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clarktooncrossing · 1 year ago

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Giraffe's Eye View: Christmas Specials Special (2023) | Barbie in Nutcracker

Chestnuts are roasting on an open fire. Jack Frost is nipping at your nose. Mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again. All the dogs in the neighborhood somehow learned to bark Jingle Bells in sync. Yet retail workers are still more annoyed with Mariah Carey. Snow is getting shoveled, tossed, and formed into sentient beings leading parades without permits. It makes for an excellent distraction as the Krampus abducts children for bad behavior. Fruitcake is exchanged only to find its permanent home in the garbage. Terrorists have hijacked the Holiday office party right before your boss can give you a Jelly of the Month Club membership as your bonus. And of course, the Turducken has returned to wreak its fiery vengeance upon an unsuspecting world! If all this doesn’t put you in the Christmas spirit, perhaps these following Holiday specials will!

Greetings people of today and robots of tomorrow! It is I, Santa Clark, your geeky giraffe friend with a deep love of Christmas! My obsession for the yuletide is rivaled only by Maleficent’s hatred for it, which is saying a lot considering she once teamed up with Mad Madam Mim to kidnap the literal Spirit of Christmas. Yes, that really happened. I know this due to my annual pilgrimage to the Island of Misfit Specials, home to obscure or nerdy festive media ranging from movies, TV episodes, and comics. It’s no easy journey. Constantly I find myself confronted by sinister snowmen, genocidal gingerbread men, and worst of all, crappy commercials. Getting stabbed in the foot by a candy-cane wielding cookie is one thing, but I swear I’ve seen that ad for Wilbur’s White Elephant Gift Emporium more times than I’ve seen Miracle on 34th Street! Sometimes at night I catch myself reciting that jingle. Wilbur’s White Elephant Gift Emporium: Where Christmas meets Convenience! Huh, maybe Maleficent had a point.

Nah, my deep-rooted appreciation for this time of year can weather even the most moronic marketing! It helps that most of the merry media I’ve seen have put me in the perfect Holiday mood! Examples include the time a Ninja Turtle found himself trapped in a truck full of stollen toys, a drunk department store Santa stumbling onto a wish-granting magic bag, Big Bird nearly becoming a popsicle, Gwenpool waking up in a world where Galactus took the place of jolly ol’ Saint Nicholas, a terrifying tree stump trying to slaughter some saps over a stupid ship war, and the year when Death gave the Little Match Girl the greatest gift of all. Needless to say, I thought I had seen it all. That is, until I took my friends on a trip to the Island, tasking them to find me new, strange, seasonal specials to review! Some of them were fair, finding me festive favorites as comforting as coco in front of the fireplace. Others were fiendish, wanting to feed off my misery like Gremlins after midnight. Regardless of how naughty or nice my companions were, I’ve compiled all of their suggestions into a makeshift advent calendar! So stay tuned everyday until Christmas to see how badly my buddies can shred what little sanity I have left.

On the first day of Christmas, my buddies gave to me...

Hoo boy, what a way to start. Now you’d think my friend Molly (molly420) would’ve made her choice due to the magnificent Margot Robbie vehicle that came out earlier this year. Honestly, Harley Quinn’s humorous turn as the iconic blonde bimbo had nothing to do with this. I’ve been trying to get this special written for a while now and Molly missed her chance to partake the first time around. Knowing I’d offer myself up to being tormented again, she set an alarm on her phone to remind herself to suggest Barbie in Nutcracker when the opportunity presented itself the following year. That kind of disturbing dedication I can oddly respect. Still doesn’t stop me from feeling annoyed. Jolly as I may be, Nutcracker turns me into a Scrooge! My love of Christmas only goes so far when I’m bored out of my mind in an auditorium, watching confused toddlers prance around on stage, the titular toy soldier clashing against a dude in a bargain bin rat costume. How can a show be so tedious yet so trippy? No wonder I made a comic comparing my going to see it to the five stages of grief. My love of Barbie isn’t much higher, her only being interesting whenever she’s in a Pixar picture. Say what you will, but Barbie and Ken’s relationship in Toy Story 3 gave us Ariel and Batman flirting. Any argument you have is invalid. Still, perhaps I’m being too harsh. I’ve praised an adaptation featuring Mickey and Minnie before, so there is precedent for decent retellings of this tale. Will Barbie manage to pull off something similar?

Certainly not in the art department she won’t! Admittedly this is a direct-to-video movie from 2001, a time when computer animation was still finding its footing. Not to mention, this movie was one of the first to use motion capture, employing the world famous New York City Ballet to provide the dancing seen on screen. In a time when Gollum wasn’t even a fully realized character yet, that’s actually impressive! Really, I have to tip my hat there. Everything else looks like a sugar plum fever dream. This is one of those movies you never want to pause ever! The lighting is lackluster, the textures are terrible, and any movement outside of the dancing is stiffer than a board. This animation has aged like eggnog! Still, it’s not the worst cartoon content I’m critiquing this Christmas. At least it succeeds in making Barbie look as plastic as ever.

Speaking of our pink protagonist, our story starts with Barbie (Kelly Sheridan) in the middle of instructing her ballet class. A class that consists of one brat failing to master a basic move. Business is booming! Seeing her sole source of income struggling, our blonde ballet instructor halts class in order to tell a self-insert fanfiction where she takes on the role of Clara. She is visited by her adventurous Aunt Drosselmayer (Kathleen Barr) on Christmas Eve, bringing with her a horribly rendered Nutcracker. Her niece is smitten by the doll cuz some peeps have kooky kinks. She even goes so far as to bandage up its arm when her brother breaks it. Great, now he can’t come with Clara to Cowboy Camp! Despite the busted limb, the wooden warrior is able to ward off an army of malicious mice that invade the house later that night. Leading these vile vermin is their king, voiced by the GOAT, Tim Curry. Oh Tim, you’re the gift that keeps on giving! He is the savory pinch of salt that can turn any drab slab of beef into a five-star steak. He is the shiny red ribbon tied up on that piece of coal you found in your stocking. He is the guy who has it out bad for Christmas if this and Belle’s Enchanted Christmas are any indication. As per usual he adds sinister charisma to an otherwise forgettable fiend.

A shame he’s not in the movie for long. Upon waking up, Barbie takes a page out of Clark Griswold’s guide to exterminating pests by covering the critter in a coat before bashing its brains out with a hammer. Or at least that’s what should’ve happened. Rather she stands still long enough for the Mouse King to use his magical scepter to shrink her down like Ant-Man. Only after does she repel the rodent via meekly kicking her slipper at him. Brilliant strategy Barbie, G.I. Joe’s got nothin’ on you! Especially since now you’re the same size. Left wondering how to return to normal, the suddenly sentient owl perched atop her grandfather clock swoops in to exposit. Oh sure, she could’ve prevented this from happening by simply eating the mice, but that’d be too logical. Jee, thanks ya' feathery fool. Instead she tasks the two with finding the Sugar Plum Princess, a magical maiden from the Kingdom of Parthenia who went missing years ago. Only she can help Barbie regain her tall status as well as dethrone the mousey monarch.

Thus off they’re sent to this magical realm, encountering freakish fairies, rampaging rock giants, multicolored mares, and the always bickering Captain Candy (Ian James Corlett) and Major Mint (Christopher Gaze). Whenever these two aren’t repressing their obvious sexual tension they’re blaming the missing Prince Eric for their troubles. He's the reason for their many woes! A sentiment shared by the few survivors still living here. Dang, you folks have a nasty habit of misplacing your monarchs. Maybe you ott’a start tagging them.

Whatever happened to Prince Eric? According to Mint his friend was next in line to rule before finding himself smitten by a red-headed fish girl who saved him from a sinking ship. Shirking off more of his responsibilities led to the Mouse King eventually seizing power, the tiny tyrant transforming the prince into the very same Nutcracker (Kirby Morrow) escorting Barbie in the present. A plot twist so obvious even our heroine saw it coming a mile away. Props to this picture for subverting expectations but that just makes Barbie’s inability to figure out the bigger reveal all the more moronic. Cuz yeah, no freak’n duh she's the Sugar Plum Princess! No doubt all of you figured that out as soon as the name was dropped. By the end Barbie finally figures it out herself, using her powers to grow back to full size, squish the Mouse King under her hot-pink heel, then dance an annoyingly long amount of time with her now human boi toy. Hey, might as well get your money’s worth out of those New York Ballerinas.

My snark should’ve made it clear by now how this adaptation isn’t for me. That’s not to say there aren’t things I liked. For starters, I appreciated the writers’ attempt to turn what’s normally a string of random sequences into a coherent narrative. Granted, they never explain how Aunty Drosslemeyer came into possession of the Nutcracker, why the Sugar Plum Princess went missing in the first place, or how Barbie suddenly learns how to use her magic, but still the effort is there. Overall the script wasn’t as brain dead as I feared it’d be. Then again, perhaps it didn’t seem as stupid due to the talented voice cast reading it. Aside from Curry, the ensemble is stuffed with My Little Pony alumni, Starlight Glimmer delivering a decent performance for our main star. Clearly she struck a chord with audiences considering how many times she’d reprise this role afterwards. Out of all the cast though, Kirby Morrow as the Prince was the weakest link, his voice never matching the character design. Not to mention, they had the audacity to cast Curry and never give him ONE stink’n song number? Screw this movie not being a musical, you don't cast a Sweet Transvestite without letting them sing! It’s a crime punishable by death! Atop of that, the pacing is peculiar in places, the plot twists are obnoxiously obvious, and the animation is just adequate. By no means is this a masterpiece.

It is, however, a great excuse to spend time with my cousin. Being a fan of Barbie for as long as she’s been alive meant she was the perfect person to call to borrow a copy from. We got together and had a laugh at the movie’s expense, my cousin unable to ignore the apparent flaws either. Fun times were had, and what more could I possibly ask for? At least now I don’t have to review any more versions of Nutcracker… right?

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