The Nutcracker and the Four Realms review

THE NUTCRACKER AND THE FOUR REALMS:

A VISUALLY STUNNING MESS!

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** out of 4

DISNEY

Keira Knightley in The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

            The world of The Nutcracker comes to life in the new fantasy adventure just in time for the holidays, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. This is an…interesting film to say the least, a retelling of Marius Petipa’s world-famous ballet, The Nutcracker and E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King with some changes made to the story and without the dance numbers.

            Despite the film looking like a Christmas version of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland from a visual perspective, I was curious to see what Disney and directors, Lasse Hallström (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, The Cider House Rules, Chocolat) and Joe Johnston (Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer, Captain America: The First Avenger) were going to do with this story. There have been several adaptations of The Nutcracker in film and television over the years like the Mickey Mouse Nutcracker short featuring Mickey and Minnie as the Nutcracker and Marie and Donald Duck hilariously casted as the Mouse King, the 1993 film, George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker which was a really awkward hybrid of a movie and stage show, and the notorious 2010 adaptation, The Nutcracker in 3D, I think we could use a adaptation that doesn’t follow the same story as the others.

            However, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind, while the visuals and cast earn some praise, the film as a whole is a mess with a tedious and confusing narrative, lousy character development, and a lack of the yuletide magic of its source material. I’ll give the film credit for trying something different, but when you overly complicate the story you take away its sense of wonder and excitement.

            The film follows a young girl named Clara (Mackenzie Foy-The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 2, Interstellar, The Little Prince) who on Christmas Eve, receives a gift from her mother, Marie who had just recently passed away. The gift turns out to be a mysterious egg-shaped box created by her godfather that requires a key to open.

            Clara, her father, and two siblings visit their godfather, Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman-Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption, The Dark Knight trilogy) for his annual holiday party and gives her a thread to follow so she can claim the key. Turns out the thread leads Clara into a strange parallel world consisting of three realms, the Land of Snowflakes, the Land of Flowers, and the Land of Sweets.  

            Unfortunately, as Clara obtains the key, a mouse steals it and chases it only to run into a soldier named Phillip (Jayden Fowora-Ready Player One) who informs Clara that her mother was actually the queen of this world, making her a princess. She also meets the regents that preside over each realm, The Sugar Plum Fairy (Keira Knightley-Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Pride & Prejudice, Collette) of the Land of Sweets, Hawthorne (Eugenio Derbez-Instructions Not Included, The Book of Life, Overboard) of the Land of Flowers, and Shiver (Richard E. Grant-Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Game of Thrones, Logan) of the Land of Snowflakes who take her to the castle where Marie once ruled.

            The Sugar Plum Fairy tells Clara that their world is at war with the fourth realm, the Land of Amusement, and its ruler, Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren-The Queen, RED 1 and 2, Monsters University) who was presumably banished for her evil intentions. She also informs Clara that her mother created this world when she was a little girl and brought its inhabitants to life through a machine that requires the same key her egg box needs.

            Since the key has been taken by the mice, Clara, Phillip, and their soldiers venture into the fourth realm, retrieve the key, and hopefully restore harmony to this unstable world.

            The film also stars Matthew Macfadyen-Pride & Prejudice, Death at a Funeral, Frost/Nixon) as Mr. Stahlbaum, Anna Madeley (The Secret Life of Mrs. Beeton, Brideshead Revisited, The Crown) as Queen Marie Stahlbaum, Jack Whitehall (Fresh Meat, Bad Education, Jack Whitehall: Travels with My Father) as Harlequin, Sergei Polunin (Murder on the Orient Express (2017), Red Sparrow) as Sweets Cavalier, Miranda Hart (Hyperdrive, Not Going Out, Spy) as the Dew Drop Fairy, Ellie Bamber (The Falling, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Nocturnal Animals) as Louise Stahlbaum, and Misty Copeland (A Ballerina’s Tale, Peg + Cat, World of Dance) as The Ballerina Princess.

            Overall, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is an ambitious project, but its stunning visuals and talented cast aren’t enough to mask its uninspired plot or poorly-developed characters. I was onboard for a different take on the story but some of the choices made with the script and execution did not click with me at all.

            It plays almost like a live-action remake of a Disney animated movie where rules and logic are constantly applied to this fantasy world of imagination that doesn’t make the story any stronger, it just overly complicates it. They try to add a purpose for ballet dancing, during a performance for Clara the Sugar Plum Fairy gives a backstory for it, do we really need that to be explained? It doesn’t impact the plot at all, I was expecting a climax involving bloodthirsty ballerina dancers spinning and kicking soldiers, see my stupid ideas are better than the ones in this film.

            Also, what they do with the Sugar Plum Fairy in this movie really doesn’t work, nothing against Keira Knightley, she’s an undeniable talent, but her character looks like a Wonderland reject with an annoyingly high-pitched voice and a lot of her lines are delivered very awkwardly. However, she falls into one of Disney’s newest clichés, without giving much away, remember the movies, Frozen and Zootopia? Yeah, they go that route with the Sugar Plum Fairy and there’s no reason for it and she doesn’t really have a motivation behind it.

            I will however give it an A for creativity, you have an action sequence involving a nest of mice that form into the giant Mouse King and attacks our protagonists, the Nutcracker battling Harlequin who has multiple versions of himself matryoshka doll style, and other odd sequences that seem more like fever dreams than a movie.

            Unfortunately, what insanity the film may have gets bottled down into a generic story with bizarre choices made. It’s harmless at best, but if you’re looking for a movie that will get you into the Christmas spirit this year, I’d suggest waiting for The Grinch.