Let's Watch This: "The Nuttiest Nutcracker" (1999)

Here's an interesting fact for you - I'm freaked out by nutcrackers. I don't know what it is, they just scare the heck out of me. It didn't help that when I was younger, my family had as part of our Christmas decorations at least two giant nutcrackers that would usually be placed in the library. We have since gotten rid of them.

Anyhow, I don't think that I've ever actually seen the Nutcracker play. I've watched the House of Mouse adaptation of it (which features John Cleese as the narrator and he totally steals the show, by the way), but I don't think I've ever sat down in a theater and watched the ballet. But that's not stopping me from reviewing this.

The Nuttiest Nutcracker is a direct-to-video film released on October 19th, 1999. Don't know why a Christmas film was released before Halloween. It was directed by Harold Harris (who according to IMDB also directed thirteen episodes of Clone High) and written by Golden Films founder Diane Eskenazi and Muppet Babies writer Sindy McKay. After being released on video, it was also aired on CBS. I have no idea what the production process for this film was like, where the filmmakers got the idea to make it, or how many people bought it on DVD. But I'll tell you this, it's certainly nuttier than your average adaptation of The Nutcracker.

What draws me in is not the fact that it looks very, very weird. I mean, just look at the cover! You've got Chuck E. Cheese's incredibly fat brother battling with a bunch of rejected VeggieTales characters. No, what draws me in is this movie's voice cast. This features the voices of Cam Clarke, Tress MacNeille, Kevin Schon, Jim Cummings, and Jeff Bennett. That's not too shabby of a cast!

I know, I know... just because something has a good cast does not automatically mean that it's going to be a good movie (for example, Foodfight featured the voices of Jeff Bennett, Wayne Brady, James Arnold Taylor, Jeff Bergman, and Stephen Stanton. And just look at how well THAT movie turned out). But still...

So, let's see if we can try and crack this nutty-looking Christmas movie.

The film begins with what looks like Mr. Potato Head in a tutu (voiced by Phyllis Diller) telling the audience that this version of The Nutcracker has a "nutty little twist". It's Christmas Eve, and a girl named Marie (voiced by Debi Derryberry) is lamenting that she's all alone on what should be one of the most festive nights of the year. Well, technically she's not alone, she has her little brother, Fritz (also voiced by Debi Derryberry), with her. So is her uncle Drosselmeyer, voiced by Jim Cummings. It's just that her parents are off doing I don't know what, and that's robbed Marie of her holiday spirit. "What's the big deal about Christmas, anyway? I just wish it would go away... forever!" she says.

Uh oh, a Christmas-hating main character. Methinks somebody needs a visit from the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come.

"We really need to get new wallpaper in this room..."

So, yeah, so far this just seems like a generic adaptation of The Nutcracker with really bad animation... where are the talking food items we were promised?

Ah, there they are! We have a stereotypical Southern colonel peanut (voiced by Jeff Bennett), a stereotypical Jamaican macadamia nut (voiced by Cheech Marin), a little kid peanut with a backwards baseball cap (voiced by Tress MacNeille), a humanoid female nut - yes, that thing in the blue dress is supposed to be a nut - who's a massive drama queen (voiced by Desiree Goyette), an old man walnut voiced by Jim Cummings, and a Brooklyn-accented cashew (voiced by Kevin Schon using his Timon voice). Honestly, with this really bad animation I had difficulty figuring out what kinds of food these characters were. I initially thought the cashew was a chili pepper.

The nuts are distressed over Marie's saying that she hates Christmas. "We've got to help her! We just GOT TO! Even if she's not a nut!" the little kid peanut proclaims. And yes, they do have names, but eh, I'm just gonna call them "little kid peanut" and "stereotypical Jamaican macadamia nut" etcetra.

We get some WHACKY SHENANIGANS and an unfunny pun from the cashew ("Just when he was startin' to come outta his shell." Get it? 'Cause they're nuts?), then we cut back to Marie, Fritz, and Drosselmeyer. Drosselmeyer gives Fritz a toy cannon and Marie... something that glows? What's in that box, the Holy Grail?

And what the heck is with Marie's hand?

No, it's a nutcracker. Anybody who knows the story of The Nutcracker should've guessed that by now.

Then we cut back to the nuts. They somehow knew that Marie would be getting a nutcracker, because they say things like "Is it him?!" and "It is, it is, it IS!" Odd that the nuts would be so excited over Marie getting a nutcracker. Aren't nutcrackers used to crack open nuts so they can be eaten?

The old man walnut explains to the little kid peanut - and the audience - that the nutcracker Marie received is no ordinary nutcracker. It's the Nutcracker PRINCE.

No, not that one. Coincidentally, Phyllis Diller was in that movie too.

You see, long ago the Nutcracker Prince (he was just the Prince back then) was in love with the most beautiful girl in the kingdom, Princess... Pearlihad? Perlypad? What the heck is her name again? Well, anyhow, there was also a Mouse Queen who was very, very jealous of the princess. And of the prince.

"I know you, I waltzed with you once upon a dream... and in that dream, we
weren't so poorly-rendered."

She wanted the kingdom for herself. So when the prince wasn't around, the Mouse Queen gave the princess a nasty bite, turning her into the ugliest thing that ever walked the Earth. Must... resist... urge to make a Donald Trump joke...

There was only one way to free her from the spell - by opening the hardest nut on the planet. Really? The Mouse Queen made it so that the spell could be destroyed by cracking open a nut? How hard could THAT be?

This is admittedly a nitpick, but how the heck can a peanut have a mustache?
And eyebrows, for that matter? Wouldn't a peanut sprouting hair mean that it's
probably not safe for consumption?

Pretty hard, apparently, because according to the Southern colonel peanut who kind of sounds like Foghorn Leghorn, many tried to open the hardest nut on the planet but failed. Then the Nutcracker Prince came along and caused the nut to explode.

No, really. It just explodes after he raises it above his head.

The spell was destroyed, and the princess turned back to normal. "You mean they were nuts for each other?" the little kid peanut asks, giving us what I think is our third nut pun so far. Alas, the prince was left so weak from the effort (apparently causing a nut to explode takes a lot out of you) that the Mouse Queen turned him to wood. Since the Blue Fairy is too busy to stop by and turn him into a real boy, there's only one way to lift the curse...

How not to anthropomorphize a peanut.

Love. Of course the secret to lifting the curse is love. Uh-huh. Yeah. And the princess' love for him doesn't count becaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaause?

Back to Marie. She tells Drosselmeyer that her new nutcracker is super-dee-dooper, but then Fritz swipes it and starts asking how he would do in battle. One thing leads to another, and Marie winds up swatting it out of his hands and onto the floor, causing its arm to fall off or something. "Look what you've done," she moans. What HE'S done? You're the one who swatted it out of his hand. I mean, yeah, he shouldn't have grabbed it, but Marie is to blame too.

"Oh, it doesn't matter anyway. I don't care about this dumb ol' nutcracker OR Christmas," Marie laments. Wait a minute, just a second ago you were going on and on about how great the nutcracker was. You flip-flop faster than a wet fish in a windstorm.

She kind of looks like Barbie, doesn't she? If the humans in your movie look
just as plastic as the toys, you've got a problem.

Marie goes to sleep, as do the nuts. But what they don't know is that they're being watched by the evil mouse Reginald (voiced by Jim Belushi), who boasts about how he's going to force them all to work in his cheese mines. I was wondering when Timothy Q. Mouse's evil twin would show up.

"I will enslave those nuts, and I'll force them to build a chain of restaurants!
Restaurants with crappy pizza, arcade games, and scary-looking animatronics!
Kids will love them, but their parents will hate going there!"

The tutu-wearing potato shows up again and tells us that we've just been introduced to the movie's villain. Yeah, you really didn't need to point that out for us. We're not idiots. We know a big ugly mouse craving to enslave talking nuts so he can force them to mine cheese for him isn't a character that we should like. He's the Mouse King, the son of that nasty old Mouse Queen we heard about earlier and the supreme ruler of the Christmas Kingdom and all of "Cheese Land".

I don't know who's uglier, the mouse or the potato...

Reginald and his little mousy minions launch into a musical number. The song is awful, Reginald can't sing (apparently, it's not Jim Belushi doing the singing voice), and at one point we have to see his underwear. Because I really needed to see that. Thank you. At one point, he boasts that he's going to "steal Christmas". Yeah, uh, I think the Grinch already tried that and it didn't quite work out. What makes you think that YOU have a shot at it? And how exactly does this loud, obnoxious musical number not wake anyone else in the house up?

After the song, the mice rush in to enslave the nuts. Wooden soldiers are there to prevent that, but the mice easily knock them out. Oh, and apparently the nuts WERE woken up by the song, because they're watching this all go down and talking about how they're in big, big trouble. "We must call for REINFORCEMENTS!" the Southern colonel peanut declares.

"FOOD FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!" the Jamaican stereotype nut announces, prompting all sorts of sentient food to join the battle. Pears, broccoli, oranges, all of them start beating the crap out of the mice. Well, except the Timon-voiced cashew, who's doing a running commentary on the battle. Way not to help stop the mice, pal.

Then some beans show up, leading to... you guessed it... a fart joke. Ha ha ha, it's funny because they're farting.

I do like the beans' goofy expressions, I'll give them that.

And by the way, Marie? She's STILL asleep. How did all of this noise not wake her up? She must be a very heavy sleeper. But, eventually, she DOES wake up, and she's understandably quite confused seeing a bunch of mice duke it out with walking, talking fruits and vegetables. And, okay, I did like this joke...

Old Walnut: Why, you should be ashamed of yourselves, chasing a bunch of poor, unarmed nuts! What are you, a man or a mouse?!

Mouse: I'm a... uh, a mouse?

Old Walnut: Well, then, then, then, that case, I owe you an apology, son. Uh, please, resume.

But just when it seems as though the mice have won, guess who shows up?

Where the heck is that glow behind him coming from?

The Nutcracker Prince (voiced by Cam Clarke), now a real boy once again, emerges to partake in a swordfight with Reginald. Once Reginald knocks the sword out of his hand, Marie gets involved. For whatever reason, she doesn't just pick the little mouse up and toss him out a window or something, no, no, instead she tells him to knock it off, then proceeds to climb up a ladder to get away from him and grab the star off the top of the Christmas tree to, I guess, throw it at him. By the way, Reginald has the hots for Marie. And yes, it's very disturbing.

Reginald recognizes the star as the "Christmas Star", which he needs to rule the entire Christmas Kingdom. Marie kicks him off the ladder, then Drosselmeyer shows up. And he's surprisingly quite calm about the fact that there are sentient food and talking rats running amok in his house. "It's time for a little Christmas spirit," he says. And then the Christmas Star somehow shrinks Marie down in size. The Nutcracker Prince starts calling her "Princess", and she still can't make heads or tails of the whole "talking nuts" thing. "Wait 'till you meet the squash, he's REALLY out of his gourd!" the cashew quips.

"After this, I'm gonna star in a Chili's commercial!"
"I'm really high right now!"

The nuts explain to Marie that she freed the prince from the Mouse Queen's spell. But, oh no! The Christmas Star is gone! If they don't get it back, Christmas will be gone forever! Oh, wait, it's not gone. Marie has it in her hands. They just need to get it back on the tree by midnight. According to the Prince, that requires climbing to the castle of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

But first, another musical number! Apparently, these guys have never heard the expression "time is of the essence". By the way, the Jamaican stereotype nut's singing voice sounds nothing like Cheech Marin. And where did Drosselmeyer go? Why doesn't he just put the star on top of the tree for them?

Okay, so while they're singing, they all step through some sort of portal that takes them to the Christmas Kingdom, a magical wonderland of giant ice pops and candy canes. Wouldn't it be easier to just climb the ladder?

Meanwhile, at Reginald's castle...

Which appears to be made out of cheese... which I suppose makes sense, seeing how
he's a mouse and all...

Reginald orders his servants to find Marie so he can marry her. God, if there's one thing worse than a villain who has the hots for the main female character, it's when that villain isn't human and the main female character is.

The good guys are very close to the Sugar Plum Fairy's castle, but before they can get there, Reginald and his henchmen show up on their flying cheese motorcycles (what the heck did I just type?), channel the Flying Monkeys and grab Marie, and take her back to Reginald's castle. We get another musical number as Marie hallucinates that the Prince is there with her or something, then Marie is brought before Reginald so he can make propose to her. She, again understandably, refuses.

Meanwhile, the Prince and the grocery store escapees arrive at Reginald's castle to save Marie and the others who've been captured. The others are all "We can't do it!" and the Prince and the little kid nut are all "Yes, we can!" and I'm all "This is a really crummy movie."

Oddly, I still don't find him as offensive as the Jellyfish from Shark Tale.

They sneak into the castle while Reginald is conveniently too busy... ballet dancing? Uh, anyway, he's too distracted to spot them sneaking in. Marie swipes the star, making Reginald realize that she didn't actually want to marry her at all. No, you THINK?

We get another scene of the Prince and the produce fighting the mice, and eventually the Prince and Marie are pursued by Reginald into the cheese mines where all of the nuts, fruits and veggies have been enslaved. The castle starts crumbling, one thing leads to another, and Reginald winds up falling into a vat of cheese. He can't swim, so Marie and the Prince go back to help him after getting the sentient food to safety.

And he can't just eat his way out (it's CHEESE, after all) becaaaaaaaaaaaause?

But of course Reginald just can't help grabbing the star when they show up to save him, and it falls into the cheese. Fortunately, they manage to save him before the castle blows sky high. "That's the first nice thing everyone's ever done for me," Reginald says. And he also saved the star, which he decides to give to them. An eye for an eye and all that.

So they head to the castle of the Sugar Plum Fairy, who as you might have already guessed is that flying potato in a tutu we kept seeing every so often. She tells them that they don't need her help to get the star back on the tree - the star has incredible powers, always finds a way to shine, and gets brighter with every good deed and nice thought. So all Marie has to do is visualize the star back on the top of the tree and give it a toss.

In a flash of light, the star is back on the tree, Marie wakes up back at her house with her parents, and then Drosselmeyer comes in with the now human-sized Prince.

Did this happen at the end of the play, too?

So, that's the end, right? Well, no, the tutu-wearing potato shows up before the credits to complain about how she didn't get any recognition for her role in the movie. Uh, what did YOU do? Aside from telling Marie that she had the power to get the star back on the tree all along, you did zilch.

What's the Verdict?

The Nuttiest Nutcracker is a very lame film. It's also not particularly nutty. Throwing a bunch of talking nuts and pears in an adaptation of The Nutcracker does not automatically make it nutty, pun aside. The characters are lame and forgettable. Marie is a very boring protagonist. The Prince is dull as dishwater. The talking nuts are really, really weak comic relief characters... well, except the cashew. I kind of like the cashew. The Mouse King is an obnoxious antagonist. The animation is bad. Very bad. Even by 1999 standards it looks crappy. The jokes are hit or miss, some of them are funny but others just fall flat. There surprisingly aren't as many food puns as I was expecting. The voice actors all do their best with the material they've been given, but that's basically the one good thing about the film.

Honestly, though, I was expecting a lot worse. From the cover alone I was expecting something far more ridiculous. I mean, sentient food fighting ugly mice? A Jamaican stereotype nut voiced by Cheech Marin? I had very small expectations, even with the great voice cast. But the film's not god-awful, it's just... bad direct to video animated movie bad. You could do a lot worse as far as animated Christmas things go, but I still wouldn't recommend watching it.

Other reviews of the film I recommend checking out (I wrote this review before watching/reading these, so any similarities, joke or criticism-wise, are unintentional):
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyeWtHaXYys
- http://platypuscomix.com/hollywood/misfit14.html
- http://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-nuttiest-nutcracker-1999-review.html

NEXT REVIEW: The Happy Elf (2005)