‘Nutcracker’ makes missteps
“The Nutcracker and the Four Realms”? What in the cuckoo Christmas blasphemy is this? Disney, continuing on its inexorable death march to add more war to soft and beautiful classic childhood stories, has plucked all the feathers from Tchaikovsky and Petipa’s holiday ballet and tossed a bunch of glitter and circus clowns at its quivering carcass. This is your warning that if you have any affinity for the ballet, avoid this at all costs. This take on “The Nutcracker,” written by Ashleigh Powell in her screenwriting debut, somehow directed by both Lasse Hallstrom and Joe Johnston, takes merely a few key elements of the ballet and then tosses them into a blender, along with “Alice in Wonderland,” “The Greatest Showman” and Stanley Tucci in “The Hunger Games,” to create something wildly kooky and more violent. Sure, “girl falls asleep on Christmas Eve and dreams an awesome dance show” isn’t a whole lot of plot. But the story this team has come up with is rife with insidious Disney story fetishes, including the addition of the requisite dead mother to offer pathos and motivation for our heroine. Clara (Mackenzie Foy) is obsessed with science and an engineering genius. Set off on a wild goose chase by a mysterious gift from her mother, guided by her godfather Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman), Clara happens into a magical passageway and ends up in the snowy world of the Four Realms: the Realm of Flowers, headed up by Hawthorne (Eugenio Derbez), the Realm of Snowflakes, led by Shivers (Richard E. Grant in truly disfiguring icicle bangs), and the Realm of Sweets, ruled by a squeaky-voiced, cotton candy-haired Sugarplum (Keira Knightley, making some odd choices). The last realm is the Realm of Amusements, where Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren) has been banished with her team of Russian nesting doll clowns. Turns out Clara’s mother was somehow the absentee queen of the tiny world that exists in a clock, and there’s a power struggle in her absence. Civil war, deceit and laser-zapped reanimated tin soldiers abound, but Clara realizes everything she needs to lead as princess is inside, which takes her entirely too long to figure out.