The film opens with Barbie, Teresa, and Renee video-chatting and playing an online video game Barbie is working on reprogramming. However, halfway through the level, the game freezes and she cannot figure out why the code isn't working. Teresa and Renee sign off and Barbie gets out a book on coding. The online tutorial of the game, a little cloud-shaped character, pops up, but Barbie cancels it and it almost seems dejected as it goes away.Chelsea arrives as Barbie tries to code the level. She asks Barbie if she wants to play their favorite game, Just Dance, but Barbie says she'd like to figure out where the error in the code lies first. Chelsea attempts to play the level, at Barbie's encouraging, but she's too scared to take her character through the cave at the beginning of the level, and she says to Barbie she'd prefer a game that fits her strengths better, if Barbie could create one.As Chelsea goes to get cupcakes for them, Barbie returns to scanning the book about coding, to see if there's anything she missed. Suddenly, the little cloud in-game tutorial appears on the screen of her tablet, nearby, saying he offers a trial of a new video game and would she like to join. Barbie touches the "yes" option on the screen to see what the game is, and suddenly is sucked into the tablet in a swirl of code. She appears as an anime-type character in a world where a huge race course winds through over-sized carnival attractions and rides. The cloud appears and introduces himself as Cutie, the tutorial for the game. He created a portal to suck Barbie into the game because as someone skilled in games and code, she is the only person he could think of who could help him reset the game. To do this, one has to beat all the levels. If the game is not reset, it will be taken over by the 'emoji' virus. Barbie realizes that little two-legged, arm-less yellow characters called emoji run around happily playing in the background of the levels, but several pink versions of them are also wandering around, angrily destroying bits of the game and the code itself and turning all yellow characters pink when they touch them. The virus corrupts everything it touches and probably was the reason Barbie's code was not working earlier.Unable to get home without beating the three levels, and unwilling to see the in-game world destroyed now that she's realized the characters in the game are sentient, Barbie agrees to skate the race course. However, the instant she steps on the start/finish line, two people suddenly show up either side of her. They introduce themselves as Bella and Chris and immediately make it clear they win at all costs, even competing with each other on simple thing like who looks the best besides the actual race itself. Barbie recognizes them as the NPCs, or Non-playable characters a player races against, in this level. As they race their way through the course, Barbie tries to explain to them the situation, but the two are too busy trying to outdo her and each other and don't seem to grasp that they have to let her win. Barbie realizes it's because they are coded to compete against everyone and everything and tries to outrace them with mixed results, mostly due to power-ups they each find on the way.Things take an ugly turn when Chelsea, returning with the cupcakes, can't find Barbie and notices the racing game going on on the tablet screen. She tries to make the game work but when she tilts the tablet around nothing appears to happen. In the video game world, everything shakes and rocks uncontrollably as the tablet is rotated, and the virus, now mutated to have more individual 'bugs' than before, starts to pour over all the giant carnival rides and games in the landscape. Chelsea tosses the tablet away and leaves to eat the cupcakes, but in the interval Chris and Bella have noticed the swarming intruders, especially when they cause bits of scenery and a giant Ferris wheel to career across the race track using a tornado power up, narrowly missing injuring them. Barbie finally manages to get through to them that competing isn't the goal right now as much as saving the game is. Chris has heard the term "Team" before (though he mispronounces it as "tee-um") but he doesn't know what it means. Bella catches on quicker and she and Barbie together work to jump over the damage the virus caused, though Bella sees it as them defeating Chris more than teamwork.Barbie, crossing the finish line first, wins the level, and a portal to the next phase of the game opens. She tries to convince Chris and Bella to join her and Cutie in their quest, as, if they stay, they'll be corrupted and consumed by the virus. Neither NPC has left their level before, and did not realize it was possible to do so up until now. Behind them, the race course is completely destroyed, and they decide they have no choice and follow Barbie. As they pass through the portal and fall through layers of code, Barbie receives a little star-shaped award, which turns out to actually give her access to some of the game's code. Cutie explains that they can earn many of these stars as they go and that having enough of these can help hold back the virus.They arrive in the next level through another portal, and see a crystal-studded tree in the middle of a field. Everything in this level, including the trio when they arrive, is cartooned and 2-dimensional. There's no real indication how the level works, and Cutie isn't allowed to tell them more than basics. They notice a large gathering of squirrels, each with a pile of nuts, who are throwing the nuts at the tree and clearly attempting to knock it down. Chris and Bella agree to help Barbie, but are distracted by the freedom of taking a break from their level. They start competing who can relax the best, and then realize that they still aren't helping and that they still don't really know what "help" or "team" means. Barbie, who has assumed the game is to fell the tree, starts throwing acorns as well, making the tree teeter dangerously, until Chris and Bella rejoin her and point out that there is a little girl in the top of the tree. Cutie indicates they are to talk to the girl, and Barbie calls to her and discovers this part of level 2 is actually a match 3 game. The squirrels have purple-pink shapes in their eyes, which on closer inspection is miniature versions of the virus bugs - the virus has already been here and corrupted part of this level. The squirrels were NPC's once, in this level, as is Crystal. Now they are trying to corrupt and destroy her as well, and to make matters worse she's too afraid of heights to just climb down the tree trunk.As matching 3 brings the level of the tree down until it reaches the ground. Barbie asks Chris and Bella to cover her while she tries to match 3 on the tower and get Crystal safely to earth so she can escape the level with them, but they don't really understand this concept either. Chris thinks throwing a power-up at the squirrels will help, but this only makes them faster while it lasts. Taking fallen branches from Crystal's tree, they split and bat the acorns as they fly at the tree while continuing to match 3 an bring the top of the tree lower to the ground, until Crystal can climb back out. A squad of approaching virus bugs and squirrels form a swarm and immediately pursue them, and Crystal leads them to back of her tree house, where among the other normally non-playable scenery is a car. Cutie, knowing where the portal is, offers to drive and takes them on a wild ride at top speed across the level as they try to avoid the ever-growing swarm of squirrels and virus bugs. They only barely succeed to get there and close the portal in time, though they know that only will temporarily halt the virus.As they fall through the layers of code and gather more trophy 'stars', Barbie lectures Chris and Bella about never leaving a team member behind and what helping really means. The two, proud of themselves for what help they did manage in saving Crystal, vow to do better. Barbie notices a portal open in the side of the wall - normally they are at the ends of the tunnels of code layers. She asks Cutie about it, but he says it's just a bonus level they managed to unlock. Beating it won't help stop the virus, and it's a risk Crystal, Chris, Bella and Cutie all deem not worth taking. Barbie reminds them there may be NPC's in the level who need help and she can't in good conscience leave anyone behind. She goes through the portal and finds herself as Anime again. There is a techno-looking race course of loops and twists, with rock music visualizations all about. There, she meets Maia and Gaia, a pair of twins who are shocked someone has unlocked their level - they haven't gotten to play with anyone in a long time. Barbie tries to explain to them, as they run the race course, but it's quickly evident that she cannot hope to keep up with their super speed.The now huge horde of virus bugs follow Barbie into the level and start dismantling it and causing glitches. With the use of a power-up, Barbie is able to temporarily get up to the twins and tell them what the virus, which they are now fleeing from, is and that they have to let her win. Maia and Gaia immediately agree with her, but there's a problem - they physically cannot move at any speed slower than their preset, once on the track, no matter how much they try or want to. They win the race and Barbie is teleported out of the bonus level and into the code tunnel again, heartbroken that she couldn't save them.Cutie, upon hearing what happened, stops speaking in rhyme (as he had done up until this point), and drops his facade of just being the helpful tutorial and nothing more. He explains the real reason he summoned Barbie to help was that he himself created the virus. Constantly overlooked and never getting the chance to do his job, as no one wanted to watch the tutorial before the game, he used the access he has to the code as the in-game tutorial to create some new NPC friends - the yellow emoji - by rearranging a bit of code to bring some yellow emoji cookies in the carnival land to life so he'd have some friends to talk to. Unfortunately, never having coded before, he didn't realize that other things could be brought to life. After creating a few dozen yellow emoji characters, he managed to bring to life one of the pink angry-face emoji cookies by mistake, and this single one became a virus bug and proceeded to infect all the yellow emoji and everything else it came in contact with. If Maia and Gaia are consumed or corrupted, he views it as his fault, and tells Barbie he's sorry he ever started this and that he should have never tried to change the code of the game. However, upon hearing the story about how much altering the code can change things in this world, Barbie is inspired to use her coding skills as an aid and rescue the twins.The group arrives in the last level, which turns out to be a Minecraft-style world of bricks and building, and they all appear as blocky shapes. Barbie immediately uses one of her code stars to change the code of a small section of level, so she can reopen the portal to Maia and Gaia's level. Cutie warns that the virus will catch up to this level if they delay, but Barbie is determined to leave no one behind. The level restarts and Maia and Gaia are forced to run, narrowly avoiding the approaching virus. Barbie tries to re-code the level but having only one star to work with doesn't help as much as she'd like, allowing her some shortcuts but still not making her fast enough. Bella arrives, having finally correctly grasped the concept of teamwork, and she helps launch Barbie to the finish line. The level won, a new portal opens and Bella, Barbie, and the twins all escape back to Level 3, returning to their blocky forms. Once out of their level, Maia and Gaia realize they can move as slow as they like, or not at all, in this new level, and are excited at their new freedoms. Bella and Barbie reveal each of them have acquired several bonus code stars as trophies for winning the bonus level.Before the gang can figure out what to do to win this level, the virus arrives in a massive swarm, forcing them to scatter. Having observed their teamwork from the bonus level, the virus bugs mutate and work together to form a gigantic bouncing ball, smashing everything in its path and attempting to smash Barbie and her friends. Nearly everyone manages to find each other in a safe hiding place under a hill, but Chris does not make it. He attempts to wave to them to let them know he found a hiding place and not to worry, but this alerts the virus ball to their location. They are forced to decoy it by all running into its path and yelling "over here" until it is thoroughly confused, giving them time to hide. Chris finds a pulse blaster power-up and uses it to buy more time, stunning the virus ball. He brings the empty blaster, once the power-up's time is out, to the cave with him.Barbie sees a virus bug turn back into a friendly yellow emoji when it bumps into a star, and decides that if she puts the code stars in the blaster they can use it to shoot the giant ball and turn it back normal so they can figure out what this level is and how to win it. However, the ball won't hold still long enough for a clear shot. A giant tree with in-level portals, rather like the side tunnels in Pac-man, resides in the center of the landscape, and the team again lure the virus ball by shouting 'over here' to it. Once in the tree, Crystal panics at how high up she is and effectively block's Barbie's shot to the teleporter that would allow several stars to strike the ball from all sides and turn it back to normal. Barbie encourages her to face her fear, and she climbs down, allowing Barbie to make the shot. UNfortunately, it only turns part of the ball back yellow, and there are other virus bugs on the ground not part of the ball. These remaining ones mutate again and gather with the remnants of the ball to form a great purple-pink giant that rampages across and destroys most of the rest of the landscape.Having no coding stars left, Barbie isn't sure what else they can do. Bella reveals she held one back, just because she'd never had a trophy - NPC's don't get to have them in their own levels. Barbie excitedly uses it and this time decides to take a risk, aggressively re-coding the level to change its very nature to a copy of the Just Dance game. She assumes a rampaging monster can't dance, but the virus monster simply mutates again to a dancing monster. Now unable to compete properly thanks to having only a pixelated body with no elbows or knees or flexibility, Barbie starts to lose the dance competition. She begs Cutie to help, but he is afraid to use his code access again. She tells him she knows he can figure it out if he really tries, and Cutie agrees to help, switching Barbie and her friends back to their anime appearances. As a team, they dance against the monster, who attempts to make its own team members by throwing individual virus bugs off itself, but having no arms, they cannot help him in the dance competition. The friends succeed, and the level is declared 'won'. Instantly, the entire game resets to its original state of being, with the exception of all the emoji beings now permanently yellow and friendly and playing about.Barbie's new friends are sorry to see her go, but thrilled they can now visit each other when the game isn't being played, by using the portals. They all say their goodbyes, and Barbie tells them that she'll be closer than they think, just on the other side of the screen. Cutie gives Barbie a large trophy in thanks for all her help, and she returns to the world outside the screen. Everything returns to normal, except the trophy, which is the only thing that came from the game. Barbie immediately gets Teresa and Renee online and the three of them play the level of the game again, this time without hitches. Chelsea arrives, and Barbie gives her the trophy, for inspiring her to think outside the box. Together, they decide to do a few levels of 'just dance". As they dance, Crystal, Maia, Gaia, Bella, Chris, and cutie appear on the screen and dance along with them as the film ends.