The mice live in the Fourth Realm, an ominous forest at the center of which stands a circus tent that Tim Burton might have dreamed up, presided over by the somewhat ghoulish Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren), with her long doll lashes and cracked-porcelain face. That composite creature may be horrifying to small children and audiences none too fond of mice, and yet it’s the most stunning creative and technical innovation in a film that’s big on ideas but far too basic in their execution. It is here that she encounters both the nutcracker and the mischievous rodent known as Mouserinks - whose oft-repeated name sounded like “Mouse Rex” to these ears, a moniker better suited to the monstrous form this new Mouse King takes when swept up in a swarm of his feral fellows (achieved by combining state-of-the-art particle animation with hip-hop dancer Lil Buck’s free-flowing, loose-jointed “jookin” choreography). The rest feels like a cross between “Alice in Wonderland” - although Clara seems considerably less bewildered than Alice did, acting bravely at all times - and “The Chronicles of Narnia,” especially as she passes from an attractively wallpapered hallway into the snowy domain on the other end.
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You may have noticed that I used the word “elaborate” three times in the previous paragraph, and while I shall not repeat it again, feel free to insert the notion before every noun still to come, for that’s clearly the effect Disney was going for, all but overwhelming audiences with both the scale and the intricacy of this fantasy world. And so, while the holiday festivities spark the familiar swirls of Tchaikovsky’s unrivaled score, Clara has her own agenda to pursue, seeking out the missing key on a quest that will take her to an elaborate parallel dimension of sorts, where all the key characters of the classic “Nutcracker” tale await her. In this way, she is a lot like her late mother, Marie (Anna Madeley), who has bequeathed her a riddle in the form of a locked silver egg and the note, “Everything you need is inside.”Īt the elaborate Christmas ball, Clara sneaks away from Papa (a forlorn-looking Matthew Macfadyen) to visit her godfather (Morgan Freeman) in his elaborate workshop, crowded with inventions, but none of his tools works on the egg. Powell also demotes the nutcracker himself (Jayden Fowora-Knight) from charming prince to chaste best friend to teenage Clara ( Mackenzie Foy of “The Twilight Saga”), whom we meet in Victorian London, where the film opens: Whereas her siblings love to dance - in a running joke, even kid brother Fritz can hardly wait his turn - Clara prefers more serious pursuits, such as studying physics and tinkering with mechanical things. In this version, the two parties have switched sides on account of a twist that makes a villain of one of the ballet’s sweetest characters. Just don’t be too surprised if writer Ashleigh Powell’s playfully revisionist approach - which unfolds more like a pitch meeting than a proper screenplay - recasts Mickey’s mouse cousins as the good guys in the epic battle for control of the land where Christmas toys come to life. To be fair, that war for control of the kingdom has its roots in Hoffmann’s original story.
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That said, there are certainly wrong answers, and Disney’s dazzlingly hollow, superficially PC live-action adaptation, “ The Nutcracker and the Four Realms,” veers dangerously close to blowing it, squandering a talented cast and some of the most spectacular design work this side of “My Fair Lady” on a version with precious little dance and even less chemistry.Ĭonceptually speaking, who better than Disney to make a definitive big-screen version of “The Nutcracker”? And yet, both the film’s title and the peculiar circumstances that led co-helmers Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston to share directing credit betray the soulless, overcalculated approach of this unwieldy tentpole-by-committee, which feels like a world-building scheme for some future Disneyland theme-park attraction (introducing yet another princess to be trotted out for parades), suggesting but never showing several spinoff-ready realms while rushing through a bellicose plot that centers on a giant battle between rebel mice and an army of tin soldiers. Hoffmann’s 1816 short story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” has been told and retold so many times over the years - as a ballet by Tchaikovsky, as a novel by Dumas, as a Christmas cartoon by Barbie - that we can reasonably conclude there’s no one right way to reinterpret the beloved classic. Conceived just a smidge over two centuries ago, E.T.A.
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