The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

Starring: Mackenzie Foy, Morgan Freeman, Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, Matthew Macfadyen, Richard E. Grant, Jayden Fowora-Knight
Directed by: Lasse Hallstrom, Joe Johnston
Rating: PG
Genre: Adventure, Fantasy
2018

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A young girl (Mackenzie Foy) is transported to a magical land where she gets involved in a dispute between the leaders of different realms.

Review:

Tim: While Disney is basically ruling the world with Marvel, Pixar, and their recent purchase of Fox, there's still some troubling things about the company. One of them is the insistence on these big budget, overly visual fairy tales that have continuously come up short of expectations. It bothers me how many we've gotten and there seems to be no ability of the company to learn from its past mistakes. My hope is the fact that The Nutcracker and the Four Realms was a commercial and box office failure perhaps gets someone to examine what went wrong.

I get the desire to put out films aimed at younger viewers, but you can still make a great movie that's rated PG. This film felt lackluster from the very start. I blame a lot of this on the overrated 2010 version of Alice in Wonderland. That movie made a ton of movie but putting visuals first and not really worrying about telling a compelling story with enjoyable characters. It proved that a bad movie could make a ton of money. 2013's Oz the Great and Powerful followed a similar path. Assemble a great cast, make nearly everything computer generated, and it'll all work out. That was another disappointment. Maleficent was the same story. And this one follows that path.

A big part of the problem here is the sense that the movie puts the visuals first, before character or plot. A ton of money was sunk into the visuals. The problem is that with no practical effects, nothing we watch feels real. The visual effects are impressive, but they are not indistinguishable from reality. Everything takes on this fairy tale quality which might seem like a good idea, but it's hard to take anything seriously. These movies need to be more grounded, less reliant on green screens. This film seems to put all its eggs in the visual basket and there's not enough room for anything else.

I thought the cast was overall fairly positive. I'll always like Mackenzie Foy from her performance in Interstellar, and I thought she made a solid protagonist. She's going to have a long career in Hollywood, I believe. She does a good job of projecting strength and vulnerability. She works really well in the lead role. While at times her ability (which is still developing) wasn't up to what the role needed, she was fairly positive overall. Morgan Freeman was fine, but he has so little to do that it felt like a bit of a waste. Helen Mirren was good. I didn't love her performance or her character, but she works fairly well.

I do want to highlight Keira Knightley. Her Sugar Plum is one of the most memorable aspects of the film. She gives a somewhat bizarre, over-the-top performance that absolutely works within the context of the film. Having seen Knightley in a ton of movies before, I can say I've never seen her like this. It was a reminder that she's a better actress than I give her credit for- she gives a totally different performance here that made the movie better. While she looks like herself, she absolutely didn't sound like it- I don't know how she made her voice do what it does here, but it was impressive.

The story here was okay. The title suggests that a Nutcracker will be more essential to the overall film, but it felt like an afterthought. A lot is thrown into the mix, but very little of it actually sticks. I didn't really care about anything that was happening in the film. The story has a few nice unexpected twists, but the main path is a familiar one and it does ultimately become a bit too predictable.

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is fine as a film, but Disney should be able to put out a better film than this. Lasse Hallstrom and Joe Johnston are both good directors, but you wouldn't know that by watching this film. I was fairly discouraged by most of this movie.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Alice in Wonderland, Oz the Great and Powerful, Alice Through the Looking Glass