Formula:
Alice in Wonderland * Christmas
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...
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Well, that didn't help much. I mean, I understand a
couple choices a little better. I appreciate the difficulty of this adaptation
more. It doesn't fundamentally change my appreciation of the movie at all.
Dammit. It looks like this is going to be one of these overly critical reviews.
I'm not going to be alone. Disney has known this for
a while. They embargoed reviews until right before the movie was released.
That's always a bad sign. It means they know there's isn't much public
excitement for the movie to begin with, and they don't want what they know are
negative reviews to kill what little buzz there is. I hate piling on too. I'd
much rather champion a movie that others turn their noses too. In fact, some
time in the last month, I started getting excited for The Nutcracker. It
looked crazy and chaotic: an island is misfit event movie cliches that could
manage to work despite itself. Where a lot of people saw a poor man's Alice
in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, or Chronicles of Narnia, I saw
potential for The Princess Bride, Stardust, or Labyrinth.
Alas, my hopes were misplaced.
The Nutcracker is loosly based on the ballet. Very loosely. It's
probably better to say it used the ballet as a starting point to build
something very different. It tells the story of Clara Stahlbaum (Mackenzie
Foy), a clever young girl who recently lost her mother. It's her first
Christmas without her mother, and she, her father, sister, and brother are all
handling it poorly in different ways. At a grand Christmas Eve party thrown by
her godfather (Morgan Freeman), she is guided to the magical land of the Four
Realms. I'm not sure how, exactly. Magic, I guess. Just go with it. Anyway, the
Four Realms are at war with each other. The rulers of three of the realms,
including Sugar Plum Fairy (Keira Knightley), ruler of the Land of Sweets, are
at war with Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren), ruler of the Fourth Realm. It turns
out Clara's mother was the queen of the Four Realms, which makes Clara the
princess. With the help of Captain Phillip Hoffman, the Nutcracker (Jayden
Fowora-Knight), who she meets along the way, Clara must find a way to make
peace between the Four Realms.
There is one thing I looked up before seeing this
movie, and that's the run time. It's barely over 90 minutes. That shocked me,
because the story I just described in the last paragraph has "2 hour 15
minute fantasy epic" written all over it. The way they cut out those 45
minutes is by truncating the story severely and giving up on character
development. This is a very plot-driven movie. The first hour of it is
Clara being pushed through all the events. She follows the lead of every
character and circumstance. It isn't until very late in the movie that it feels
like she has any control over what's happening. It's hard to build a character
out of that. Her only discernible personality trait is that she's plucky. And
she's the most developed character. The Nutcracker should be the
breakout supporting role, both because of the name of the movie and his role as
the sidekick who doesn't have the responsibility of driving the story. That's
the Han Solo, Jack Sparrow, Mad Hatter role. Sadly, his only character trait is
that he's blindly loyal. There's a mouse character who is literally too small
to have much of a personality. Keira Knightley is buried under a performance
that requires her to talk in baby voice the whole time. [I couldn't stop
thinking about Cristin Milioti in the "TGS Hates Women" episode of 30
Rock.] Knightley gives it her all, but it's too silly to overcome. Mirren
gets very little to do, because as soon as she says five words, she telegraphs
where the rest of the movie is going.
Throughout the movie, I kept thinking about all the
different movies this reminded me of, but the one I kept coming back to is Labyrinth.
A lot of the complaints I have with The Nutcracker could be said about Labyrinth
too. Both movie force a teenage girl with little discernable personality
into a story that seems to move forward whether she does anything or not. Labyrinth
has turned into a beloved children's movie. I see no way for The Nutcracker
to end up beloved. Why? Well, because Labyrinth is proudly weird. It has
David Bowie is an absurd role that he's 100% committed to; singing catchy songs
for some reason. Each leg of the journey in Labyrinth is it's own quirky
chapter, with characters who make a quick impression. Almost none of that movie
makes sense, and that's fine. The Nutcracker doesn't excel at anything a
movie needs. It doesn't have a strong lead who I care about. None of the
supporting characters pop in a memorable way. There isn't a cheeky sense of
humor. The production design isn't especially impressive or ingenious. It's
mostly a collection of leftover ideas that didn't fit in Alice in Wonderland
or The Golden Compass. The villain, for a few reasons, doesn't get to be
villainous in a fun way. The famous ballet is ham-fisted into the movie in a way
that's more distracting than anything. A better score that really took
advantage of the very famous music could've done a lot in this movie.
Still, I didn't hate the movie. It isn't exactly
bad. Go with me here. The best way I can describe it is this. In professional
sports, when a league adds a new team, they hold an expansion draft. The way it
works is that all the current teams in the league are allowed to protect a few
of their best players. The new team can then put together a team out of all the
unprotected players from of the other team rosters. So, in basketball a 15
player team protects 8 players. The new team can pick any of the other 7
players from each team to build their roster. So, what you end up with is a new
team that's made up of the 9th or 10th best players from other teams. These
aren't bad players, but none of them are great players. The Nutcracker
is very much like a movie put together by a fantasy movie expansion
draft. It has the 9th best thing about Lord of the Rings, the 5th best
part of The Golden Compass, the 7th best element of Labyrinth,
etc. It isn't the best example of anything from the genre. Expansion teams are
almost always awful right away because the other teams are built out of better
pieces by definition. That's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms in a -
well - nutshell. Despite a commitment from Disney (estimated $120
million budget) and a couple decent signings (Mirren has an Oscar and Knightley
has a pair of nominations), it's obvious why no one was racing to piece this
story into a movie sooner.
One Last Thought: Is this a Christmas movie? It takes place on Christmas
Eve. Christmas is the direct impetus for the story. Many of the production
design elements are directly pulled from classic Christmas items. Inside the
Four Realms though, nothing really screams "Christmas". If this was a
more popular movie, this could spark a much more interesting debate than the
one surrounding Die Hard and Christmas. I think I'm leaning toward The
Nutcracker and the Four Realms: Not a Christmas movie.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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