and a car pursuit sequence.

The palette chosen for the scenes in Barbieland was inspired by the classic three-strip Technicolor look, and was named TechnoBarbie. This required the creation of a software called PPL, a color correcting program which separates the image into the three basic components of blue, green, and red, which can then be manipulated individually.

Music

Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt scored the film. The score was released by WaterTower Music on August 4, 2023.

Ronson was also tasked with curating a compilation soundtrack that matched Gerwig's vision for Barbie. As the film was being edited, Ronson and Gerwig showed some of its scenes to artists they wanted on the soundtrack. The soundtrack, Barbie the Album, was released on July 21, 2023, and features music by Ava Max, Charli XCX, Dominic Fike, Fifty Fifty, Gayle, Haim, Ice Spice, Kali, Karol G, Khalid, Sam Smith, Lizzo, Nicki Minaj, Billie Eilish, PinkPantheress, Tame Impala, the Kid Laroi, and cast members Ryan Gosling and Dua Lipa. "Dance the Night" by Dua Lipa was released as the album's lead single on May 26, 2023. It was followed by "Watati" by Karol G on June 2, 2023. "Angel" by Pink Pantheress was released on June 9, 2023, as the first promotional single. "Barbie World" by Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice was released as the album's third single on June 23, 2023. The album's second promotional single, "Speed Drive" by Charli XCX was released on June 30, 2023. On July 6, 2023, the album's third and final promotional single, "Barbie Dreams" by Fifty Fifty and Kaliii was released. On July 10, 2023, Warner Bros. released a preview clip of Ryan Gosling singing "I'm Just Ken". The album's fourth single, "What Was I Made For?" by Billie Eilish, was released on July 13, 2023.

Despite fan expectations for the 1997 song "Barbie Girl" by the pop band Aqua to feature in the film, Ulrich Møller-Jørgensen, manager for Aqua lead singer Lene Nystrøm, said that it was not used; Variety speculated that it was due to bad relations between Mattel and MCA Records, the song's American publisher, who engaged in a series of lawsuits over it from 1997 to 2002. "Barbie World", a rework of the song, was instead used in the film. It samples "Barbie Girl"; Aqua is credited as a performer and co-writer on the track.

The film features multiple renditions of the 1989 song "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls and the 1997 song "Push" by Matchbox Twenty, the latter of which Ken adopts as his favorite song after visiting the real world, which becomes "a tongue-in-cheek anthem of patriarchal dominance" in the fictional Barbieland. While many reviews of the film interpreted this as a critique of the song, director Greta Gerwig said that she was a fan of Matchbox Twenty and "I never put anything in a movie I don't love." "Spice Up Your Life" by Spice Girls plays in a flashback scene showing a little girl's rough play creating "Weird Barbie".

Marketing

Barbie received an extensive marketing campaign. In the months leading up to its release, Mattel entered into several Barbie-themed promotional partnerships and collaborations with various brands, including Airbnb, Aldo Group, Bloomingdale's, Burger King Brazil, Chi Haircare, Forever 21, Gap Inc., Hot Topic, Krispy Kreme Philippines, MINISO, Primark, Progressive Insurance, Spirit Halloween, Ulta, and Xbox. Studio parent company Warner Bros. Discovery also engaged in cross-promotion through its TV channels, most prominently with an HGTV renovation reality competition series, Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge, coproduced by Mattel Television, which premiered shortly before the film's release. Trade publication Variety reported that Warner Bros. spent $150 million promoting Barbie—more than the $145 million budget used to produce the film itself.

A first-look image of the film was revealed during a Warner Bros. presentation at CinemaCon in April 2022. Released to the public on April 27, 2022, it showed Margot Robbie as Barbie, behind the wheel of her pink 1956 Chevrolet Corvette. Collider commented: "This photo is just further proof that Robbie was made to play this role. She just looks like a Barbie doll come to life—it's almost uncanny." On June 15, 2022, a second still featuring Ryan Gosling as Ken was released. Despite noting similarities between his look in the image and his previous roles, The Guardian asserted that "there is a very strong chance that this will be [Gosling's] defining role".

A Barbie booth was opened at the 2022 CCXP event in São Paulo, Brazil. The film's first teaser trailer debuted during preview screenings of Avatar: The Way of Water in December 2022. It featured a parody of the opening "Dawn of Man" sequence in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, where Robbie (clad in Barbie's original 1959 outfit) imitates an alien monolith whose influence on the history of dolls is narrated by Helen Mirren. Along with a theatrical poster, the teaser trailer was released to the public on December 16, 2022. Rolling Stone praised the 2001 homage and the trailer's vibrant colors, and remarked on its vague hints of the plot: "One has to wonder when, or better yet how, it will all get shaken up."

At the 2023 Academy Awards, Robbie co-presented a tribute to Warner Bros with Morgan Freeman. During the montage, they reflected on the roles and projects they had shared with the company, and Freeman eventually referred to Robbie as 'Barbie'.^{[citation needed]} On April 4, 2023, 24 character posters of the several Barbies and Kens featured in the film, tagged with brief descriptions, were shared on Barbie's social media accounts. Empire remarked: "You might have thought that Multiverse fever would be constrained generally to comic book films and never-would-have-called-it Oscar winners [Everything Everywhere All at Once]. But... it seems Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie will also be flooding the screen with variants, this time of plastic dolls Barbie and Ken." A second teaser trailer was unveiled shortly after the posters' release, featuring a rendition of the Beach Boys' 1964 surf rock song "Fun, Fun, Fun". The Washington Post noted that the "visually striking" and "polysemic" teaser captivated multiple demographics because of its humor, color palette, and the Barbie doll's cross-generational appeal. An official trailer for the film was released on May 25, 2023. Critics noted its existential tone set against upbeat music. Ben Travis of Empire said: "There's much to discuss here—not least, that it looks visually impeccable" and speculated Academy Awards attention for its production and costume design. A float promoting the film was featured in the 2023 WeHo Pride Parade in Los Angeles; two of its LGBTQ+ cast members, Alexandra Shipp and Scott Evans, were present.

In June 2023, a French Barbie poster went viral for including the tagline "Elle peut tout faire. Lui, c'est juste Ken" ("She can do everything. He's just Ken"). Ken is the verlan slang term for "fuck" in French—i.e. the phonological inversion of nique, while c'est ("he is") is a homophone for sait ("he knows how")—so the tagline could also be read as "She can do everything. He just knows how to fuck." Analysts concluded that the pun was most likely intentional, as the slang term is common knowledge among French speakers; Warner Bros. would neither confirm nor deny this.

Leading up to the release, pink billboards, blank apart from the film's release date, appeared worldwide, and a real-world "Barbie Dreamhouse" in Malibu, California became available to rent through Airbnb.

Actress Margot Robbie received praise for her red carpet fashion while promoting the tour. Designers including Vivienne Westwood, Hervé Léger, and Schiaparelli created custom outfits inspired by recognizable Barbie doll clothes.

On July 14, 2023, SAG-AFTRA, an American labor union of film, television and voice actors, declared a strike action, effectively halting any promotional event that involved the guild's members. Robbie showed her support for the action. SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher later claimed that the studios "duped" the guild into accepting a 12-day extension for negotiations to continue promoting summer films like Barbie. On July 21, 2023, Mattel and Miniso Group Holding Limited opened the Barbiecore flagship store in Changsha, China, coinciding with the film's theatrical release. Coinciding with the film's release, a stop motion crossover trailer with the animated film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem from Paramount Pictures, produced by Seth Rogen, was released on July 20, 2023.

Theatrical

Barbie had its world premiere at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on July 9, 2023, followed by the European premiere at Cineworld Leicester Square in London on July 12, 2023. It was released theatrically in the United States and the United Kingdom on July 21, 2023, taking over the original release date of Coyote vs. Acme. Previous iterations of the project were set for June 2, 2017; May 12, 2017; June 29, 2018; August 8, 2018; and May 8, 2020.

In August 2023, it was announced that the film would be re-released in IMAX theaters on September 22, 2023, for one week only, along with a new post-credit scene. The IMAX edition starts with an onscreen introduction by Greta Gerwig, who notes the advantages of the IMAX format. The post-credits scene includes an intro of Margot Robbie's Barbie, in her 1959 Barbie bathing suit, taking a human-sized Ken doll on camera, which transforms into Ryan Gosling's Ken; it is followed by humorous outtakes, e.g., whether Barbie should marry Barney the Dinosaur, and a voiceover by Robbie hoping people enjoyed the experience. Too, as Sarah Little notes on Screen Rant, "The meta post-credits scene features [narrator Helen] Mirren as herself walking in on Midge, played by Emerald Fennell, giving birth." The film also received a Spanish language release in the United States and Puerto Rico on the TheaterEars app.

Box office

Barbie grossed $636.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $810.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.448 billion. This was described by Warner Bros. as "reaching a Barbillion". Deadline Hollywood calculated the film's net profit as $421 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs; box office grosses, television and streaming, and home media revenues placed it second on their list of 2023's "Most Valuable Blockbusters".

It was described as a "record-breaking" box office success during its opening weekend, and set the record for any film that was not a sequel, remake, or superhero property. Barbie became the highest-grossing live-action comedy film of all time, smashing the domestic record formerly held by Home Alone (1990) and the worldwide record formerly held by The Hangover Part II (2011) simultaneously. It has also become Gerwig's highest-grossing film, overtaking its predecessor Little Women (2019). The film crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide on August 6, 2023, making it the only film by a solo female director to do so. This was also the fastest Warner Bros. film to reach $1 billion, beating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011). In late August, Barbie surpassed that same film again, becoming Warner Bros.'s highest-grossing film, not adjusted for inflation. By September 2, the film surpassed $1.365 billion at the global box office, replacing The Super Mario Bros. Movie as the highest-grossing film of the year. Additionally, it became the highest-grossing film by a solo female director, surpassing the previous record held by Jia Ling for Hi, Mom (2021).

Critical response

Barbie attained widespread critical acclaim. On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 506 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.0/10. The website's consensus reads, "Barbie is a visually dazzling comedy whose meta humor is smartly complemented by subversive storytelling." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 80 out of 100, based on 67 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled by PostTrak gave it an 89% overall positive score, with 79% saying they would definitely recommend the film.

In his review for the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips called Barbie "a lovely, eccentrically imaginative example of brand extension and raw, untrammeled commercialism", applauded the production design, and summed: "The crucial partnership here is the one between director and performer, Gerwig and Robbie; anything Gerwig and Baumbach's verbally dexterous script requires, from Barbie's first teardrop to the final punchline, Robbie handles with unerring precision." Richard Brody of The New Yorker called it "brilliant, beautiful and fun as hell", claiming the "giddily stylized vision of a doll coming to life makes a serious case for the art of adapting even the most sanitized I.P." and commended the "free and wild" direction as well as the "profuse and exquisite" visual aesthetics. Charlotte O'Sullivan of the Evening Standard hailed the film as "easily the comedy of the year" with a large amount of fun, where "star and producer Margot Robbie, and writer-director Greta Gerwig, have done themselves proud" with a "breezily outrageous" film "about a woman's right to be 'weird, dark and crazy'". Eileen Jones of Jacobin said that the film "manages to overcome cumbersome plotting and feminist pieties to provide a delightful spectacle of funny moments that add up to something pretty good".

In The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw awarded Barbie a three out of five stars, describing it as "beamingly affectionate and deliriously pink-themed" but "perhaps a giant two-hour commercial for a product" and highlighted Gosling as a scene-stealer, being given "all the best lines".

Lovia Gyarke of The Hollywood Reporter called the film a "tricky balancing act of corporate fealty and subversion" lauding Gerwig's direction, the set design, costumes, soundtrack and lead performances, but criticizing the "muddled politics and flat emotional landing". Variety critic Peter Debruge praised the humor for giving "permission to challenge what Barbie represents" and lauded Gosling's physical performance, but concluded that the film is "an intellectual experience, not an emotional one, grounded largely in audience nostalgia". In the Vulture component of New York, Alison Willmore commended the lead performances, particularly that of Robbie, whom she characterized "as capable of heartbreaking earnestness as humor, and who sometimes effortlessly achieved both at once", but lamented the themes of the film, opining that it "doesn't ultimately want to do much more than talk itself in circles about these themes". On a similar note, Stephanie Zacharek of Time praised Robbie's "buoyant, charming performance", Gosling's "go-for-broke" effort, and the "inventive production design", but criticized the "self aware" nature of the film especially following the first half-hour, concluding that it is a feminist film "only in the most scattershot way", and that it is not "subversive". A mixed review in Le Monde also expressed doubts about the treatment of the topical issue and found that the "doll drowned herself in kitsch derision" while GQ-France, regretting that the film did not prove as radical as might have been expected, found it was somehow a continuation of Little Women.

Camilla Long of The Times wrote that the film featured Mattel's "pink, squealing, corporate grasping", trying to be "ahead of the sexism curve", but "ended up feeling sexist itself" for its portrayal that "men are stupid, go to the gym, run everything and don't care about women, while women are sensible, striving but ultimately conflicted victims". In the review by Kyle Smith in The Wall Street Journal, he stated: "As bubbly as the film appears, its script is like a grumpier-than-average women's studies seminar", exemplified by the Mattel employee character's "long monologue on how miserable it is to be female". MovieWeb ranked it number 1 on its list of the "Best Comedy Movies of the 2020s (So Far)", writing that "Gerwig's ode to the Barbie girl and her Barbie world ... is as surprisingly modern and introspective as audiences have come to expect from her work. Scrunching 60 plus years of history into a two-hour time frame aside, this film gets straight at the heart of what it's like being a woman today while providing more than a laugh or two in the process." Chinese film critic Li Jingfei (李竞菲) praised the film's humor and criticism of patriarchy, qualifying that its themes were too often advanced by slogans rather than the experiences of its characters.

Filmmakers such as Allison Anders, Joe Dante, Drew Goddard, Chad Hartigan, Rachel Morrison and Paul Schrader also cited the film as among their favorites of 2023.

In June 2025, IndieWire ranked the film at number 46 on its list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 2020s (So Far)." In July 2025, it ranked number 84 on the "Readers' Choice" edition of The New York Times' list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century."

Accolades

The National Board of Review and the American Film Institute named Barbie one of the top-ten films of 2023. The film's soundtrack album and score received 12 nominations at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards. Barbie tied with Cabaret (1972) for the second-most nominations in Golden Globe Awards history, earning a leading nine at the 81st edition. It would ultimately win two awards at the ceremony, including Best Original Song (for "What Was I Made For?") and the inaugural Golden Globe for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement.

Earning 18 nominations at its 29th ceremony, the film received the most nominations in Critics' Choice Movie Awards history. Longlisted in 15 categories at the 77th British Academy Film Awards, Barbie (along with Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon) equaled the BAFTA longlist record for most nominations set by Edward Berger's German anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front (2022). It also received eight nominations at the 96th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Gosling), Best Supporting Actress (Ferrera) and two nominations for Best Original Song (for "I'm Just Ken" and "What Was I Made For?"). It eventually won Best Original Song (for "What Was I Made For?").