Film Credits

Screenplay by: Patricia Watson

Directed by: Paul Schibli

Starring: Kiefer Sutherland, Megan Follows, Peter O'Toole, Mike McDonald, Peter Borestski, Phyllis Diller

Review

If you're an animation lover like myself, you expect nothing but the best out of animated feature films. But wanting the best doesn't necessarily mean you're going to get the best, and that brings us to The Nutcracker Prince. In a nutshell, the makers of The Nutcracker Prince have attempted to imitate a Disney-type production in any way possible, only they have failed miserably in the attempt. Based on the book "The Nutcracker and the Mouseking" by E.T.A. Hoffman and set to a Tchaikovsky musical score, this tiresome rehashing of the classic story features a young girl and The Nutcracker Prince trying their best to protect themselves and the Land of the Dolls from the evil Mouse King. Voice actors include the likes of Keifer Sutherland, Megan Follows, Mike MacDonald, Peter Boretski, Phyllis Diller and Peter O'Toole. The storyline is poorly written ("stupid" would be a more descriptive word), the pacing is extremely slow, characterizations are one-dimensional at best, and a sense of wit and charm is sorely lacking. Not even the animation is really worth discussing - while the individual character designs are okay, the animation is limited, movement is often jerky, and there's just no "style" to the proceedings. In any event, if either you or your children can sit through this thing without passing out from boredom, you should get some kind of reward. And remember, don't let the nicely-designed cover art fool you into passivity.

Warner released the laserdisc of The Nutcracker Prince. The image is fairly bright and the focus usually sharp, but occasionally the picture tends to go slightly fuzzy. Colors are strong, but reds, oranges, and the like are often unstable. Side two is in CAV with perfect still frames. Our copy featured a heavy amount of video noise, as well as numerous "crawling" horizontal glitches, throughout side two. The CX-encoded digital surround stereo is fine. The disc was pressed at Pioneer and contains 22 listed chapter markers.