Overrated

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

I remember getting this as a birthday present from my grandparents on video and I absolutely loved it. I've watched it lots and lots of times just because I loved seeing the ballerinas and of course the music was absolutely amazing! I mean I'm 20 years old and I can still remember this! Unfortunately the video of this is gone to the charity shop since it was hanging around the shelves for years and became dusty. I'll miss it like but you know, it will always be a memorable one for me!It will be great when I show this to my kids in the future and tell them how mummy was obsessed with this during her childhood xD

No hero is worth his salt without a great villain, and no actor is better at playing an animated villain than Tim Curry.Yeah, the animation's nice for a 2001 project and yeah, it's basically a feature-length advertisement for the deluge of toyetic characters and props that it features, but you know what? They put their all into making it as entertaining an ad for toys as G.I. Joe or Transformers ever were. The story's pretty solid, the action's not to bad, Barbie is a surprisingly interesting character in her role as Clara. But by far the best element in this film is Tim Curry as the Mouse King, who you have to wonder why ANYONE would leave their kingdom and magic scepter to inherit. My only real complaint about this film are the deviations from the source material. Don't get me wrong, most of them work but a few are clearly there to pad out the movie or shoehorn in more of Tchaikovsky's original Nutcracker score.But, seriously, if nothing else, watch this film for Tim Curry. Playing power-hungry, deliciously evil villains are when he's at his very best, and the Mouse King is no exception.

I was amazed to see the low rating this movie was given! My daughter absolutely loves it. The movie highlights real ballet steps and the original Tchaikovsky score, performed by th London Symphony. The plot is sweet, Barbie is a good role model, and there's a wonderful message. It also almost completely non-violent. The evil rat is wonderfully voiced by Tim Curry. I thought this Barbie movie was much better than Rapunzel but it's certainly rated lower. I have to echo some other comments by saying I've seen it around 100 times with my 2 year old and it's still not completely boring!

A nice and enchanting animated film. The only problem I had was that English accents were chosen for the only 3 disturbing characters - the two villains and the hypocritical Captain Candy. Somebody have an issue there? The motions were clearly based upon some kind of real-world motion capture, and thus did not have the faky non-gravity quality of much computer-generated 'footage' of living beings.