Here's somethin' interesting for you - whilst watching the credits to The Nutcracker Prince last night, I noticed how a substantial portion round the middle was dedicated to "opaquers." The term's alien to me and doesn't make its description obvious on first look, so I spent a little while Googling it, trying to find some reference to the profession of opaquing as it pertains to the film or animation industry. My efforts were for naught, and the only reference I found to opaquing beyond dictionary definitions for "making something opaque" came from the imdb credits page for this very film. It seems really strange for a film to have 168 artists credited for a single job I can't find any reference to online, especially when every other credit pertaining to people who designed, laid out, animated, photographed, and cut the film totaled to 176 persons, a mere eight more for every other part of making the drawings move than whatever an opaquer does. What's going down here? What secrets do you hide, O The Nutcracker Prince?
I've a working theory on this, and I'd love to hear any information proving it wrong, because it speaks to some unfortunate business practices if it's right. Of those 168 opaquers, 37 are credited in a special section for Opeongo High School, Ontario-located home to graduate Kevin Gills. Gills served as The Nutcracker Prince's screenwriter and sole credited producer, and quite a large portion of the non-celebrity voice cast were drawn from acting contributors to his cartoon The Raccoons. It's also worth noting how, despite the film's listings noting production by Lacewood Productions, the animation credits here name Hinton Animation Studios, a studio which fell to crippling debts mid-production and was reconstituted into Lacewood prior to release. All this, in combination with the "opaquers" coming just after the the xerographers and matching department people, leads me to believe "opaquer" is a deliberately twisted term for "colorist," one not covered under union protections, and so an easy way for a producer operating on a tight budget to cut a few costs on his film. Why pay a few professional colorists at scale when you can farm the operation out to a whole bunch've people for very little money, and still not pay as much as if you'd hired any union-backed folks? You can even get a little work from the high school and not pay a dime!
Now, as I mention, this is largely speculation. I confess I don't know too much about how many workers it typically takes to get the colors done on an animated film compared to the other departments, and it's possible the use of high schoolers could come down to Gills paying his dues and offering his old school a program for teens to get a little experience in the professional filmmaking world for school credit. There's easily a non-sinister interpretation of events if you look for it. However, I'm not too inclined to believe it sight unseen over thinking the practice unethical, as there are still oddities in the credits like assigning a single artist to produce the backgrounds for a solid fifteen minute chunk of film where the other background artists would only need paint roughly five-and-a-half minutes assuming roughly even distribution, or the downright odd aversion to the word "colorist" when character designers are followed immediately by "character colour design." Something don't quite add up here to my eye, and I'd love to hear from anyone more in the know about these things than me, because I'm really quite baffled. Is "opaquer" a common job title up in Canadian production houses, or have I really found a weird cost-cutting measure?
As one might guess from the three paragraphs focused on accreditation more than anything in the film, The Nutcracker Prince gives one reason to think it made on the cheap. It's not particularly egregious about any of these, and looks quite nice in places for what they had, but you can TELL they weren't exactly throwing around money to spare during production. A few of the more impressive, fluid pieces of animation get reused in the same context wholesale, faster movements trend towards choppiness and lower detail compared to the norm, and numerous actions that seem best suited to smooth execution across a single shot are broken into their individual components across multiple edits and focused on as complete actions in their own right, completely killing any illusion of naturalness. What's more, the aforementioned fifteen-minute chunk of the film with its own background artist is so thanks to a shift in the artstyle towards something far simpler and cartoonier, which effectively means the more complex, Disney-inspired animation only requires 50 minutes finished work rather than 65. Fine as it appears in places, including some rather impressive on-screen transformations and big gestures given the clear crunch, the crunch is still clear, and marks the film as one produced under tight conditions.
Much as I'm inclined to note its low-budget, I don't much hold this against the film. As I keep stressing, the designs work for what they are with one or two little stand-outs (primarily the Mouse King, who looks nicely frazzled and burly), the backgrounds have a good gentle quality about them, and some of the animations had me impressed at what they could pull off on not a lot've money. The big art style shift actually works to the film's favor in my mind, as the character designs shared across both styles read better with the thinner lines, lighter colors, and slightly lesser detailing. Its embrace of a zanier, late 50s sketchy-mod-look-embracing Looney Tunes aesthetic also helps the film's louder, slapstickier elements feel more natural, and leaves a satisfying sensation in the mind once it's all over and done with. I very much enjoy the dedication to showcasing sequences sure to frighten small children in the audience, as when the Mouse King is stalking Clara with a fatal wound in his chest while all the animate dolls revert back to wood and plush. We might not have artistic triumphs here, but the artistic moderate accomplishments get the idea across on their own level all the same.
Heck, with regards to the plot and story, I appreciate how much The Nutcracker Prince draws from ETA Hoffmann. It's pretty much the same plot points in largely the same order, with details like Clara bargaining with the Mouse King after his supposed initial defeat and the passage through the Land of Sweets left intact. We're even free from a creepy Drosselmeyer again, which I think will only be possible through these animated adaptations - the instinct to move FAR away from "what if an eight-year old's sexual awakening by way of her godfather's tricky machinations" is absolutely the right instinct. Where the film REALLY falls down comes with its confidence in the material. Paul Schibli and Kevin Gillis have, if not a time-tested classic, at least a well-worn, simple template on their hands, and no good reason to tack on additional details or rearrange the structure, but they do all the same. For example, just as Nutcracker Fantasy's Tchaikovsky quotations were rather sparse and token, here the snippets from the ballet's score come far too frequently, and are overly front-loaded. Recognizable melody follows Christmastime staple with little time for the score to cool its heels, and before we're past fifteen minutes we've used practically everything the general public might know, thus leaving the rest little to pull out for something fresh, beyond an admitedly clever use of the final waltz across multiple emotional tones. There's too much eagerness to prove we're doing The Nutcracker, which leaves the film a bit sonically lacking as it goes on.
When considering their lack of confidence in the novella's story and structure, the problems multiply. The battle against the Mouse King's forces and the journey into the Land of Sweets now requires the presence of multiple new doll characters to provide further slapstick comedy and exposition about the nature of the fantasy world and its kingdom, which mark a transparent grab for inattentive children's eyes. They're not particularly enjoyable or dignified parts, especially not Peter O'Toole's elderly, bumbling toy general, who I feel earnestly sorry he ever had to voice for any reason. Parts must've not been very good at the time.
Our biggest issue, though, comes with the exact placement of The Hard Nut flashback segment, the prior discussed 15-minute artstyle shift. Rather than coming between the two battles between Nutcracker and Mouse King, it is positioned at the fifteen-minute mark during the opening Christmas party, and concludes at the half-hour mark, leaving the following forty-five minutes to work through the book's first and third acts back to back. This speaks to a distinct lack of trust in the young audience to go along with the magic of toys and mice fighting without a full explanation for why there are magic toys and talking mice that don't get along beforehand, and sets bad precedent for the film to come. Positioning such wild silliness gives the rest of the film justification to play its comedy broad and loud even when it doesn't match the more Disney-esque artwork, and leaves us with the odd problem of characters showing up to establish their gimmick and subsequently reappearing to bring it to conclusion in the space of five minutes. Placing the flashback where it naturally sits in Hoffmann's work, as effectively the middle act, would not only break up the action and hopefully dissuade the surrounding film from going as broad as it does, but maintain the sense of wonder and magic around that first battle, perhaps hooking an unattentive audience better than "here's some exposition but it's really silly" does.
This constitutes a LOT more words than I anticipated spilling over a minor forgotten piece of 90s children's animation based on The Nutcracker, so I feel a little bad gritting my teeth and giving it the lower rating between the two I teased in my head for most of the day. After all, despite some shrillness in the comedy and sloppiness in the animation shouldn't entirely overwhelm a solid if unremarkable overall production. Poor construction and lack of faith are poor construction and lack of faith, however, and I've my suspicions that the same team working under the same circumstances would've produced a stronger film if they'd stuck to what they had and didn't feel the need to, for want of a better phrase, dumb it down by tweaking the order of events and adding more trendy elements for their day. The gentler aspects of the original story are what spoke to me most, and something trying for an early prototype version of 90s eye-rolling and purposeful tone breaking just can't get all the way over the pass line in my house. Plus, y'know, much as one shouldn't let behind-the-scenes stuff effect their viewing unless it's concrete and doing active harm to someone, I really can't shake the notion that they weren't paying their colorists a living wage during production, and that's just shitty if it's the case. Please, please tell me I'm off-base on this.
(It's really all down to the Mouse King - a crooked tail and a hair-trigger temper do NOT compensate for one lousy head.)
2.5/5
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