To live in Barbie Land is to be a perfect being in a perfect place. Unless you have a full‐on existential crisis. Or you’re a Ken. A film by Greta Gerwig, starring Margot Robbie, Issa Rae, Kate McKinnon, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Mackey, Ryan Gosling, Simu Liu, and Michael Cera

A fantasy comedy film based on Mattel’s iconic fashion dolls of the same name It is the first live-action Barbie film, following numerous computer-animated films and specials.

Margot Robbie stars as the stereotypical Barbie, living in the Barbie World (Land), with different versions of Barbies, Kens, and discontinued Barbie models. Every day, she wakes up feeling happy, follows her daily routine, and cruises around the city of Barbie Land in her pink self-driving car, greeting her fellow Barbies. Life seems perfect for her.

At a dance party in the evening, Barbie has some morbid thoughts, which shocks her fellow Barbies. She quickly brushes them off as a joke. The next morning, she wakes up to a series of misfortunes: her breath is foul, her shower water is cold, her waffle is burnt, and her milk is expired. Things go from bad to worse when she notices her feet have become flat and her thighs have developed cellulite.

Barbie’s friends urge her to see Weird Barbie, believing she is the only one who can help her with her inexplicable experiences. Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) explains that a portal to the real world has opened, creating a tear in the continuum. To become her perfect, stereotypical self again, Barbie must travel to the real world, find the child playing with her doll, and help that child.

The first 30 minutes of the film are enjoyable for their comedic references, but the film takes a nosedive once Ken (Ryan Gosling) and Barbie arrive in the real world, where their idealized expectations are shattered. The film becomes an overly long, and feels like a three-hour commercial music video for Mattel products, despite its runtime of only 107 minutes.

Barbie premiered at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on 9 July 2023, and was theatrically released in the United States and the United Kingdom on 21 July 2023. It crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide on 6 August, becoming the first film by a solo female director to do so. Barbie has since surpassed The Super Mario Bros. Movie with $1.36 billion to become the highest-grossing comedy of all time, with a current gross of $1.4 billion.