The Beanie Bubble eventually runs out of steam. The snappy pace and colorful style — so attractive at first — later become alienating, keeping nearly all the characters locked into one dimension.

| Jul 31, 2023

The film feels like a vapid cheerleader for late-stage capitalism. It is blithely unquestioning of what the frenzy over glorified Hacky Sacks actually tells us about society.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 30, 2023

Zach Galifianakis captures the narcissism of Chicago’s Ty Warner.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 29, 2023

It is dispiriting to watch such talented people try to animate this turgid blueprint.

| Jul 29, 2023

Robbie is right that the beanie bubble represents a mad moment, as did tulip mania in 17th-century Holland, and other must-have investments before and since.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 29, 2023

The Beanie Bubble is convinced there’s a victory buried in this story somewhere. It’s just not clear who or what we should be celebrating.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 28, 2023

This is the weakest of the year's crop of pictures that purport to tell the inside story behind iconic products.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jul 28, 2023

Outside of some easy irony given the cuddliness of the product at hand, there may not be enough that makes this iteration of such a familiar cycle especially interesting.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 28, 2023

Despite its satirical tone, The Beanie Bubble largely plays things pretty straight -- indeed, a little too straight, when a bit more humor and whimsy would have helped.

| Jul 28, 2023

By offering a lazy take on power and greed, Gore and Kulash short change their talented female leads and patronise the audience.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 28, 2023

Barbie is hot, but this botch job about the Beanie Bables—another doll craze from last century—is no collector’s item as it runs off the rails and wastes such fine actors as Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks, Geraldine Viswanathan and Sarah Snook.

| Jul 28, 2023

A breezy feminist demolition of self-made-man mythology, The Beanie Bubble is marred by clunky ironic retrospection, based on showing its characters unschooled in the internet...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 28, 2023

It’s not as though Banks, Snook and the reliably charming Viswanathan don’t have their moments, but the film commits to a relentless hard sell on the Amazing Women™ each one is playing, and we don’t really believe a word.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 27, 2023

The Beanie Bubble needlessly complicates itself. But it also makes a compelling reflection of history repeating itself.

| Original Score: C | Jul 27, 2023

Screenwriter Gore codirects with husband Damian Kulash and the film struggles to figure out what story it wants to tell.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 27, 2023

It deploys every storytelling cliché in the book, from “you’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation”-style voice-overs to pat last-act monologues that reiterate the themes.

| Jul 27, 2023

The elements of a good story are here, and the talent to tell it is more than willing. The movie just never quite gets there.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 26, 2023

The Beanie Bubble is less a tale of a corporate genius than a story, three times over, of a woman scorned.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 25, 2023

There’s material here for a juicy backstage exposé yet unfortunately the story never pushes beyond the parameters of a Horrible Bosses set piece.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 24, 2023

Sometimes the storytelling can feel like a stretch, but this is mostly a lively, well-told account of a bizarre toy craze gone wrong, and the big personalities behind it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 24, 2023