Barbie in The Nutcracker
Year: 2001
Director: Owen Hurley
Starring: Tim Curry, Kirby Morrow & Kelly Sheridan
Runtime: 78 mins
BBFC: U
Published: 20/04/23
Director: Owen Hurley
Starring: Tim Curry, Kirby Morrow & Kelly Sheridan
Runtime: 78 mins
BBFC: U
Published: 20/04/23
With the upcoming release of Greta Gerwig’s live action Barbie film starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, it got me looking back at Barbie as a brand and seeing how this literal action figure for girls came to be. But what surprised me most was that this upcoming Barbie movie was far from Barbie’s first foray into feature film territory. Since 2001 there have been over fifty animated Barbie films, that’s a whole lot of Barbie! Whilst my first instinct was to overlook these titles simply as glorified toy commercials (see my reviews of the Lego Bionicle films), I have to say I was somewhat allured by the prospect of Barbie films based on ballets. So, whilst I’ve yet to decide if I’ll indulge in the entire Barbie Cinematic Universe just yet, I thought I’d check out some of the animated Barbie films in the run up to her big screen debut, starting with the original, Barbie in The Nutcracker.
On Christmas Eve, Clara (Barbie (Kelly Sheridan)) receives the gift of a Nutcracker from her Aunt Elizabeth (Kathleen Barr). During the night, Clara awakes to find the Nutcracker (Kirby Marrow) alive and engaged in combat with an army of mice led by their King (Tim Curry).
Shrunk down by the King’s magic, Clara enters a fantastical world where she and the Nutcracker must search for the Sugar Plum Princess in order to defeat the King and return Clara back home.
On Christmas Eve, Clara (Barbie (Kelly Sheridan)) receives the gift of a Nutcracker from her Aunt Elizabeth (Kathleen Barr). During the night, Clara awakes to find the Nutcracker (Kirby Marrow) alive and engaged in combat with an army of mice led by their King (Tim Curry).
Shrunk down by the King’s magic, Clara enters a fantastical world where she and the Nutcracker must search for the Sugar Plum Princess in order to defeat the King and return Clara back home.
With declining toy sales and trends indicating that children engaged more with toys related to other media, Mattel launched their filmmaking division, partnering with various animation houses to produce films to some of their biggest toys. Barbie in The Nutcracker was Mattel’s first foray into films, and you know what…for a glorified toy commercial it has no right being as good as it is.
I need to set the bar here, Barbie in The Nutcracker is good by the standards of low-budget straight to DVD rubbish designed to get kids to ask their parents to go buy toys. But it’s not the story that Nutcracker excels in, rather it’s the production values.
The story is mostly forgettable and a very loose adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s beloved ballet. If you’re thinking of checking out Barbie in The Nutcracker for its ‘epic’ retelling of the iconic ballet then just don’t. There are dozens of versions of The Nutcracker that are better (and more faithful) than this film. There’s not an awful lot of dance in it actually, instead preferring to tell the story through awkwardly written dialogue. For the most part, it’s a farce, but it should satisfy young children at the least and really that’s all it needs to do.
The voice performances and the animation however, a totally different story.
First off, the ever fabulous Tim Curry went so hard in this role and it’s really quite impressive how good he makes the bad dialogue sound. He commits to the performance entirely, and I’m so here for it! But he’s not the only one, everyone in the film delivers a reasonably strong vocal performance and it makes the world of difference. It’s a shame that they are contending with such rubbish dialogue because had this been written better then I could have looked past the unfaithfulness to the source material entirely.
Sheridan can’t make Clara/Barbie a particularly deep character because she isn’t afforded the dialogue to do so, but she does make her an entertaining and endearing lead, and that’s really what counts.
I need to set the bar here, Barbie in The Nutcracker is good by the standards of low-budget straight to DVD rubbish designed to get kids to ask their parents to go buy toys. But it’s not the story that Nutcracker excels in, rather it’s the production values.
The story is mostly forgettable and a very loose adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s beloved ballet. If you’re thinking of checking out Barbie in The Nutcracker for its ‘epic’ retelling of the iconic ballet then just don’t. There are dozens of versions of The Nutcracker that are better (and more faithful) than this film. There’s not an awful lot of dance in it actually, instead preferring to tell the story through awkwardly written dialogue. For the most part, it’s a farce, but it should satisfy young children at the least and really that’s all it needs to do.
The voice performances and the animation however, a totally different story.
First off, the ever fabulous Tim Curry went so hard in this role and it’s really quite impressive how good he makes the bad dialogue sound. He commits to the performance entirely, and I’m so here for it! But he’s not the only one, everyone in the film delivers a reasonably strong vocal performance and it makes the world of difference. It’s a shame that they are contending with such rubbish dialogue because had this been written better then I could have looked past the unfaithfulness to the source material entirely.
Sheridan can’t make Clara/Barbie a particularly deep character because she isn’t afforded the dialogue to do so, but she does make her an entertaining and endearing lead, and that’s really what counts.
The animation is incredibly impressive. A bold statement to make when looking at still frames of the film will reveal horrendously low quality and barren looking environments, and plasticky looking character models; and whilst that is the case I implore you to see the film in motion.
Whilst that does nothing for the empty backdrops, the character models are fully motion-captured which is crazy for a straight to DVD feature length toy commercial.
The ballet choreography (which is painfully not the actual choreography to The Nutcracker) is performed beautifully by professional dancers and you’d be hard pressed to find character models move so fluidly in an animated film for another decade. Every movement adds so much life to the whole film because it looks so real, a shame then that the budget couldn’t have stretched for nicer environments or more realistic character models, but I’ll take what I can get because the fact that all the human characters are motion captured is actually crazy in a film of this budget.
Barbie in The Nutcracker is far from a great film, but children will likely enjoy the adventure regardless. What’s impressive for an older audience is the excellent voice performances and the incredibly impressive motion capture animation. Mattel had no need to go this hard with a feature length toy commercial but I’m glad they did. It’s easy to see how Barbie very quickly found herself in other animated adventures following this impressive first outing.
Whilst that does nothing for the empty backdrops, the character models are fully motion-captured which is crazy for a straight to DVD feature length toy commercial.
The ballet choreography (which is painfully not the actual choreography to The Nutcracker) is performed beautifully by professional dancers and you’d be hard pressed to find character models move so fluidly in an animated film for another decade. Every movement adds so much life to the whole film because it looks so real, a shame then that the budget couldn’t have stretched for nicer environments or more realistic character models, but I’ll take what I can get because the fact that all the human characters are motion captured is actually crazy in a film of this budget.
Barbie in The Nutcracker is far from a great film, but children will likely enjoy the adventure regardless. What’s impressive for an older audience is the excellent voice performances and the incredibly impressive motion capture animation. Mattel had no need to go this hard with a feature length toy commercial but I’m glad they did. It’s easy to see how Barbie very quickly found herself in other animated adventures following this impressive first outing.