Three stars. Rated PG, for no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.2.18
This isn’t your grandfather’s Nutcracker.
Actually, I’m not sure what to call it.
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| Having just learned that she's princess of the magical Four Realms, Clara (Mackenzie Foy, left) is gowned in suitable fashion by Sugar Plum (Keira Knightley), while one of the palace soldiers guards them attentively. |
This Frankenstein’s Monster is a cynical, coldly calculated commodity that lards the gentle Marius Petipa/Lev Ivanov/Tchaikovsky ballet with bits and bobs from Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz and The Chronicles of Narnia, wraps the content-heavy mess with a ribbon of mild steampunk, and — for good measure — adds Harry Potter’s owl as a bow.
Only Disney could concoct such a clumsy, lumbering mess of a movie, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to enhance the corporate brand via ancillary merchandising.
Along with the opportunity to further entice little girls with a new “Disney princess.”
Mind you, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms certainly looks spectacular. The traditional Disney logo — Sleeping Beauty’s castle — appears on the screen; then the camera swoops past its spires and takes us on a breathtaking, owl’s-view ride above and through Victorian-era London, all in a single magnificent tracking shot, until we reach the Stahlbaum residence, home of Clara (Mackenzie Foy), Louise (Ellie Bamber), young Fritz (Tom Sweet) and their father (Matthew Macfadyen).
It’s a dizzying, captivating tour-de-force opening by cinematographer Linus Sandgren, production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas, and visual effects maestros Max Wood and Marc Weigert.
Things get even more dazzling when the Stahlbaum family joins the cream of London society at the annual Christmas Eve ball, held in the even more opulent palatial estate of Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman). He’s an eccentric, well-traveled entrepreneur and inventor, who also happens to be Clara’s godfather. She shares his talent for tinkering and fabrication: a gift revealed earlier, in the Stahlbaum attic, where she dazzles Fritz with a complicated, Rube Goldberg-esque mousetrap that (briefly) captures an actual mouse.
But Clara is troubled and saddened: This is the first Christmas without her mother, Marie, who — in the rather harsh Disney tradition — is dead before this story takes place. Consumed by her own grief, Clara fails to register her father’s similarly forlorn bearing (a mood that Macfadyen conveys with a persuasive subtlety the rest of this film lacks).
Ah, but Marie has bequeathed a special gift to Clara this Christmas Eve: an ornate, locked metal egg accompanied by a note that reads “Everything you need is inside.” But the egg requires a golden key that Clara does not possess; she hopes that her godfather will know how to open it. Instead, Drosselmeyer speaks in benevolent riddles and sends her along a ribboned trail to find his gift to her.
At which point, after following the ribbon through his garden hedge labyrinth, and the similar maze of upstairs hallways in his oddly, ever-expanding upstairs wings, she emerges from the hollowed trunk of a massive felled tree in a snow-covered landscape.
Whereupon I turned to Constant Companion and muttered, “C.S. Lewis, here we come.”
That’s only the beginning.
With the resourceful assistance of a nutcracker soldier named Phillip (Jayden Fowora-Knight), Clara narrowly escapes an attack by a horrific Mouse King, and then is guided safely to the Arabian-esque palace at the center of the Four Realms. She meets Hawthorne (Eugenio Derbez), regent of the Land of Flowers; Shiver (Richard E. Grant), regent of the Land of Snowflakes; and Sugar Plum (Keira Knightley), regent of the Land of Sweets.
All speak fearfully of the malevolent Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren), regent of the dark and mysterious Fourth-Realm-That-Cannot-Be-Named, and of her intention to invade and destroy everything that’s bright and cheerful. (Wicked Witch of the West, anybody?)
The kingdom is delighted to meet Clara, as she’s the daughter of Marie, who became the Four Realms’ queen, back in the day. That makes Clara a princess, so she naturally offers to save the realms. Besides which, she wants that golden key, which she has seen in the tiny jaws of a mouse beholden to Mother Ginger.
Seems as good an excuse as any, for a magic- and steampunk-laden quest.
Mind you, the “Nutcracker Ballet” is based on an 1816 E.T.A. Hoffman story that’s even more daft, but that’s no excuse for the pop culture-mangling clumsiness of Ashleigh Powell’s script for this film. Clara’s subsequent encounters and confrontations are completely random, existing more for visual pizzazz than anything approaching plot coherence.
Yes, the aforementioned Mouse King is cleverly nightmarish, and the nested Polichenelles who guard Mother Ginger are impressively creepy — a very clever special effect — as they pop out of each other and do battle as bouncing dervishes. And, late in the game, the squadrons of life-size tin soldiers — all bearing an approximation of Clara’s father’s face — are quietly menacing.
But it feels meaningless, because all of these characters — particularly Knightley’s shrill, squeaky-voiced Sugar Plum — speak and interact with a level of stilted exaggeration that’s too precious by half. Granted, they’re all toys come to life, with no experience in “real” human behavior, but that’s hardly an excuse; we had no trouble identifying with all the characters in Pixar’s various Toy Story fantasies.
The characters here simply don’t resonate. They speak tin-eared lines with no conviction, and therefore it’s difficult — if not impossible — to get emotionally involved. The outcome of Clara’s quest is a foregone conclusion from the onset, and she never seems to be in any actual danger.
Her adventures also feel oddly rushed, perhaps because a good chunk of this film’s running time is devoted to a lengthy ballet presented early on by Hawthorne, Shiver and Sugar Plum, as a means of explaining their realms’ back-story to the newly minted Princess Clara. (In a nice nod to Disney history, a fleeting glimpse of the silhouetted conductor and orchestra evokes the identical tableau from 1940’s Fantasia.)
The ballet is a distraction, like so much else. The film simply doesn’t flow. It lurches from one set-piece to the next, with little rhyme or reason; all this luxurious production design, and the impressive special effects, are wasted on a story with no heart.
The reason behind this uneven tone is obvious: Original director Lasse Hallström was replaced by Joe Johnston, who spent a month on re-shoots of new material (written by an uncredited Tom McCarthy).
Hallström, an actor’s director celebrated for classics such as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, The Cider House Rules and Chocolat, never, ever would have coaxed his cast to act this coldly and falsely. Johnston, on the other hand, is a large-scale director who traditionally pays more attention to visuals than performances, in blockbusters such as Jurassic Park III, The Wolfman and 1995’s Jumanji.
Credit where due, Foy makes Clara an admirably intelligent, plucky and resourceful heroine. She’s a reasonably credible character, although her London scenes — notably those with Macfadyen — display far more heart than anything taking place in the Four Realms.
Mirren is suitably sinister as Mother Ginger, her menacing air given additional intensity by flaming red hair and a face that’s chipped and cracked, like that of a broken doll. Freeman makes a saintly Drosselmeyer, and Knightley’s Sugar Plum is a hoot (with hidden depths). Finally, Jenny Beavan’s colorful, dazzling costume designs are beyond splendiferous.
All of which amounts to very little, because this film is all dressed up, with nowhere to go. I wondered whyThe Nutcracker and the Four Realms — clearly a Christmas story — was being released only two days after Halloween. The answer now seems obvious.
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