Barbie Reviews Roundup and Rotten Tomatoes Score – A Perfect Summer Blockbuster!

Just yesterday I wrote an article about when will the embargo for Barbie be lifted. There was some confusion because an earlier report from last week suggested us that the embargo for Barbie will be lifted on July 13th 2023. However, the report turned out to be false. No reviews surfaced. Just a bunch of early reactions. Shortly after the report, a tweet appeared which revealed that Barbie has debuted on Rotten Tomatoes with a perfect rating of 100%. This got fans excited but they were disappointed as the embargo lift up was delayed to July 18th 2023 by Warner Bros. Meaning one can read about critics’ real opinion on July 18th at 7 pm ET and if you’re reading from the US then you know that this date and time have passed, which means the critics’ real review are out. Let’s see what they think about Gerwig’s directorial debut.

Barbie Reviews Roundup – Debuts With 91% Fresh RT Score!

Barbie doesn’t have a perfect rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes like the earlier report mentioned but most of the reviews are overwhelming positive. The film Debuted with a 91% RT score and currently has a healthy score of 89% after 107 reviews.

David Sims (The Atlantic) –  “Combining the meta jokiness with a heap of motivational sincerity is no easy task, but Barbie is a very charming success.”

Katie Walsh (Tribune News Service) – “In this existential exegesis on what it means to be a woman, and a human, Gerwig reflects our world back to us through the lens of Barbie, and in doing so, delivers a barbed statement wrapped in a visually sumptuous & sublimely silly cinematic confection.” Original Score: 4/4

Ann Hornaday (Washington Post) – “The zaniness of Barbie, combined with Gerwig’s interest in skewering the patriarchy, sometimes makes the movie a baggy, tonally dissonant viewing experience. But for the most part, she achieves a pleasing balance between the silly and the serious.” Original Score: 3/4

Tomris Laffly (TheWrap) – “A soulful film underneath all the persistent fuchsia. One that has heart and ambition as well as abundant beauty, inside and out.”

Stephen Romei (The Australian) – “It is completely bananas, and that just might be something we need right now.” Original Score: 4.5/5

Ann Manov (New Statesman) – “For all that Mattel will profit from Gerwig’s name, there’s little here of her private reserve of outstanding sensitivity, messiness and appreciation for the beauty of… “the real world”. In their place are merely hollow overtures to feminism.”

Kimberley Jones (Austin Chronicle) – “Electric. There is such visual wit to the film, which ping-pongs between “make-believe” and “real-life,” the two-dimensional and three-dimensional. Lest that all sound too hifalutin, there are some punchlines that made me honk with pleasure.” Original Score: 4/5

Anwen Crawford (Sydney Morning Herald) – “Ultimately, Barbie the film suffers from the same problem as Barbie the character: it ends up flat-footed. The film is buoyed by jokes yet heavy with speeches.” Original Score: 3/5

Peter Howell (Toronto Star) – “What really makes this comedy click are the stellar performances, from the lead role on down. This is the funniest cast I’ve seen in some time.” Original Score: 3/4

Alice Saville (Time Out) – “This is a wonderfully fun watch that somehow manages to simultaneously celebrate and satirise the Barbie brand, its feminism and girliness pairing like gorpcore sandals with a floaty pink skirt.” Original Score: 4/5

Moira MacDonald (Seattle Times) – “Gerwig’s “Barbie” is, delightfully, more than Kenough.” Original Score: 3.5/4

Christy Lemire (RogerEbert.com) – “”Barbie,” director and co-writer Greta Gerwig’s summer splash, is a dazzling achievement, both technically and in tone. It’s a visual feast that succeeds as both a gleeful escape and a battle cry.” Original Score: 3.5/4

Chandler Levack (Globe and Mail) – “Barbie is both a master’s thesis on feminism and an Austin Powers-esque romp.”

Richard Roeper (Chicago Sun-Times) – “This is a truly original work — one of the smartest, funniest, sweetest, most insightful and just plain flat-out entertaining movies of the year.” Original Score: 3.5/4

Chris Hewitt (Minneapolis Star Tribune) – “It’s a thoughtful, funny film that cares about what Barbie means to people and it argues that Barbie — like human beings — makes mistakes but is pretty great, anyway.” Original Score: 3.5/4

Mick LaSalle (San Francisco Chronicle) – ““Barbie” is an impressive and original work of the imagination.” Original Score: 3/4

Adam Graham (Detroit News) – “Barbie is not only built for this moment, it’s built to last, just like the doll at its center. This is a Barbie you’ll want to hold onto and cherish for quite some time.” Original Score: A+

Hannah Strong (Little White Lies) – “Has a few rough edges, but Gerwig continues to dance to her own beat.” Original Score: 4/5

Clarisse Loughrey {Independent (UK)} – “Barbie is one of the most inventive, immaculately crafted and surprising mainstream films in recent memory — a testament to what can be achieved within even the deepest bowels of capitalism.” Original Score: 5/5

Alison Willmore (New York Magazine/Vulture) – “There’s a streak of defensiveness to Barbie, as though it’s trying to anticipate and acknowledge any critiques lodged against it before they’re made, which renders it emotionally inert despite the efforts at wackiness.”

Kate Erbland (indieWire) – ““Barbie” is a lovingly crafted blockbuster with a lot on its mind, the kind of feature that will surely benefit from repeat viewings (there is so much to see, so many jokes to catch) and is still purely entertaining even in a single watch.” Original Score: A-

David Fear (Rolling Stone) – “A big movie can still have big ideas in 2023. Even a Barbie movie. Especially a Barbie movie.”

Beth Webb (Empire Magazine) – “Greta Gerwig delivers a new kind of ambitious and giddily entertaining blockbuster that boasts two definitive performances from actors already in their stride. Life after Barbie will simply never be the same again.” Original Score: 4/5

Justin Chang (Los Angeles Times) – “Robbie takes an archetype long dismissed as an airheaded caricature and, moment by deeply felt moment, teases and fleshes her out.”

Robbie Collin {Daily Telegraph (UK)} – “Gerwig’s film – while still fundamentally being a summer comedy adventure about the Barbie toy line – is far from the blunt-force cash grab many of us feared. In fact it’s deeply bizarre, conceptually slippery and often roar-out-loud hilarious.” Original Score: 4/5

Lovia Gyarkye (Hollywood Reporter) – “However smartly done Gerwig’s Barbie is, an ominousness haunts the entire exercise. The director has successfully etched her signature into and drawn deeper themes out of a rigid framework, but the sacrifices to the story are clear.”

Brian Truitt (USA Today) – “Barbie is really an insightful exploration of humanity, the meaning of life and the cognitive dissonance of a woman living in the patriarchy, all with a really big heart and style to spare.” Original Score: 3.5/4

Courtney Howard (AV Club) – “Gerwig and her creative collaborators not only give the formerly inanimate figure a sparkling personality and a pastel-shellacked pop-art playground, they also deliver genuinely meaningful sentiments surrounding the complexities of gender politics.” Original Score: A-

Peter Debruge (Variety) – “Gerwig has made the kind of family film she surely wishes had been available to her when she was a girl, sneaking a message (several of them, really) inside Barbie’s hollow hourglass figure. That’s an admirable achievement.”

Devan Coggan (Entertainment Weekly) – “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.” Original Score: A-

Manohla Dargis (New York Times) – “The Mattel brand looms large here, but Gerwig, whose directorial command is so fluent she seems born to filmmaking, is announcing that she’s in control.”

Johnny Oleksinski (New York Post) – ““Barbie” is an exhausting, spastic, self-absorbed and overwrought disappointment.” Original Score: 1/4

Stephanie Zacharek (TIME Magazine) – “The things that are good about Barbie end up being steamrollered by all the things this movie is trying so hard to be. Its playfulness is the arch kind. Barbie never lets us forget how clever it’s being, every exhausting minute.”

Bill Goodykoontz (Arizona Republic) – “It’s over the top, Day-Glo in every way possible, silly and goofy. It’s also smart and thoughtful and depressing in a speak-truth-to-power, zeitgeisty kind of way — a critique of toxic masculinity and more.” Original Score: 4.5/5

Peter Bradshaw (Guardian) – “It is maybe down to Gerwig’s confidence and generosity as a feminist film-maker that she gives all the best lines to Ryan Gosling, who is allowed to steal the whole film.” Original Score: 3/5

Kyle Smith (Wall Street Journal) – “Barbie is a template for how not to write a crowd-pleasing Hollywood feature. Ms. Gerwig and Mr. Baumbach are accomplished indie filmmakers who make poor choices to flesh out these characters.”

Richard Lawson (Vanity Fair) – “There is plenty in Barbie to be delighted by, even moved by.”

Danny Leigh (Financial Times) – “At its best, the movie is like the kind of high-end restaurant that serves great food in the playful guise of favourite childhood desserts. The pleasures of that — and the chutzpah of doing it at blockbuster scale — are to be applauded.” Original Score: 4/5

Greg Nussen (Slant Magazine) – “The film is at once a journey of self-actualization and a testament to female solidarity.” Original Score: 3.5/4

Liz Shannon Miller (Consequence) – “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 — while also delivering a giddy, silly, and hilarious time.” Original Score: A-

Michael Phillips (Chicago Tribune) – “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.” Original Score: 3.5/4

Barbie’s script has been co-written with Greta Gerwig and her partner Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story, Frances Ha, White Noise). Margot Robbie will star in the titular role with Ryan Gosling playing Ken, Barbie’s male counterpart. The rest of the cast includes, America Ferrera, Simu Liu, Issa Rae, Ncuti Gatwa, Alexandra Shipp, Ariana Greenblatt, Sharon Rooney, Ana Cruz Kayne, Emma Mackay and Hari Nef.

Barbie is set to release in theatres near you on 21st July 2023.

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