Gabby's Dollhouse: The Movie

“While the visuals lean heavily into traditional gender coding, Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie avoids toxic messages.”

Title: Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie (2025)
Director: Ryan Crego 👨🏼🇺🇸
Writers: Screenplay by Mike Lew 👨🏻🇺🇸 and Rehana Lew Mirza 👩🏽🇺🇸 based on the TV series by Traci Paige Johnson 👩🏼🇺🇸 and Jennifer Twomey 👩🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

—SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 2/5

Since its debut in 2021, the Netflix series Gabby’s Dollhouse has become a marketing powerhouse, with apparel and toys available for purchase at every turn. When you’ve got your own Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon, you know you’ve made it. So, when I took my 3-year-old to see the DreamWorks adaptation in a theater packed with kids, the giddy excitement was palpable.

A tie-in movie with such an easy audience ought to be a slam dunk. Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie opens charmingly enough, with plenty of punchlines (and ye olde fart jokes) greeted with peals of laughter. However, the repetitive quest structure—Gabby (Laila Lockhart Kraner) goes to save MerCat (voiced by Secunda Wood), then Kitty Fairy (Tara Strong), then the resentful Chumley (Jason Mantzoukas)—begins to feel like completing a list of chores, and the theater quieted. It ultimately runs about 20 minutes too long, and forgettable musical numbers further deflate the momentum.

Narratively, we didn’t need DreamWorks to reinvent the wheel. But it’s hard to get away from the considerable shadow cast by Pixar’s Toy Story, which hit the pinnacle of the sad-toys-that-aren’t-played-with-anymore story beats back in 1995. The soft-focus scenes of Chumley remembering bygone days of being a girl’s beloved stuffy might work for the kiddos who have yet to see Toy Story. But for any viewer familiar with Woody and Buzz, Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie feels like reheated leftovers. Kristen Wiig’s delightful performance as the cat-obsessed CEO of a kitty litter empire, Vera, marks a high point, but even she can’t save the rambling script.

Gender: 4.25/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

The movie features a majority-female cast, including the protagonist, Gabby, her mentor, Grandma Gigi (Gloria Estefan), and the villain, Vera, in leading roles. While the visuals lean heavily into traditional “girl” coding, saturated with pinks, purples, and glitter, the script avoids toxic messages. This isn’t Barbie’s body image notoriety, Bratz’s hypersexualization, or Disney Channel’s tropey heroes, such as Lizzie McGuire, who’s obsessed with clothes, boys, and popularity. Instead, Gabby and Gigi encourage more positive—and gender-neutral—traits, such as curiosity, playfulness, and loyalty.

This isn’t to say that characters never get to wear a fun outfit and feel cute. On the contrary, characters like MerCat and Kitty Fairy go all in on princess vibes. Vera is frequently referred to as “fashionable,” and her ridiculous pleather ensembles are a key source of entertainment. But there’s a lovely range of gender presentation in the cast, from neutral sweethearts like Baby Box (Maggie Lowe) and Cakey (Juliet Donenfeld) to personalities that skew more masculine, including Pandy (Logan Bailey), Cat Rat (Donovan Patton), and Chumley. Breaking free from Barbie-Ken binaries, this range offers multiple touchpoints for children to see themselves represented.

Race: 4/5

The movie only has a few human characters to showcase racial and ethnic diversity. Among them, Gabby is multiracial, Gigi is Latina (played by Cuban American Estefan), and Vera is white. But other than some cultural nods through Gigi’s occasional Spanglish and Latin warmth, the diversity is largely surface-level.

Behind the screen, voice actors are mostly white. However, it’s worth noting that the character most closely associated with femininity and beauty, MerCat, is voiced by Black actor Wood. While it’d be more impactful to see a dark-skinned mermaid, rather than MerCat’s light teal, the casting at least counters stereotypes of Black girls and women having to be “strong” or “tough.” MerCat is pretty, and she needs saving, y’all. In another win for the offscreen team, screenwriters Mike Lew and Rehana Lew Mirza are Chinese American and Pakistani American, respectively.

Mediaversity Grade: C+ 3.42/5

Despite reinforcing some gender norms through its visual language, the film thankfully sees girls and women showcasing creativity and supporting their friends, rather than focusing on looks or popularity.

But more important than what a 40-year-old thinks about a kid movie is what kids think about a kid movie: Both boys in my group (who are 3 and 5 years old) enjoyed the film, though one did lean over to his mom and whisper that the movie was “long.” Let’s be real, though; take kids (and grown-ups … ) to a movie, and their favorite part will probably be the popcorn and snacks. Priorities!

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Grade: CLiSeptember 24, 2025Female/Nonbinary Creator