The Nutcracker is often considered a staple of the festive season, yet its also a story that many aren’t very favorable with nowadays. Originally starting out as a short story written by E. T. A Hoffman in 1816 (titled “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”) and eventually transforming into a popular ballet in 1892 by Marius Petipa and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the story of a young girl’s favourite toy coming to life to battle the evils of the Mouse King, made for a successful ballet due to its visuals, music and impressive dancing, but no one could deny that it’s very strapped for story and doesn’t really have that much to offer outside of non-verbal mediums and short little vignettes in films or tv specials. The best course of action to take if they wanted to revive the story would be to reinvent it in a different perspective, even if that would also come with its fair share of hurdles (some people get so desperate that they include Holocaust allegories in it). Thankfully, Disney has basically made it an trademark of theirs to remake classic fairy tales in a modern lens, so you would think that they would be able to do it when they announced they would be making a modern adaptation. However, this was going to be a live action adaptation, and given the current track record of live action adaptation, it shouldn’t be a surprise what we eventually got. On Christmas Eve in Victorian London, a young girl named Clara (played by Mackenzie Foy) is grieving the loss of her mother who passed away from ‘’Disney parent-itis’’ and feels disconnected from the rest of her family and the world. She is given a present left behind by her mother, an egg-shaped box that she can’t open without the key, leaving her stumped and desperate for answers. This answer comes in the form of a magical world where its inhabitants are aware of her mother as she was the Queen of this land yet suddenly disappeared. Now a princess of this new world, Clara is told of the turmoil the Four Realms has faced due to Mother Ginger (played by Helen Mirren), the regent of The Fourth Realm who was banished by the rulers of the remaining three realms. Discovering that Mother Ginger has the key to her present, which also holds the power to create an army to fight off her forces, Clara is instructed by the Sugar Plum Fairy (played by Keira Knightly) to venture back to the Fourth Realm along with a The Captain Nutcracker (played by Jayden Fowora-Knight) to retrieve the key and restore balance to the world, even though it will later be discovered that things aren’t as black and white as they are perceived to be. Nutcracker and the Four Realms was a box office disappointment for Disney and resulted in a movie that was quickly forgotten about by the general public.

Its ironic how much this movie was proclaimed as being a re-imagining of the original Nutcracker tale as upon viewing the movie, there’s not much new content included in it, at least not to the level of claiming it’s a complete revamping of the story. It follows the basic outline of the story fairly decently enough; involving a magical land, an evil kingdom run by a ruler who is connected to mice, a young girl brought into this new world by a nutcracker, etc, etc. Looking back at the original short story showcases that it very much relies on fairy tale logic and gets more millage out of its crazy situations and random scenarios rather that featuring something akin to a three-act structure. Upon inspection, its understandable how it could be told very nicely in a ballet format as the set design, musical score and performances of the dancers would be able to convey this story very nicely without much dialogue and it would’ve been a unique experience that helped an otherwise bland story. With this film, they had ample opportunity to fix the original story’s issues and rework it in a manner that made it more interesting and fleshed out for modern time, and Disney could’ve pulled this off much like they’ve done for multiple fairy tale stories in the past, but what was given was anything but fresh and new. This has got to be one of the blandest, safest narratives that has be given to one of these Disney live-action films in a good long while, or even just in any film in general. There is no effort put into making this the least bit new, fresh, or different from any other story of its caliber. It feels like Narnia, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, any random Young Adult book, a good majority of old fashion Disney films, it carries all these components and ironically results in something that feels like it was constructed in a few minutes. Every line of dialogue is expected and generic, the characters have no personality or intrigue to them, the directing is stale and brings nothing to the table, and its so bizarre that a film that is obviously trying from a production level to look visually new and different features a screenplay so not trying to be new and different. You can predict every line, every character arc, every plot beat, it’s the most stale and unoriginal telling of a story that is apparently wanting to be a fresh take on a story already lacking in a plot, and it somehow manages to give it even less plot than before. This film was co-directed by Lasse Hallström (the man who directed What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Chocolat and almost all of ABBA’s music videos) and Joe Johnston (the man who directed Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Jumanji, Jurassic Park III, The Rocketeer and Captain America: The First Avenger) and while these two are definitely good within their own ballparks, their conflicting nature in regards to their films no doubt caused a tonal problems when directing the film, resulting in a confused mess without a distinct touch or personality.

The cast of this movie is decorated with relatively familiar names, but wasn’t advertised to the point where it benefited from their inclusion to increase viewership, moreso feeling like a standard paycheck than an engaged performance. Even with this mix of newcomers and recongisables, the characters in this film are so blandly written that it wouldn’t even matter who portrayed them. Even from people like Richard E. Grant, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren, their roles are so minute and under-written that it makes it feel like a waste that they were even a part of this film, and with all the theatrical and colorful costume design and make-up attached to them, its hard to even see them through their crazy designs. Keira Knightley as the Sugar Plum Fairy is really annoying and is stuck with an incredibly whiny high pitch voice that makes her come across more like a failed Reese Witherspoon performance rather than anything Keira Knightley could have brought herself. The direction they take with her character is definitely different to say the least, but with how poorly this movie is written and constructed, it leaves no impact and feels like a complete waste of time. Mackenzie Foy and Jayden Fowora-Knight as the leads are written very weakly and aren’t given anything unique, fun, or new to work with and just leaves them feeling like stock characters in any random fantasy story. She’s the generic bland innocent whose brought into a new world which connects to her family heritage and must save it because of that, and he’s the generic helpful support who honestly has very little to do in this movie overall (for being a movie about THE NUTCRACKER, he feels pretty pointless to the overall story). It never feels like any of the performers aren’t trying and putting in effort, but they were just given nothing to work with.

If there’s anything that this movie deserves credit on, its the production and visual craft and design for the film. Where everything else about the movie feels like it was given practically nothing to work with and was just forced to work within this bland forgettable shell, the technicals of this film go to great lengths to make this feel different, interesting, visually pleasing, and unique in a way that stands out even from traditional fantasy. While the locations and some of the people look like typical fantasy creations, the way the are dressed and the way the buildings and environments are made to look like gives it an old-fashioned Victorian feel which really helps to connect this version to its original tale while physically showcasing it in a live-action perspective, which feels brand new and different. The cinematography by Linus Sandgren makes a lot of even the basic looking environments feel bigger and more impactful than they would normally be and whenever a shot is trying to make the film replicate the layout of an actual ballet stage performance, it allows for a lot of unique shots for the film, and even when they perform an actual ballet, the shot composition and pacing feel like an extension of an actual stage play and give angles that wouldn’t normally be available. The production design by Guy Hendrix Dyas, the set decoration by Lisa Chugg and the costume design by Jenny Beavan is very well constructed, clearly shows all of their talents and brings a lot of color, flair, and even occasional surreal touches to an otherwise bland environment. During a moment in the middle when they recreate a Nutcracker ballet in order to give context to the world in a presentation like an actual ballet,  it honestly provides for some of the more engaging parts of the film and had the film gone for more of an angle like that (a filmed ballet staged like a movie), it would’ve been given credit for trying something like that even if it failed. The music from Tchaikovsky is very well known and is credited as one of greatest musical compositions of all time, and its not hard to see why with how elegant and graceful yet timeless and impactful it sounds, it’s a groundbreaking score. Whenever it’s used in this film, there definitely are occasions where it feels forced in and like its only there to hype up an otherwise generic scene, but when it’s used well, it is fitting and sounds great.

The Nutcracker and The Four Realms’ biggest issue isn’t even that it’s the most awful thing to sit through, its just that it’s so forgettable and so lacking in anything different or interesting that it barely deserves to even be talked about. It doesn’t offer anything that we haven’t already seen done better in other properties, and for a film that was supposed to bring a new spin to an older story, it does the exact opposite and makes the original look more unique by comparison, which at least had the credit of featuring aspects that are at least surreal and random enough to leave an impression, whereas this is just as soulless and dead as the creepy soldier toys the story is based on. The cast isn’t awful, and it is a very visually pleasing movie, but it would probably just be better to stick with the ballet as at least you can appreciate some fantastic dancing and music in that version. There’s definitely worse versions out there (that Holocaust one is pretty disgusting) but when the one with Barbie looks a little more promising, that’s when you know you made a failure.

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