“Barbie” is everywhere.

The idea of taking Mattel’s number 1 doll and blanketing the world with her has worked. Greta Gerwig’s movie tie in to a toy has such high awareness that Warner Bros. is confident of making $100 million in the opening weekend.

But so far there have been no actual reviews. The studio has held them until this moment for a good reason. “Barbie” is a complicated release. Despite plucky stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, and a stylized production design for the ages, the movie itself is a mystery shrouded in a puzzle. Who is this movie for? Beats me.

The movie opens pre-credits with no less than Helen Mirren telling the history of dolls in a Kubrickian send up. Little girls are out on the cliffs playing with old fashioned dolls until — in a sequence set to “Also Sprach Zarathustra” — a towering Barbie appears like the obelisk in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The girls smash their old dolls violently and embrace Barbie. (The American Girl company may object to this.)

Cut to Barbie Land, all Pepto Bismol pink. All the girls are named Barbie, all the men are Ken except for one, called Alan (Michael Cera), Everything in Barbie Land is fake, and director Gerwig plays it for laughs — especially the mild sex stuff including jokes about having no genitalia, and no idea why Ken wants to spend the night with Barbie. (“We’re boyfriend and girlfriend!” he cries, befuddled.) But the laughs wear thin quickly.

Barbie’s world is turned upside down when she discovers a creeping sense of death and darkness. All of a sudden her world goes wrong: her perfect feet go flat, and she’s askew. She’s sent to see Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon, in an inspired turn), who says someone is playing with her in the real world who’s got dark thoughts, basically. She says Barbie must cross the line into reality, find that girl, and set her straight. Barbie and Ken set off on their voyage in Barbie’s convertible.

They head straight for Los Angeles and Mattel, “the mothership,” which is run by Will Ferrell. He wants Barbie to get back in a box so she can be shipped back to her imaginary world. She has other ideas.

The fun really stops there. Once this charmingly nitwit duo arrive in Los Angeles, the movie loses its cool groove. Set up as a strangers in a strange land, “Barbie” suddenly become a polemic about “the patriarchy” and endless talk of female empowerment. After Mattel, they find the culprit: America Ferrara, playing a frustrated feminist whose young daughter is giving away her toys a la “Toy Story.” Now Barbie knows why she felt so bad: she’s been rejected.

There’s some wink wink stuff, and breaking of the fourth wall — Mirren’s narration interrupts a scene to point out how beautiful “Margot Robbie” is — but it all starts to sound like noisy feedback. The movie hits a speed bump when America Ferrara (who I always like) delivers a dry filibuster about Women, with a capital W. Robbie kind of stares it her agape throughout. Her thought balloon must be, “I’m glad I didn’t have to say that.”

No one is more invested in this movie than Robbie and Gosling. They are completely committed, which is the only reason why the good parts work at all. They’re very charming. But they can’t overcome the turn in the second hour into preachy politics. Gerwig seems a little lost in this film after being so assured with “Lady Bird” and “Little Women.” I don’t think she is a director for hire. She’s an auteur who’s better than studio assignments. Who is this movie for? Little girls? Young women? If they go for this, I’m happy for them. But “Barbie” is a shiny brightly wrapped gift that loses its luster very quickly. Go for the fun, ignore the rest.

It was an unusual premiere last night in New York for Christopher Nolan’s Oscar buzzed “Oppenheimer.”

The screening at AMC Lincoln Square IMAX was packed, drawing an eclectic crowd of recognizable faces including media mogul Barry Diller and punk rock queen Patti Smith. Prodicer/activist Trudie Styler was accompanied by her son, Jake Sumner, who’s got a great documentary coming to Netflix this fall about rock and roll promoter Ron Delsener. (Sting is touring all the world to sell out crowds.)

But there were no SAG members of note, no stars from the film as the union strike prevents any promotion of films.

Director Nolan was there to introduce the film, and thanks his crews around the world. An avowed enemy of streaming, Nolan made short remarks supporting the striking actors and writers, noting “changing business models that have not kept pace” and “need to be changed.” He said very politely, very British, “We need to get back to work as soon as possible so we can keep doing what we love.”

“Oppenheimer” is three hours, and nine minutes long. Already the raves are piling in. Director Paul Schrader said to me and later Tweeted that it’s the best film of the century.” That was a lot coming from him since Schrader is bffs with Martin Scorsese, who’s got the spectacular “Killers of the Flower Moon” coming in October — and will be “Oppenheimer'”s competition in awards season. (Watch for Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., and Emily Blunt to be on the top of lists.)

Great food at the Natural History museum, and plenty of it since Universal scaled back the party so severely. But Universal chief Donna Langley was busy accepting kudos on her promotion to Head of Everything including Movies and TV. Langley has risen through the ranks over two decades, and she’s the only one in Hollywood who seems to know what they’re doing these days!

I’ll start my piece about Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” with this: I’m in deep admiration of people who can raise millions of dollars simply to indulge themselves. I also admire the actual investors. That they have this much money to squander on spending time with movie stars, that’s pretty swell.

“Asteroid City” is playing on Amazon Prime now. I paid 20 bucks to see it, and I’d like it back. Is it well made? Sure. The art direction is precious, perfect, contrived, impeccable. It all looks good. But it adds up to absolutely nothing. It’s a fraud.

Anderson has made some terrific movies in this vein before. “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Moonrise Kingdom” were very clever. His films before that — “Bottle Rocket” and “The Royal Tennenbaums” — were amusing and off beat. But Anderson has reached the point where he’s having a laugh at our expense. First it was “The French Dispatch,” a box office disaster, and now “Asteroid City.”

Dozens of familiar faces dot this film shot in Spain at I’m sure tremendous expense. So far the film has made about $25 million in the US. It’s like petty larceny on the part of the filmmakers. Everyone wants to be in the cool group at school so you go see a movie with Edward Norton, Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwarzman and a bunch of people who are in on the joke. But the joke is on us.

Anderson is one of the most indulged directors in modern history. Years ago, some studio was putting him up a boutique hotel on Irving Place and footing his bills. Now they say he’s living in France, I’ll bet he’s having a great time. He can pick up the phone and summon two dozen name actors to Europe for a six week shoot and someone pays the bill — even if the actors have no lines, or the movie has no plot.

“Asteroid City” is sort of like an unfunny parody of “Oppenheimer.” It’s set in the desert in 1955, where the children of rich people come to be in a science camp. An alien lands in this Area 51, so the people are quarantined. Not a lot happens. There’s little comedy and no drama. Actors make cameos, say silly things, and waste a lot of time. Scenes are sketches that go to black. Everyone has a contrived, meaningfully funny name. Schwarzman plays a war photographer named Steenbeck because that’s the name of the editing machine used in pre-digital times. So clever! You spend more time figuring out the names in these films than following the story.

The sets are built on a soundstage against painted backgrounds. There’s a lot of effort to make the film look surreal or animated. No one, however, is animated, in the real sense. Everyone is disaffected, droll, detached. The actors have cool costumes.

The space or science camp, it turns out, is fiction. The actors are making a movie. Sometimes we go backstage, where there’s some discussion of what’s happening in the shots. Listen, we’ve all been backstage a lot. Go see “Noises Off.” This is a worn out gimmick by now. How about an actual movie?

The next Anderson movie is based on Roald Dahl’s “The World of Henry Sugar.” There are just a few characters. If it’s not a substantial leap out of this morass, disappointment will be heavy. It’s time to take all this brilliance and making something meaningful, not just attractive.