Missing that magic touch

House’s iconic baddies and the all-over-theplace dynamic sees an under-utilised Morgan Freeman (Drosselmeyer) share a billing with a grating Jack Whitehall (Harlequin) and Omid Djalili (Cavalier).

Speaking of grating, Keira Knightley’s Sugar Plum and her supersonic-like vocal chords will leave you wishing you’d taken some earplugs along to the cinema – and have you reaching for a couple of painkillers afterwards!

Ashleigh Powell makes her writing debut here and the story offers so little you’d be forgiven for wondering if her script was penned on a postage stamp.

Once the key pieces are put in place, the movie coasts along hoping that the bigger names among the cast and the bubblegum visuals will distract from the fact nothing of consequence is happening.

Given the Nutcracker’s ballet beginnings, there’s also a criminal lack of dancing or musical sequences that not even the inclusion of familiar, and welcome, Tchaikovsky notes can save.

We go to a Disney film to see people triumph against the odds, fun secondary characters, jaw-dropping magical moments and get swept up in catchy tunes.

The Nutcracker is missing all but the first of those elements and also doesn’t have the courage to inject a true sense of danger that most of the studio’s best flicks are renowned for.

Let’s hope that next month’s Mary Poppins Returns can supply the wonder and wow factor Disney fans have come to expect.