Alice in Wonderland meets Cirque du Soleil
Ashleigh Powell) that pads out the slender, dreamlike fable at its heart with an at times needlessly busy narrative that evokes Alice in Wonderland, The Chronicles of Narnia
That said, the movie also includes passages of simple ballet featuring Misty Copeland. The score, by James Newton Howard, also mixes in plentiful chunks of Tchaikovsky’s familiar music.
The story centres on a girl named Clara Stahlbaum (Mackenzie Foy) and opens at a Christmas Eve party attended by her father (Matthew Macfadyen) and godfather (Morgan Freeman), a toymaker named Drosselmeyer. When Clara wanders off in search of her present from Drosselmeyer, the key to a locked, ornate metal egg, she enters — via a Narnia- like portal — an alternate universe.
There, she meets the film’s title character: a wooden nutcracker who has turned into a young soldier named Philip (Jayden Fowora-Knight). He introduces Clara to four realms: the lands of Sweets, Snowflakes, Flowers and Amusements, each one reigned over by a regent (played to perfection by Keira Knightley, Richard E. Grant, Eugenio Derbez and Helen Mirren, respectively). In this telling, there is dissent among the regents, and Mirren’s character, Mother Ginger, is presented as the villain. But all is not as it seems.
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms can be a little bit scary at times. But in the end, Nutcracker is a delightfully old-school diversion. The plot may not always hum with clockwork precision, but nevertheless plays a sweet tune.
— Michael O’Sullivan,
Washington Post