Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has scored an impressive 89 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.
The film which debuted on the review-aggregation website on Wednesday (19 July) stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken.
Other cast members of the much-awaited film include Will Ferrell, Emma Mackey, Simu Liu and Michael Cera.
So far, 96 reviews have been added to the Rotten Tomatoes website, with most of the critics agreeing that Barbie is a must watch.
David Sims from The Atlantic called the film “a very charming success”, while Tomris Laffly from The Wrap said it’s a “soulful film underneath all the persistent fuchsia”.
Kimberley Jones from Austin Chronicle wrote that the film is “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.” she wrote.
Peter Howell from Toronto Star credited the cast for their “stellar” performances.
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“What really makes this comedy click are the stellar performances, from the lead role on down,” Howell wrote in his review. “This is the funniest cast I’ve seen in some time.”
Rolling Stone’s David Fear wrote: “A big movie can still have big ideas in 2023. Even a Barbie movie. Especially a Barbie movie.”
Many critics also applauded Gerwig’s filmmaking skills.
New York Times’ Manohla Dargis wrote that the Mattel brand looms large in the film, but “Gerwig, whose directorial command is so fluent she seems born to filmmaking, is announcing that she’s in control”.
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“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, said Variety’s Peter Debruge. “That’s an admirable achievement.”
In her five out of five-star review for The Independent, Clarrise Loughrey hailed the film as “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”.
Barbie is out in cinemas on 21 July. Follow The Independent’s live blog about the film here.
