Fun fact: this marathon was originally conceived as an All-Barbie December, on the simple basis that Christmastime is a time for tormenting friends, and nothing could possibly equal the torment of promising a Nutcracker marathon, only to dovetail into a long collection of samey Barbie films with no warning. Only trouble is, if we DID run an All-Barbie December, I'd have to watch all of those same Barbie films myself - and, even worse, WRITE about them. Such a joke could not possibly sustain itself across a whole month and still produce good writing, so the series was quickly converted to a Nutcracker-a-thon, and here we are today. You can still count Barbie as the centerpiece of the series, the crown jewel from whence all other films featured sprang forth, and a perfect embodiment of why we're doing Nutcracker stuff instead of Barbie stuff. Because let me tell y'all right here right now, I do NOT have a lot to say about this one.
Not like I didn't have a lot to say about The Motion Picture, gosh no. Go back and read the review, I had plenty to say, just no clue how to format it into a coherent, paragraph-based piece. Barbie in the Nutcracker challenges because it is plainly aimed at the youngest audience yet, roundabouts the four-to-six demographic, and much as the joke reviews on Letterboxd insisting this has an ending to rival Mulholland Drive in complexity and confusion, something ready-made to stop holding appeal once you enter second grade does not offer many avenues for critique. The simplicity leaves fewer dimensions to pick at, the purity of purpose makes slagging too hard bad sport, and the lack of nostalgia in my case in particular means I cannot articulate what makes it tick for someone who saw it at just the right age in the way someone born round the same time as myself but with a Barbie obsession in their past. So, seeing as I do still have a few concrete points to walk across, we won't rely on bullet pointing, but we will theme by paragraph, and take some time to poke Barbie in the Nutcracker's merits as an adaptation of The Nutcracker/TheNutcracker and the Mouse King, its merits as a piece of animation, its merits as a piece of children's entertainment, and how it is effected by its status as part of the Barbie brand. Should work out just fine; let's go.
As I've noted when discussing the various ballet-oriented adaptations, The Nutcracker has an inborn problem of dropping any semblance of narrative in the back-half in favor of pure dance, and even ETA Hoffmann's original story loses its slack once Marie and the Nutcracker Prince enter the Land of Sweets. This requires any story-focused works to find some means of tinkering the material to suit its own needs, and we've seen a few differing approaches - Nutcracker Fantasy was more inspired by ideas from the story and crafted its own narrative from near-whole cloth, The Nutcracker Prince added more supporting characters and a bit of extra drama during the final movements, and the various ballets have the benefit of about half-a-dozen scripted dances for fodder. Barbie, for her part, sticks to the basic rhythms of a young woman receiving presents on Christmas eve, becoming delighted by a nutcracker, and having a strange dream of a war between mice and toys, with a few minor alterations. Her Aunt Elizabeth functionally replaces now-Grandfather Drosselmeyer as gifter and One Atop The Clock, there's no party or other toy soldiers because character models are expensive, and she doesn't wake from her dream once she drives away the Mouse King with her slipper. This last marks the film's major departure, for once it's done with the literary source's first half inside fifteen minutes, it sets aside the rest of its remaining hour for a story of light high fantasy.
This basically works as a creative choice, because it decouples the movie from novella and ballet, and largely enables it to run its own little Christmas-themed thing. Changing the Sugarplum Fairy to a Sugarplum Princess is a weird little bit of probably-necessary marketing tampering, but making her a McGuffin that Barbie, the Nutcracker, and a few hangers-on must seek out to free a fantasy kingdom from the Mouse King's iron clutch gives a fine excuse to keep introducing new concepts, constantly move forward without flagging in one spot for too long, and introduce a few little bits and bobs of its own. I certainly didn't expect the Barbie Nutcracker movie to feature a massive rock golem chase or a talking bat sidekick, yet they're here all the same and functioning quite nicely. Considering the way it all looks, Mattel could've easily taken the same assets and put out a token PC game with the same story. That courtyard in the climax seems purpose-built as a boss arena, so why not?
With regards to looks... well, it's no great shake, but was there any chance otherwise? Round 2001, only Pixar and Dreamworks had humanoid animation anywhere close to workable, and Pixar's whole "It's more believable and endearing because they're toys" idea with Toy Story also had a greater budget, more talented artists, far more detailed environments, a stronger lighting rig, and stylized characters who aren't confined by the semi-realistic proportions and sculpting of the Barbie line. They tried, God bless 'em they tried, but there's a stiff lack of flair to the movements and the models are way too lacking in detail to read as anything except cheap. Attempts at animating special effects like fairies dancing through the air as they fly look more like someone messing around with the drag-and-drop tool, and the little amount of dancing present seems heavily limited by what the models could do regardless of them using mo-cap. The lighting effects are the biggest failure, as any attempt to do something creative gives the characters this weird fuzzy halo effect that ruins any illusion of them standing in their environment, while simpler set-ups make them look like the plastic they are. All in all exactly what you'd expect from a direct-to-video 3D animation project of this time, but I still have to give props for the effort. The animators at Mainframe and Mattel Entertainment could've easily lit the whole thing uniformly and made no swings at more complex animations they didn't have the budget or experience to handle. Their failures speak more to willingness to experiment than lack of ability (though don't get me wrong, the execution lacks something fierce at times - that cloudy beachside scene is just the pits).
(Plus, they recognized their inability to fully model every outdoor environment, so several of them utilize digital mattes on the skyboxes and render a few more complex panoramic scenes as fully 2D paintings, which actually caught me off-guard at one point. I was just about ready to mock the film for not knowing what the heck a Perspective is when they arrive at a magical castle, only for it to fall down because it's a cardboard fake planted by the bad guys, which just so happens to look identical to the style used on the flat backgrounds. They got me good there!)
I think the whole thing holds together as a cartoon for really young kids pretty well. Fun little out-and-back adventure type narrative with just enough daring-do to keep the boys engaged while remaining soft enough for the girls, if we are to think in terms of a Mattel-executive circa turn of the millennium. As regular readers know, I'm perpetually gung-ho for a little bit've scary imagery bound to frighten small ones a little in any product, and the Mouse King's predilection for casually turning his minions and subjects to statuary checks that box quite nicely. We had quite a lot of fun joking about how the dialogue-driven portions of the climax are effectively Mattel discoursing on the need for consent from the governed for an effective system of government, which satisfies the whole "Gotta have something for the parents!" aspect in a manner beyond the usual crude humor. And really, while I'm baffled by the large percentage of reviews from supposedly full-grown adults that seem to genuinely have a hard time understanding the ending (Dream real; nothing more, nothing less), the whole thing with Barbie turning out to be the Sugarplum Princess and Prince Eric being real outside the dream probably does work as a series of effective twists for anyone of the right age. Thumbs up from me on this metric.
If there is a real weakness I can dig at here without feeling bad for going after something made for very small children with the same vigor I do more mature films or animators in circumstances unfriendly to more polished work, I think the film's position as part of the Barbie brand harms it most. The whole thing is framed as Barbie telling a story to her... I think sister, as a means of helping her gain confidence during her ballet lessons, and the fact that main character Clara is more Barbie as Clara than a person herself leaves the film unable to pursue its ideas to the fullest. Other characters claim Clara is a strong, brave, confident person whose presence keeps the party together and gives the Nutcracker the strength to outmatch the Mouse King, but Barbie can't do anything we might interpret as off-brand, so these qualities only come through because the characters say so. Otherwise she's just moving from place to place and setting up more important conversations, which limits its ability to impart any positive message to its audience. The whole thing with "Barbie was a beautiful princess all along and lives happily ever after!" comes through on a "I'm four and don't know what stories or dialogue are" level far clearer than "Barbie becomes a beautiful princess because she's a capable person who uses her inner strength to earn her happy ending" aspect. Not to mention, ending on a scene of Barbie and her sister dancing a variation on the Sugarplum Fairy piece with step-to-step perfection kinda undercuts Barbie as a positive big sister rolemodel by having her teach it perfectly the first time with no need for anything beyond telling a story. At least the sister struggling a little but doing better than she did at the start would've made it stronger.
Yeah, I know I'm giving way, way more credence and critique to a Barbie film than it probably merits, but one has to at least try and treat all films equally if we want everyone across all ages and outlooks to have good movies made for them. Far, far easier to do so for a children's film than something made for members of another racial identity or sexual orientation, given we've all got some variation on that childhood experience, and I think Barbie in the Nutcracker deserves a little effort anyhow. One can tell the crew put forth their level best for the circumstances, and while it's not great or even to my personal standards of wholly good (that lighting really kills it for me), it does what it wants to do well, and also allows Tim Curry a chance to go whole ham on the digital scenery. Nobel goals fulfilled adequately. Bout all one can ask for and be happy with when dealing with Barbie, I'd say, least till they had the idea for Life in the Dreamhouse and got meta with it.
(Here's some fun trivia for you - the Nutcracker's VA, Kirby Morrow, served as Goku in Ocean Group's dub of Dragon Ball Z from episode 160 onwards, while Ian James Corlett (Captain Candy) served as Goku in Saban's initial dub of the anime, and Peter Kelamis (Primm the Bat) replaced him in the Saban dub before serving in the same capacity in the Westwood dub. Got three Gokus up in here. Neat!)
3/5
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