Barbieheimer, the crafty, endearing portmanteau of Barbie  and Oppenheimer, the two biggest blockbusters of the summer, became mainstream weeks and months before the dual-day release of each movie. Moviegoers flocked to the theaters in greater fashion than even 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick. This ultra-successful, undeniably popular film has become universally accepted as helping bring people back to theaters following the COVID-19 pandemic. Some would say that it saved movie theaters entirely. As someone who sees two, three, or sometimes even more movies in the theater each month, often being one of a small handful of patrons, I am in that camp.

Top Gun: Maverick grossed $127 million in its opening weekend, a fantastic number. Barbie ($162 million) and Oppenheimer ($83 million). With each filming budgeting around $100 million, each movie is a smashing success and, as it looks now, benefited from a same-day release. The number of people who saw the films on the same day or consecutive days was even more impressive.

Barbie earned the 19th-highest opening weekend gross of all time, while Oppenheimer earned the 111th-highest. These are incredible feats, considering that neither is a superhero or animated film, and is doing so in a day and age where moviegoers have, more often than ever, sacrificed going to the theater because of the cost of doing so and the home theater experience being an equal, or often better, alternative.

Critically, each movie is a massive hit, with Oppenheimer (94% critics, 92% audience) slightly ahead of Barbie (89% critics, 86% audience). In perhaps the most unpopular movie opinion of the summer of 2023, I am confident that each film is overrated. I’d go so far as to say that neither movie is even particularly good. As I wrote in my review of Barbie, I was frustrated by the film’s style. I understand what it was trying to say, though it wasn’t nearly as revolutionary in 2023 as it might have been in 2013. Its purposeful obscurity in its promotion left people wondering whether it was a film made for adults or for kids who enjoy the doll and want to learn the magic behind Barbieland. This, undoubtedly, resulted in confusion for some and irritation for others. It was irritating for me, as by the third act, I couldn’t wait for the film to end.

With Oppenheimer, it was more boredom than anything else. Though it was three hours, it didn’t necessarily drag or even feel that long. Instead, it was much more dialogue-driven than I expected from a Nolan movie. If you didn’t like Dunkirk (I did enjoy that film), it might be even more challenging to enjoy Oppenheimer. Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) each had fantastic performances from their leads, as well as solid performances (Oppenheimer with Robert Downey Jr., Barbie with Ryan Gosling) from the two main supporting actors. Each film was directed by a Hollywood heavyweight (Greta Gerwig, Christopher Nolan). Sadly, most of the positive similarities between the two films end there.

Nolan (Interstellar, Inception) might be the most admired and sought-after director. Oppenheimer marks his twelfth feature-length film. All have earned a Rotten Tomatoes audience score of 75% or higher, and all but one (Tenet, 69%) have the same with critics. I’ve seen all of his films (except Tenet) and have appreciated and enjoyed all eleven. I admired Oppenheimer to an extent, but I did not enjoy it. It was long, tedious, and more meddlesome than thought-provoking, educational, and entertaining. Of Nolan’s 12 credits, only Dunkirk is based on a real-life event. Appreciated for its mastery of editing, sound mixing, and production design, Dunkirk’s biggest flaw was its story. Oppenheimer told an important story that most likely only knew parts and pieces. However, its story could have been more entertaining. Nolan’s films (The Dark Knight Rises, Inception, Interstellar, The Prestige, and more) are known for keeping audiences glued to the edges of their seats with their pulsating action sequences or can’t-turn-away suspense. Oppenheimer didn’t have either of these characteristics.

Murphy (28 Days Later, Red Eye) stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, who led the United States’ development of the first nuclear weapons during World War II. We stay with our lead character throughout the 180-minute film, following his life through back-and-forth narration and shifting points of view. While the dropping of the two atomic bombs occurred in 1944, the film opens in 1954 at the start of a security hearing as Admiral Lewis Strauss (a vindictively captivating Robert Downey Jr. – Iron Man 3, The Judge) is working to get his security clearance revoked, believing he has ties to communism and is a threat to American security. We flashback to 1947, when Strauss first met Oppenheimer and appointed him Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. There is one scene in particular that we see from Strauss’s perspective as he walks toward Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein. We don’t know what the two men say to each other, but the look on Einstein’s face as he passes Strauss informs us that they weren’t discussing the weather.

Nolan transitions us throughout the movie between the 1954 Congressional hearing and other points of Oppenheimer’s life, including his time as a physics major at Cambridge University, his Ph.D. studies at the University of Gottingen, and his teaching at the University of California Berkeley, the pursuit of his future wife, Kitty Puening (Emily Blunt – A Quiet Place Part II, Sicario), a member of the Communist Party, and his selection by General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon – The Martian, Elysium) to be the director of the Manhattan Project, its goal to create and deploy the world’s first atomic bomb.

The highlight of the film is Murphy’s performance. He’s a lock to earn a Best Actor Academy Award nomination and is the current frontrunner to win. He engulfs himself in the role, bringing credibility to Oppenheimer while exposing his vulnerability, remorse, and inability to stand up for himself, even when he is unfairly attacked, and part of a mudslinging campaign intended to destroy his credibility. Murphy helped lift the performances of the incredible ensemble, including Oppenheimer’s mistress, Janet (Florence Pugh – Midsommar, Don’t Worry Darling).