New ‘Nutcracker’ is an Overcooked Christmas-Movie Meatloaf
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
Starring Mackenzie Foy, Keira Knightley & Helen Mirren
Directed by Lasse Halleström & Joe Johnson
PG
Only in Hollywood can li’l vampires become Disney darlings.
Mackenzie Foy stars in this lavish House of Mouse retooling and respooling of the beloved Nutcracker holiday musical. You might remember her as the child who played the half-vampire, half-human spawn of Edward (Robert Pattinson) and Bella (Kristen Stewart) in two Twilight movies.
In the time-warp-y Interstellar, she was Matt Damon’s young daughter, who grows up to be Jessica Chastain.
So as an actress, Foy, 17, is certainly no stranger to strange things happening.
Mackenzie Foy
In The Nutcracker and The Four Realms, based on the Tchaikovsky ballet—and mainly on the book, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, which inspired it—she’s Clara, a young British lass who discovers a hidden parallel kingdom crawling with colorful, wacky characters and divided by old grudges.
It turns out that Clara’s late mother was actually the queen of the Realms, making Clara a princess—a Disney princess!
Clara’s on a quest for a key to unlock a musical egg, a cryptic Christmas gift from her mother. The same key may also be essential to saving the Four Realms. Interesting! If only she can retrieve it from that pesky rodent, Mouserinks, known far and wide as a scampering scallywag—and stay away from the Mouse King, an oversized beast of a creature that’s actually thousands of teeming, swarming mice.
Morgan Freeman
Keira Knightly is a winged, pixie-fied delight as the Sugar Plum Fairy, with a wad of cotton-candy hair, a sweet tooth, an agenda of her own—and a soft spot for big tin soldiers. Morgan Freeman has a couple of scenes as Clara’s godfather, a wise, one-eyed inventor and tinkerer who points her on the path into the Realms. Helen Mirren plays Mother Ginger, the “banish-ed” Queen of Amusement now reigning over an abandoned circus and some super-creepy, somersaulting harlequins.
Misty Copeland
There’s also the icicle-covered Shiver, King of the Snow Realm (Richard E. Grant), and the Flower Realm King, played by superstar Mexican actor and filmmaker Eugenio Derbez.
Acclaimed pro ballerina Misty Copeland, the principal dancer for the American Ballet Theater, performs an elegant classical number in the movie’s only real tie to theatrical productions of The Nutcracker.
A princess, a castle, a cute critter or two, beauty, a beast, music and magic dust—that’s pretty much been Disney’s bread and butter for decades. But The Nutcracker and the Four Realms feels more like a snack than a meal, a Disney diversion instead of a main course.
It looks sumptuous, with lavish sets, extravagant costumes and whimsical designs—that don’t really add up…to much of anything. It’s a hodgepodge, a beloved holiday musical based on a musty book from 1816; a shoehorned ballet performance; fantasy elements that feel drawn from a variety of other sources, including The Chronicles of Narnia, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland and Babes in Toyland. Sometimes the clever, plucky Clara seems like a cross between Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft and Victorian London’s smartest STEM student. She can jailbreak clockwork doodads, plop down a rope from a castle tower, scale across rocky cliffs, crawl through massive churning waterwheels and even—yes—build a better mousetrap.
It’s all “science, mechanics and a bit of luck,” she says.
But you’ll be out of luck if you come to this Nutcracker wanting to see actual nutcrackers—you know, those ornamental, toy-soldier dolls people unbox at Christmastime. The nutcracker in this Nutcracker is a real person, played by Jayden Fowora-Knight, a British actor in his first major film role. He’s a handsome guard who’s around for most of the movie, but he doesn’t get a lot to do.
And he’s no nutcracker.
Swedish director Lasse Halleström (The Hundred-Foot Journey, Safe Haven, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) passed the baton to Texan Joe Johnson, whose resume includes Captain America: The First Avenger, The Wolfman and Jurassic Park III, when rewrites and reshoots were required last year. That’s usually a signal of some kind of trouble—just like Princess Clara finds in the Four Realms. This overcooked, Texas-Swedish Christmas-movie meatloaf is a Disney dud that just doesn’t quite measure up.
Not every Disney princess can be Cinderella, and not every Disney movie can be a classic. This one will probably leave most Disney fans hungry and waiting for the next one, when Mary Poppins sweeps down in December to remind everyone what the good ol’ Disney magic is all about—and how it’s done.
In theaters Nov. 2, 2018
The Media Tourist 