Written on November 4th, 2018.
SYNOPSIS: All Clara (Mackenzie Foy) wants is a key – a one-of-a-kind key that will unlock a box that holds a priceless gift. A golden thread, presented to her at godfather Drosselmeyer’s (Morgan Freeman) annual holiday party, leads her to the coveted key—which promptly disappears into a strange and mysterious parallel world. It’s there that Clara encounters a soldier named Phillip (Jayden Fowora-Knight), a gang of mice and the regents who preside over three Realms: Land of Snowflakes, Land of Flowers and Land of Sweets. Clara and Phillip must brave the ominous Fourth Realm, home to the tyrant Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren), to retrieve Clara’s key and hopefully return harmony to the unstable world.
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms opened on November 2nd, and having watched the film, I am quite disappointed with what it turned out to be.
I went into the theater pretty hyped, the visuals in the trailers looked amazing, especially the colours and the saturation. I thought it would be quite a success, and the budget for The Nutcracker was around $130 million. However, the story was much less captivating than other live-action Disney films.
I thought it was a little strange for the film to be titled The Nutcracker and the Four Realms when the main character was Princess Clara, as such it was believed that the Nutcracker would play a pretty big role in this film. Is Clara the Nutcracker? Jayden Fowora's Nutcracker Prince didn't seem to have too big of a role, neither did Morgan Freeman's Drosselmeyer nor Helen Mirren's Mother Ginger. But of course it was the plan all along to have Mother Ginger be a misdirection to something or someone bigger, that is Keira Knightley's Sugar Plum Fairy.
Considering Clara does don the Nutcracker uniform for a large portion of the film I think it's safe to consider her as the main Nutcracker in the title. Mackenzie Foy, most well-known for her roles in Interstellar and The Twilight Saga, was rather great in the film. She managed to bring the right expressions to her character, but I think there could have been further emotion and a larger reaction when she discovers the hidden world. She didn't seem too amazed that a whole other universe existed in the attic. At times the character seemed a little cunning with her getting angry at the Mouse King, demanding the guards to continue on to Mother Ginger's when they knew more about the Fourth Realm, and when she found out that the silver egg was merely a music box.
Keira Knightley had on too much makeup which shielded her facial movements. At times she gave some excessive dramatic reactions but still managed quite a remarkable performance. After all, she is the actress behind Elizabeth Swann from the Pirates of the Carribean franchise, also owned by Disney.
The stakes of the innocent people don't seem very high. It's almost as if everytime a problem comes about, fast forward a few minutes and it is pleasantly solved. It now moves on to another problem. This I think is largely due to the film's exceptionally brief runtime of 1 hour and 40 minutes, including the credits.
The movie feels like its trying to have different elements from a wide range of choices and this was a bad direction to go as they could never properly end on one. Everytime it feels like the movie might be on to something big, it forgoes the whole deal and switches to another chapter. That may be because of the two directors' different visions. Lasse Hallstrom was the director originally hired, and production initially wrapped under him in January of 2017. Almost a year later in December, Disney announced that Joe Johnston would oversee a “significant shoot of additional photography”, lasting 32 days based on new script material written by Oscar winner Tom McCarthy.
The box office for The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is currently underpowered by Bohemian Rhapsody, which released on the same day. The film probably would have earned more if it was released around Christmas, in tone with the context of the film. December 21 marks the release of many Hollywood blockbusters like Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, Aquaman and Bumblebee, but I'm sure some would still prefer the Nutcracker to really get into that holiday spirit.
All in all, I would rate this film a 5 out of 10. Rotten Tomatoes has the Tomatometer at 33%, as is the Audience Score. On IMDb it's 5.5 out of 10 stars.
This is a Drama/Fantasy film, and maybe some romance, adventure and action would have improved it.