‘Barbie’ Review: Greta Gerwig Strikes The Balance Between Comedy, Commentary & Camp

Greta Gerwig is making history! Three weeks after its debut in theaters, Barbie has surpassed $1 billion at the box office, making Gerwig the first female director to hit this box office milestone as a solo director.In a statement, Warner Bros. said the fantasy-comedy movie has taken in $459 million from domestic theaters — counting the United States and Canada — and another $572.1 million overseas since it hit theaters, for a total of $1.0315 billion.

This Barbie is a billionaire! Greta Gerwig‘s doll comedy starring Margot Robbie has officially earned over $1 billion at the box office.

Greta Gerwig revealed Ryan Gosling’s surprising reality TV inspiration when it came to crafting the character of Ken for the Barbie movie.  

Barbie director Greta Gerwig has revealed how she got Ryan Gosling to perform a track for the film’s soundtrack.The director was speaking as part of a new interview with Rolling Stone when she reflected on the song ‘I’m Just Ken’ – a track from the film performed by the leading actor.In the discussion, she admitted that she initially believed that he would have been reluctant to perform the song, and therefore took a very specific approach to convincing him to do it.“He has a beautiful voice, and he’s a beautiful dancer. We kind of got there organically.

Spoiler Alert: This post contains spoilers about the final scene in Barbie. Read with caution if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

Barbie is shaping up to be one of the hottest movies of the year and is racking up rave reviews.

Risks in Hollywood pay off. “Barbie” has already grossed half a billion dollars after nine days in theaters, with no signs of slowing down as the film heads into its second box office weekend.

Greta Gerwig’s bubblegum fever dream “Barbie” gave clever nod to ill-fated Barbie Land dolls — such as pregnant Midge, Ken’s BFF Allan, Tanner the pooping pup and Growing Up Skipper, to name a few.“I think I got most of them in there,” Gerwig, 39, told IndieWire of brushing off the decades of dust on the misfit toys for the new summer flick.“There’s like a million of them.”Among the many popular iterations of Barbie over the last 64 years, these unfortunate few fell flat.The “weird,” as “Barbie” narrator Helen Mirren says, concept of the pregnant figurine was born into Mattel lore in 2002.Midge — whose full name is Margaret Hadley Sherwood in the Barbieverse — was originally billed as Barbie’s best friend, but was meant to be the “ugly sidekick” to Barbie’s “dream girl” persona, M.G. Lord, the author of “Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll,” told Buzzfeed News.When Midge, played by Emerald Fennell in the summer blockbuster, was launched in 1963, the redhead could fit in all of her bestie’s outfits.But that ended when she was re-released with her magnetic bump that revealed an infant inside — nevermind the anatomical logistics.

As many predicted, Greta Gerwig‘s “Barbie” cleaned up at the box office this past weekend, with the film sitting just under $500 million worldwide. Will it break the $1 billion dollar barrier like star Margot Robbie predicted in her studio pitch? It certainly looks like it, and in such a tumultuous time for Hollywood, many people are happy about that.

the New York Times.“Certainly, there’s a lot of passion. My hope for the movie is that it’s an invitation for everybody to be part of the party and let go of the things that aren’t necessarily serving us as either women or men,” said Gerwig.“I hope that in all of that passion, if they see it or engage with it, it can give them some of the relief that it gave other people,” the director said.Gerwig was responding specifically to the interviewer’s question as to whether or not the “Lady Bird” director anticipated “the degree to which rightwing pundits are bashing the movie as being ‘woke’ and burning their Barbies.”Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro flamed the feminist themes in “Barbie” by lighting Barbie dolls and a pink toy car on fire at the start of a 43-minute YouTube review.

To say Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” is a hit is a gross understatement. Not only did the film wow critics, with a great 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, but the comedy has connected with the general public in a massive way, earning a huge $162 million in its first three days.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Greta Gerwig told The New York Times that watching her “Barbie” movie become a historic comedy blockbuster has been “so amazing.” The film debuted to a whopping $162 million, breaking the opening weekend record for a female director. It then scored $26 million on its first Monday after release, setting a new Warner Bros. in-house record for the studio’s top Monday grosser.

Barbie is a box-office success and has been receiving positive reviews for its diversity, inclusion and positive message. However, certain political circles have taken aim at the Greta Gerwig-directed film and the director is giving her take on the backlash.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Barbie,” now playing in theaters nationwide. America Ferrera’s epic “Barbie” monologue left the entire set in tears, Greta Gerwig recalled in a new interview with The Atlantic. Even the male cast members were left emotional, which the director reasoned was because they have their own speech to make.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Barbie,” now playing in theaters nationwide. Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” ends with an ingenious final joke. Margot Robbie’s eponymous doll has become human and appears to be walking into a job interview when it’s revealed that she’s actually at a doctor’s office. “I’m here to see my gynecologist,” Barbie says with a huge smile despite not having any genitals (which is joked about earlier in the film). The movie cuts to black. “With this film, it was important for me that everything operated on at least two levels,” Gerwig told USA Today about crafting that final line. “I knew I wanted to end on a mic drop kind of joke, but I also find it very emotional. When I was a teenage girl, I remember growing up and being embarrassed about my body, and just feeling ashamed in a way that I couldn’t even describe. It felt like everything had to be hidden.

Greta Gerwig had a clear vision for the story she wanted to tell with Barbie and rejected the idea of cutting a scene with Margot Robbie and an older woman on a bench.

Angelique Jackson “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig loved playing with Barbies growing up, so when the time came to bring the world’s most famous doll to the big screen, she was well-versed in Barbie lore and infused the Margot Robbie-starring movie with tons of pink plastic (and fantastic) details. “There must be thousands of B’s everywhere because they also have like designs in the carpet,” Gerwig told Variety on the pink carpet at the world premiere in Los Angeles. (She’s not kidding — we spotted the cursive “B” everywhere, on the dreamhouse walls and patterned on the windows.) Asked which “Hidden B” Easter Egg is her favorite, Gerwig played coy. “I can’t tell it. But I know it,” she teased.

Barbie featuing an elderly woman on a bench to remain in the final cut of the film.While Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) are in ‘the real world’, they pass by an elderly woman on a bench, and Barbie stops to tell the woman she is beautiful. Gerwig faced pressure to cut the scene because it didn’t add to the plot.Gerwig stood her ground, however, maintaining that the scene was ‘the heart of the movie’. “I love that scene so much,” Gerwig told Rolling Stone.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” is now playing in theaters nationwide, but one if its most emotional scenes might not have made it to the big screen had the filmmaker not held her ground against studio executives. In several interviews before the comedy’s theatrical release, Gerwig revealed that it was suggested she cut out the scene where Barbie (Margot Robbie) meets an elderly woman on a bench and tells her she’s beautiful. “I love that scene so much,” Gerwig told Rolling Stone. “And the older woman on the bench is the costume designer Ann Roth. She’s a legend. It’s a cul-de-sac of a moment, in a way — it doesn’t lead anywhere. And in early cuts, looking at the movie, it was suggested, ‘Well, you could cut it. And actually, the story would move on just the same.’ And I said, ‘If I cut the scene, I don’t know what this movie is about.'”

“Barbie” only just hit theaters today, but Greta Gerwig already knows what’s next on her slate: a new film series based on “The Chronicles Of Narnia.” And EW reports that the filmmaker is “terrified” of the prospect, but in her mind, that’s a good thing. READ MORE: ‘Barbie’ Review: An Existential & Exhilarating Comedy Cementing Greta Gerwig’s Status As A Master Storyteller “I haven’t even really started wrapping my arms around it, but I’m properly scared of it, which feels like a good place to start,” Gerwig said on the Total Film podcast.