Review of The Nutcracker Prince (1990) by Jon T — 20 Dec 2010

There have been so many different versions of THE NUTCRACKER is almost hard to keep track of them all. This animated retelling, subtitled THE NUTCRACKER PRINCE, draws upon elements from the E.T.A. Hoffman original, including a long (and very crudely animated) backstory involving the titular character's transformation.

Then there is the ambiguity of whether young heroine Clara actually experiences her Christmas Eve adventure with the Nutcracker and the brutish, nasty Mouse King, for real or not. For the most part, it is a pleasant enough holiday timewaster, but there are times when it does seem to be imitative of Disney (the addition of a cuddly kitten sidekick who doesn't amount to much, for instance, as well as a pop song over the closing credits -- based VERY loosely on a passage from "The Waltz of the Flowers"), not always to useful effect.

The animation itself (aside from the backstory), although colorful for the most part, is better suited to television standards. The vocal cast which includes the likes of Megan Follows, Phyllis Diller, and Peter Dorestki as well as Keifer Sutherland as the title character, is arguably the film's greatest strength (aside from snippets of the famous ballet score), but Peter O Toole is wasted in a lame cameo as a scatterbrained doll soldier.

All in all, THE NUTCRACKER PRINCE will certainly appeal to kids and anyone looking for an attempt to incorporate elements from the Hoffman story, but it is nothing particularly outstanding (or unbearable, the Hard Nut story notwithstanding).