Directed by: Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston
Runtime: 99 minutes
As a lover of everything Christmas, I jumped at the chance to see the latest theatrical version of the classic tale of The Nutcracker. The iconic score and fanciful tale from the imagination of composer Tchaikovsky and E.T.A. Hoffmann has captured the imaginations and children and adults alike for over 200 years, and while there have been many different theatrical versions of the story made, I was excited to see what spin Disney would put on the story.
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms delivers when it comes to visuals. The CGI is expertly done without being over the top—in particular, the animation of the Mouse Prince is astounding. The costuming is similarly stunning; watching the main character Clara don a number of intricate Christmas gowns awoke my inner child, as did the costuming of all four heads of the Four Realms, who each have their own unique couture costuming. The set designs of the different Realms are wonderfully whimsical, as is that of the real-world London Christmas Ball.
On top of all this, I was happy to find the inclusion of a spectacular ballet sequence complete with the original ballet score. A few more snippets of the ballet score are played subtly throughout the film, adding a welcome element of nostalgia as we follow the heroes’ journey through the Narnia-like fantasy realm.
Unfortunately, this is where my potential love affair with the film ends. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms can easily be likened to a fancy dessert you might order at a restaurant: the dessert looks stunning on the outside, but take a few bites and you realise it is lacking in substance and already making you sick to the stomach.
When re-imagining a classic tale, there needs to be a balance between fresh and old concepts to provide the audience with something new while elements of nostalgia remain. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is so far removed from the original tale that the plot had many left scratching their heads in the cinema. On top of the overblown plot, the film is also terribly miscast, with the best performances coming from Helen Mirren as Mother Ginger (who only has around 10 minutes of screen time) and the CGI Mouse Prince (who has no dialogue at all, but was the only character that managed to get a laugh from any of the kids in the audience).
Mackenzie Foy does an admirable job playing the main character Clara, and probably could have carried the character properly if she were given more succinct dialogue. Overall, Clara’s motivation for helping out the leaders of the Four Realms remains unclear. Firstly, the film focuses on Clara’s strained relationship with her father (played by Matthew Macfadyen) after her mother’s death. She then embarks upon a journey to retrieve a key to find the answers to life’s big questions. Then she is swept into a quest to save the Four Realms while she wrestles with the concept of what makes a good ruler. It all gets a bit much and results in a character that is constantly in a state of frantic confusion.
This is not helped by the incessant whining of Sugarplum, the ruler of the Land of Sweets. Played by Keira Knightley, Sugarplum could certainly compete with Eddie Redmayne’s Balem Abrasax from 2015 film flop Jupiter Ascending for worst character accent. The helium drawl Knightley manages to wheeze out for the whole duration of the film had me in a constant state of cringe-mode, a mode that was further heightened when she plays the coquette using phrases like “Come on boys” and “Boys in uniform with weapons send a quiver right through me”. I can’t tell you how uncomfortable that last phrase made me as I was surrounded by a silent cinema full of parents and their children.
On top of this, the character of the Nutcracker (played by newcomer Jayden Fowora-Knight) is downgraded to a simple sidekick whose acting is about as wooden as his character is meant to be. I was more interested in the brand of gold highlighter they used to pronounce the top of his lip and eyebrow arches than his clichéd one-liners about believing in yourself and looking inside your heart to find answers.
The rest of the cast hardly gets enough screen time for any real connections to be made. Despite being prominently featured on the poster, Morgan Freeman has about five minutes of screen time and really could have been done without. Richard E. Grant is not too embarrassing as Shiver, regent of the Land of Snowflakes, and Eugenio Derbez’s camp rendition of Hawthorne, the regent of the Land of Flowers, is just passable. Jack Whitehall as one half of a duo of baffled guards is very obviously shoved into the film to provide a bumbling sort of comedic relief—the unfortunate sort of comedic relief that falls flat at every turn. Whitehall in particular just looks happy to be there.
But I digress. I could go on with each little element of the film that makes for a less enjoyable experience, or plainly express the overriding factor that makes this film a failure in my eyes: The Nutcracker and the Four Realms simply over-complicates the source story by including too many characters and trying to focus on too many competing themes.
Looking at the film through a child’s eyes, I can see that the stunning visuals, hero’s journey set-up and glimmering costuming might just be enough to keep a child’s interest for the duration. The cute mice and the charm of the fantasy world might be a hit with the kids, but most adults are likely to find the film lacking in heart and lacking the spirit of what made the original story so iconic.
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