Looking good for the holidays
Striking visuals save the day in extravagant but radically reworked Nutcracker adaptation
It’s been 202 years since E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, and we’re still trying to make the perfect adaptation. The first ballet performance premiered in 1892, with music by Tchaikovsky. A film version of that from 1986, with sets designed by Maurice Sendak, remains popular. And a 2010 adaptation, The Nutcracker in 3D, was easily the worst film of a year that included Marmaduke.
The good news is that Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is nowhere near that level of ghastliness. (The other good news is that it was directed by Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston, because if Peter Jackson had got his mitts on it, he’d have made a nine-hour epic with one film for each realm.)
For a start, the visuals are fantastic. The 19th century has seldom looked so lived-in; you could freeze just about any frame and revel in the costumes and set decoration.
There’s also a weird steampunk vibe happening, with all kinds of clockwork mechanisms, water wheels and Rube Goldberg devices, including a mousetrap. It’s great fun to watch.
The film opens in the Stahlbaum family house at Christmas. Mother has recently died, and Father (Matthew Macfadyen), tries to put on a brave face, but ends up with a mopey one. The protagonist, however, is Clara (Mackenzie Foy), who receives a sort of Fabergé egg from her late mother, but lacks a key to open it.
Enter Godfather Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman in an eye patch), whose present is a trip to a magical world where Clara tries to track down the key, which has been stolen by a mischievous mouse. She’s helped by a nutcracker/soldier named Phillip (Jayden Fowora-Knight), who introduces her to the realms’ regents, played by a falsetto-voiced Keira Knightley, Mexico’s Eugenio Derbez, and Richard E. Grant.
Helen Mirren plays Mother Ginger, the ruler of another realm that looks like an amusement park gone to seed. We sense that at least one of these monarchs might be misrepresenting themselves, but the nice thing about a radical reworking of the story is that, even when the narrative flounders, it at least offers some surprises to those who know the original plot backward and forward.
It’s worth letting fans know not to expect more than a little of the ballet’s music in this version. We get the odd snippet, along with a little bit of dance, but then it fades away in favour of a score by James Newton Howard, who eight Oscar nominations notwithstanding, is no Tchaikovsky.
Foy, who turned 17 during filming, turns in a strong performance as Clara.
The Four Realms features some mild peril, but its PG rating means it should be safe enough for most little ones, and its mix of Narnia and Oz-like visuals should keep everyone engaged.
It may not become the Christmas classic Disney is hoping for, but it remains as pretty as a decked-out tree.