‘Nutcracker’ reboot is not an instant classic ‘The Nutcracker and the Four Realms’
Officially, the relationship between “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” and the ballet is “suggested by,” but Disney has been taking suggestions from more than just a 19th-century children’s story and its iconic incarnation in dance.
In a sumptuous blend of live action and CGI frills, teenage Clara (Mackenzie Foy), grieving the death of her mother, discovers a magical world where mechanical toys have come to life. Naturally, she arrives just in time to be dragged into a civil war between Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren in post-apocalyptic mode) and the Sugar Plum Fairy (Keira Knightley at her absolute perkiest).
It’s part “Alice in Wonderland,” part “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” with a narrative arc expertly engineered — just like the toys of the kindly/ exotic inventor Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman in an eye patch) — using interchangeable parts from all your favorite youth-lit hits. Heck, some of the denizens of the Four Realms would blend in fine in The Capitol in the “Hunger Games” movies.
A hodgepodge story calls for a hodgepodge look, but you nonetheless can count on Disney to create a visual world that any wide-eyed kid (or self-professed youth at heart) would want to visit. After slipping through a magic doorway into a frozen forest, a red-uniformed soldier named Philip — aka the Nutcracker — guides Clara to a palace Lasse Hallström, Joe Johnston. Mackenzie Foy, Keira Knightley, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren. PG for some mild peril. that looks like St. Basil’s Cathedral plucked out of Red Square and plopped onto a tower with gargantuan gearworks that would make Sauron the Great salivate.
For pure cinematic pleasure, you’ve got to love the way Disney has updated the Mouse King. Instead of a giant rodent, Clara and her faithful sidekick (Jayden Fowora-Knight, as wooden as the Tin Man, and not in a good way) battle a squirming mass of life-size mice undulating as one mass entity.
If you’re the “eek, a mouse” type, you might want to plan a quick trip to the restroom.
Fans of fancy period costumes and supernatural effects both get plenty to gawk at, but the story offers no real surprises, and that includes the big plot twist. Even the conflict with Clara’s starched-shirt father (Matthew Macfadyen) builds and resolves like clockwork.
So, not quite an instant Christmas, or Disney, classic. But “The Nutcracker and Four Realms,” just like the Land of Sweets in the ballet, has many delightful diversions, including a well-publicized cameo by the famed Misty Copeland, the first black woman to be a principle dancer with American Ballet Theatre. Her mini-“Nutcracker” is lovely (with a visual nod to “Fantasia”), but even better is her more modern pas de deux in the closing credits.
It’s the one thing that doesn’t quite fit with the well-oiled stylistic machinery at work here, but it’s one of the few moments of true magic.