Barbie In The Nutcracker (DVD)

.../> The film begins with Barbie and Shelly practising the Nutcracker Suite, when Shelly gets frustrated Barbie starts to tell her the story of Clara and the Nutcracker.

Cue the action moving to a Victorian Christmas, and orphaned Clara is helping to decorate the Christmas tree at her Uncle's. Clara dreams of a more exciting life, but during that era, anything more than getting married was frowned upon, so dreaming is all she does. ...
...Clara, definitely looks like a Barbie doll, as do many of the other characters. The dancing is beautifully done, probably because they based it on an actual ballet company performing the dances. But all in all I found the animation lacking that something special.

~~~The Music~~~

Being based on Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and performed by The London Symphony Orchestra, it's not surprising that the music is fantastic, ... more

My nine year old daughter Louise asked me to write this review, so that I could tell everyone about one of her favourite DVDs, that she got for Christmas way back in 2002. The DVD in question has been played many times, Louise and her six year old sister will still often watch and dance along. So here goes.....

~~~The Storyline~~~

The film begins with Barbie and Shelly practising the Nutcracker Suite, when Shelly gets frustrated Barbie starts to tell her the story of Clara and the Nutcracker.

Cue the action moving to a Victorian Christmas, and orphaned Clara is helping to decorate the Christmas tree at her Uncle's. Clara dreams of a more exciting life, but during that era, anything more than getting married was frowned upon, so dreaming is all she does. Then the more daring, globetrotting Elizabeth gives her a gift, an ugly nutcracker, who she claims has the heart of a prince.

That night as the house sleeps the Mouse King visits, and while intervening in a fight between the Mouse and the Nutcracker, Clara gets shrunk down to mouse size. Her only hope of returning to normal is to find The Sugar Plum Fairy, and the magic and beauty that's within all of us and so begins a magical journey full of music and dance.

~~~The Animation~~~

While the animation is beautiful, it's certainly not upto the standard of the likes of Shrek. Clara, definitely looks like a Barbie doll, as do many of the other characters. The dancing is beautifully done, probably because they based it on an actual ballet company performing the dances. But all in all I found the animation lacking that something special.

~~~The Music~~~

Being based on Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and performed by The London Symphony Orchestra, it's not surprising that the music is fantastic, and animation has been fitted around it perfectly.

~~~The DVD~~~

Unsurprisingly, seeing as this is a Barbie film, both the actual DVD and case are predominantly pink, and both feature a picture of the star herself as Clara. Now I have a problem with the disc, and that is it has started to crack in the middle. This means it can no longer be played, which has disappointed my girls no end (but it has been played upwards of a hundred times). I don't know if this is a one off, or all copies will be the same.

~~~The special features~~~

There aren't a great number of special features on this disc, in fact there's only really three which are :

~~Living a Ballet Dream~~

In this short documentary lasting just over thirty minutes we meet some students of The American School of Ballet, and see how they are living their dream. The girl's range from an eight year old just starting her career to a former student who is now a principle dancer with The New York City Ballet. My girls actually found this quite boring, but I would imagine that a dedicated young ballerina would find it fascinating.

~~Act with Barbie~~

In this section your child has the chance to act out four scenes from the film. There are two modes, Practice and Act. In both modes Barbie talks the child through the scene and any words that Clara says are shown on the screen. The only actual difference between the two modes seems to be the amount of prompting the child is given. I personally found this section very cute, especially watching my daughters as they attempted to play the part of Clara and they seemed to enjoy themselves too.

~~Help~~

This is a small section that shows the child how to use the DVD remote control. I'm not sure how necessary it was for this to be included, especially as my little madams are more than capable of using a DVD player.

~~~Picture and Sound Quality~~~

Picture and sound quality is flawless throughout and a nice touch is that the film is available in both wide screen and full screen via a settings menu.

~~~Other Information~~~

Running time : 1 hour 16 Minutes
Rating : U
Region : 2
Picture : 16:9 and 4:3
Audio : English 5.1 and 2.0 Dolby Surround.
Subtitles : None

Price : £14.99 from Play.com

~~~The Girl's Opinions~~~

Louise (9) ~ I think Barbie is very pretty and she dances really nicely. I especially like the ending.

Ashleigh (6) ~ The Mouse King's a bit scary, but it's alright 'cos it's not real.

~~~My Final Opinion~~~

Although this film seems to cashing in on the world-wide phenomena that is Barbie, I have to admit that my girls do love it. Having sat and watched it with them on more than one occasion I can say that it's beautiful to look at and the music is very stirring, but it just doesn't have that something extra that would keep an adult amused. Therefore I would only really recommend this to anyone who has a little girl who likes either Barbie, ballet or both.

Oh and be prepared for you little angels to decide they too want to be prima ballerinas after they've watched it. 

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