Checked out the great big shrug of a movie The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. This is what you get when the studio wants to make a Nutcracker Christmas movie, someone else slates it for October, and then a third guy says, “yes, but more Lord of the Rings, please”. I’m not sure who this movie is for… and I’m not sure the movie knows what it is.
To be randomly fair, the movie is more like Chronicles of Narnia than it is Lord of the Rings… or maybe it’s a lot more like the recent Alice in Wonderland movies? I dunno. Just roll some dice and pick from a list of low-effort, family-friendly attempts at emulating the success of other blockbuster movies and you get this limp noodle.
Mackenzie Foy plays the girl who wanders into the winter wonderland that is Narni… I mean… the Four Realms? Or something? Foy is really good here and very charming… she played young Murphy in Interstellar. Except for the production design, she’s about the only good thing in a movie that co-stars Keira Knightly, friggin Helen Mirren, and Morgan Freeman…
As to Keira Knightly… I like her. I really do. She’s terrible in this flick though as the Sugar Plum Fairy. Teeth grating acting. Helen Mirren and Morgan Freeman got a paycheck. Foy, as mentioned, is trying really hard and her character solves problems with her knowledge of physics and mechanics (and random martial arts because that just makes sense). Unfortunately the dude playing the titular Nutcracker makes no impression at all.
So I guess the movie sort of follows some version of the Nutcracker story… it has a tiny bit of ballet, and occasionally a tune you’ll recognize… but mainly it wants to be a children’s fantasy movie with more sword fights, a rat king made of thousands of mice, a giant robot, and more steampunk than you really need. None of it really comes alive and you just kind of wonder why they spent so much money on nice costumes and visual effects for THIS. I’d call it at try-hard but it’s not even trying very hard.
Score: 68