Mark Ronson Claps Back at Bill Maher Over ‘Barbie’

Bill Maher is not invited to Mark Ronson’s mojo dojo casa house. After Maher took to social media to criticize Barbie, Ronson clapped back at the late-night host for denouncing Greta Gerwig’s “f**cking magnificent comedy.” 

Earlier this week, the Real Time With Bill Maher host tweeted that he found Barbie to be “preachy” and “man-hating,” particularly taking issue with the fact that the film depicts the Mattel board as entirely comprised of men. “Spoiler alert, Barbie fights the Patriarchy,” Maher tweeted. “Right up to the Mattel board who created her, consisting of 12 white men! The Patriarchy! Except there’s a Mattel board in real life, and it’s 7 men and 5 women. OK, not perfect even-steven, but not the way the board IN THE MOVIE – which takes place in 2023 – is portrayed.” 

Ronson, who produced The Barbie Album and also composed the film’s score, channeled Nicole Kidman’s iconic AMC ad when replying to Maher’s critique of the film. “We come to this place for magic,” tweeted Ronson. “We come to AMC theaters to laugh, to cry, to care… and to furiously google ‘mattel board configuration’ while others are trying to enjoy a f***king magnificent comedy.”

While Barbie has made over a billion dollars at the global box office, there seems to be at least one country that’s as uninterested in the film as Maher. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Barbie has flopped in South Korea, a major international market for many Hollywood films. Barbie finished in eighth place at the box office last weekend, earning just $273,414, with only a 1.2% advance ticket sales rate, THR reported, citing the Korean Film Council. Oppenheimer, meanwhile, has a 35.8% advance ticket sales rate in South Korea ahead of its August 15 release date there. Since its release on July 19 in South Korea, Barbie has reportedly sold only 518,172 tickets, earning a total gross of $3.8 million.

Barbie is no stranger to challenges in the Asian market. The film is banned in Vietnam due to a scene featuring a map that shows China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, an area contested by Vietnam and other nations. As for Barbie’s poor showing in South Korea, Kang Yu-jeong, a professor of cultural contents at Kangnam University in the city of Yongin, pointed to the film’s focus on gender as a potential explanation. “Given how gender has been politicized and became a polarizing issue in Korea in the past few years, young people seem to be easily exhausted by discussions around gender,” Kang told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s such a sensitive topic for the younger generation —the film’s main target—that they want to avoid it entirely.”

Min Yong-joon, a Seoul-based film critic and author, pointed to the film’s American roots as another potential reason for its disconnect with the South Korean audience. “The humor related to Ken dressed in Western outfits dreaming of imaginary horses in the real world just did not translate here,” he told THR, adding, “The film had a very particular American context. The kitsch references also didn’t seem to communicate well.”