This is Warmer Brothers' film version of composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's famous ballet, The Nutcracker, filmed at New York City.It tells the story of Marie, who dreams about her Nutcracker Prince. They journey to the Enchanted Forest after defeating the Mouse King. There, the Sugar Plum Fairy honors Marie and the Prince's presence by hosting them a number of dances - Spanish Dance, Arab Dance, Chinese Dance, Russian Dance, Dance of the Clowns and Waltz of the Flowers. These sequences are probably the highlight of the entire Nutcracker Ballet.The special and visual effects were great and the costumes were colorful. The film's coda was brilliantly done, with the neat carriage in midair and all the dancers coming out to dance in one extravaganza number.Tchaikovsky's music is rich and beautifully performed by the New York City Ballet Orchestra. While the adapted story line was interesting, the film in general starts off really slow, with too much focus on the children and their greedy personalities. The female lead, the girl named Marie, was a little too much in the zone - trying to act too prim, proper, and theatrical. The overall acting didn't do it for me - a little too overzealous and artificial.If I have to compare, I would choose MGM's 1986 Nutcracker: The Motion Picture over this one.Grade C+

The best thing about this movie was the Orchestra and the incomparable Tchaikovsky score. A few of the dancers were literally amazing and virtually all of them were superb. The staginess of the production was very evocative of a live performance. However,the production as a whole detracted from the art we should have gotten. We ordered the DVD in hopes of showing it to our grandchildren, but the score, story and name alterations were so disconcerting that we decided to not introduce them to the Nutcracker this way. Of course, inserting a non-dancer into a ballet is like asking Rosanne Barr to sing at the Met. It is sure to elicit the exclamation: "What WERE you thinking?!?!" and it did. The major complaint about the production as a whole is hard to pin down, but the DVD was disappointing nonetheless. It just lacked the essence of great art. We simply were not "swept away." In general, some performances leave you feeling they were not up to snuff, but this one left us with the feeling of having been affronted. I would love to see it re-shot with a standard plot line, all dancers (no current heartthrobs), and more drive via the editing. One final whine: as the music was the best part, why don't they include the names of the musicians in the end-title roll? It wouldn't take up that much time.The violin solo was one of the high points of the entire performance, yet we got the names of all kinds of tradesmen whose output was indiscernible to us, but not the names of the musicians.

The Nutcracker has always been a somewhat problematic ballet. It bears little resemblance to ETA Hoffman's original story on which it is based.In the ballet, the story is essentially over by the second-half when Clara (or Marie in this version) travels to the Kingdom of Sweets to watch a series of character dances.There's an infinite variety of stage productions that re-interpret the story in myriad ways (not always successfully) to compensate for the ballet's weak libretto.Balanchine's version doesn't really have any sense of drama or story at all (despite the fact that there is plenty of drama and mystery in Tchaikovsky's wonderful first-act music). The result is a completely forgettable first-half Christmas party where hardly anything happens and where even the dancing (the little that there is of it) isn't particularly memorable.The pantomime over-acting, particularly of Drosselmeier, which might look passable on the stage, just looks silly filmed for the big screen.Unfortunately, things aren't much better when we get to the Kingdom of Sweets (Act II in the stage version). Although there are a few choreographic highlights, most of the choreography is bland and uninspiring. This certainly isn't vintage Balanchine.Balanchine is widely regarded as a master of abstract dance, but I have always felt he was less successful as a creator of narrative ballets. Watching this film version of his stage production of The Nutcracker has only re-affirmed this view.

I have seen many, many productions of The Nutcracker. Now perhaps I viewed this movie from the tainted point of view of a theatrical director, but I was disappointed. I'm sure people in the specific business of ballet choreography find this production impressive but from a purely theatrical perspective I found everything from design to choreography to be lackluster and unbefitting of a "motion picture". None of the traditionally "weird" and impressive costumes looked like what they were supposed to be (i.e. the candies didn't look like candies, the rats didn't look like rats but rather like chocolate kisses,) the acting was weak, perhaps toned down too much for the screen, and the choreography just didn't do anything for me. This makes the entire show very satisfactory (at best), as if it were intended to not set itself apart from any other production. But remember, again, this is from the artistic perspective of a theatrical director, not a dancer or a choreographer, but a straight male theatrical director.