The Nutcracker (2010)

Directed by: Andrey Konchalovskiy | 110 minutes | action, family, fantasy, musical | Actors: Elle Fanning, Nathan Lane, John Turturro, Frances de la Tour, Richard E. Grant, Yuliya Vysotskaya, Shirley Henderson, Aaron Michael Drozin, Charlie Rowe, Peter Elliott, Daniel Peacock, Alan Cox, Hugh Sachs, Africa Nile, Jonny Coyne, Stuart Hopps, Ferenc Elek, Attila Kalmar, György Hontic

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky turns in his grave when he sees what his compatriot Andrei Koncharovski has done with his beloved ballet ‘The Nutcracker’. Anyone expecting a film adaptation of the traditional Christmas fairy tale about the young girl and her wooden doll that has come to life will be disappointed. ‘The Nutcracker: The Untold Story’ (2010) certainly contains elements from the original ‘Nutcracker’ – here too there is a girl who is given a wooden nutcracker doll that comes to life in her fantasy – but Koncharovski gives then such a bizarre twist that the entire film is destroyed. The fact that he’s made a mixed bag of genres and jumps from one piece to the next, doesn’t make it any easier to appreciate this film. ‘The Nutcracker: The Untold Story’ is an outright misstep.

It took Konchaovski nearly twenty years to bring his version of the ballet dating from 1892 to the silver screen. For the story he borrowed from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’, for the look of the film he peeked at Terry Gilliam. Mary (Elle Fanning) is a girl of about twelve years old in 1920s Vienna. Her parents (Richard E. Grant and Yulia Visotskaya) pay no attention to her even on Christmas Eve. Fortunately, there’s her absent-minded Uncle Albert (Nathan Lane)—whose tousled gray hair and fondness for the song “Theory of Relativity” indicate that we’re dealing with none other than Albert Einstein, albeit a rather clumsy version—who points to continuing to believe in the impossible. Uncle Albert gives Mary and her annoying little brother Max (Aaron Michael Drozin) a wooden dollhouse with three ‘residents’ and a wooden nutcracker doll called NC. When Mary goes to sleep, the doll comes to life.

From that moment on, ‘The Nutcracker: The Untold Story’ takes a turn for the worse. The doll, who is actually a cursed young prince, first takes the poor child on a journey through her own Christmas tree. However, the silver-colored cherubs are soon exchanged for SS officer-inspired military rats that form the army of the evil rat king (a grimaceous John Turturro), who has taken over the prince’s kingdom. The rat king takes the toy away from the children and throws it into an incinerator (?); the smoke blocks the sun’s rays that it can’t stand. Children probably won’t get this tacky association with the Holocaust, but they won’t be attracted to the grim images of angry rats pursuing world domination. What makes the whole thing even weirder and makes you feel even more uncomfortable is that the characters suddenly burst into song at the most unexpected moments. Tchaikovsky’s music, complemented by Tim Rice’s lyrics – it just doesn’t fit in with this Third Reich-inspired musical.

Are there really no positives to ‘The Nutcracker: The Untold Story’? Yes. The young Elle Fanning holds her own in this mixed bag and Frances de la Tour, who plays the mother of the rat king, also delivers fine acting. The production values ​​are also in order. Those few plus points, however, do not nearly outweigh the tastelessness that drips from this weird film. The beautiful music of Tchaikovsky should of course never have been used for this piece of shit. Andrei Konchalovski can sometimes scratch his head: if you have devoted twenty years of your life to something, you could have made something better of it, right?!