The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018)

Directed by: Lasse Hallstrom, Joe Johnston | 99 minutes | adventure, family | Actors: Mackenzie Foy, Matthew Mcfadyen, Morgan Freeman, Tom Sweet, Ellie Bamber, Eugenio Derbez, Richard E. Grant, Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, Omid Djalili, Misty Copeland, Jack Whitehall, Gustavo Dudamel, Meera Syal, Anna Madeley

Around the holidays, the classic story of ‘The Nutcracker’ often resurfaces. The ballet performance with the beautiful, recognizable music of Pyotr Ilyich Chaikovsky was first performed on December 18, 1892 in the legendary Mariinsky Theater in Saint Petersburg. The libretto written by Marius Petipa and Ivan Vsevoloshki was based on a version by Alexandre Dumas, and he was again inspired by Ernst Hoffmann’s fairy tale ‘The Nutcracker and the Mouse King’ from 1816. Two centuries later, the story still inspires, because Walt Disney Pictures recently released ‘The Nutcracker and the Four Realms’ (2018). None other than Lasse Hallström (the man behind 1985’s ‘My Life as a Dog’, 1993’s ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?’ and 1999’s ‘The Cider House Rules’) took the director’s chair, but because filming took more time than planned and Hallström had other appointments, Joe Johnston (‘Jumanji’, 1995; ‘The Wolfman’, 2010) took care of the final stage of the directing work. The same Johnston has also been recruited to direct the fourth installment in the ‘Narnia’ series (‘The Silver Chair’) and has announced that it will be his last film.

The heroine of ‘The Nutcracker and the Four Realms’ is called Clara and is played by Mackenzie Foy. Together with her father (Matthew Macfadyen), brother Fritz (Tom Sweet) and sister Louise (Ellie Bamber), she prepares for the big Christmas bauble at the mansion of their godfather Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman), an eccentric inventor whose inventive and curious Clara likes to poke around in the basement. It’s the first Christmas without their mother Marie and that puts a lot of pressure on the mood. Marie turns out to have left her children something special. Clara receives a mysterious metal egg that can be opened with a special key. The search for that key takes her into a mysterious world made up of four realms, led by Hawthorne the Flower King (Eugenio Derbez), Shiver the Snowflake King (Richard E. Grant), Sugar Plum ‘Queen of Sweets’ (Keira Knightley) and Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren), queen of entertainment. With the latter, however, the rest of this magical world is at odds. With the help of the plucky nutcracker Phillip (Jayden Fowora-Knight), Clara continues her search for the key and finds herself unbidden in the power struggle between the leaders of the Four Realms.

‘Narnia’, ‘Alice in Wonderland’, ‘Harry Potter’. That’s where we have to look for ‘The Nutcracker and the Four Realms’. Anyone who expects dance to play a major role will be disappointed. The story, of course, partly corresponds to the classic, fragments of music by Tchaikovsky pass by (in the otherwise beautiful score by James Howard Newton) and Misty Copeland, the first black prima ballerina of The American Ballet Company, provides her – unfortunately too short-lived – performing for a climax. But otherwise this disneyfied version has little to do with the classic ‘Nutcracker’. The loss of mother Marie should provide an emotional depth, but that is completely out of the picture. This film colors so neatly and carefully within the lines that it is at the expense of liveliness, sincerity and our sympathy. Everything has been conceived in such a way, smoothed out and stripped of any form of individuality that it has become a saltless, boring mess. And that despite the muddled, bombastic explosion of color and visual design.

Fortunately, there are also positives: Misty Copeland’s aforementioned breathtaking contribution could have lasted a little longer and the film looks great thanks to the fantastic costumes by Jenny Beavan and the accompanying production design by Guy Hendrix Dyas, with a big nod to Rococo. and Steampunk, dazzling out. Among the actors, Keira Knightley in particular stands out, who indulges in her role of Sugar Plum and boasts an exaggerated voice and fantastic cotton candy hair. Beside her, Mackenzie Foy, the story’s heroine who is too drab and ordinary to impress, fades. Many characters in the wonderland where Clara ends up are so overpowered with lavish makeup and clothing that they appear as lifeless as the tin soldiers the villain in this film manages to revive to form an army.

‘The Nutcracker and the Four Realms’ is a typical case of ‘style over substance’. Disney ran off with the classic story and dipped it in a honey-sweet, iridescent bath without caring about the depth and sincerity of the characters. The film is not bad, but the chance that this sugar bomb will stick is minimal.