The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is the latest holiday offering from Walt Disney Studios, a production company known for their decades-long penchant for adapting fairy tales and well, their Disneyfication of those tales. This time, we are given a big-screen overhaul of the Nutcracker story, similar to other recent reworkings like 2010’s Alice in Wonderland, Oz the Great and Powerful and Snow White and the Huntsman, for better or for worse.
Mackenzie Foy (Interstellar) stars as Clara Stahlbaum, a curious girl who along with her family is dealing with the loss of her mother. During a melancholic Christmas celebration, at the behest of her wizened godfather Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman), she stumbles upon a magic kingdom – as one does in Disney features – once ruled by her mother long ago. She finds a Nutcracker soldier, Philip (played by Jayden Fowora-Knight), who joins Clara on her quest to find a key that will unite the titular Four Realms and unlock her mother’s final gift. Keira Knightley, Eugenio Derbez, Helen Mirren and Matthew Macfadyen also star respectively as the Sugar Plum Fairy, the Flower Realm King, Mother Ginger and Clara’s father Mr. Stahlbaum. Ballerina Misty Copeland makes a special appearance in the film.
Directors Lasse Hallström (Chocolat, The Cider House Rules) and Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, Captain America: The First Avenger) share credit on The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, as do writers Ashleigh Powell and Tom McCarthy (Spotlight, Christopher Robin), the latter handling rewrites directed by Johnston. One notable aspect of this production is the shift in tone and texture, perhaps purposeful, in its somber beginnings and the more fantastical proceedings within the Four Realms. That tone continues to shift as the story moves from the introduction of the Nutcracker’s re-imagined aesthetics to settling into a somewhat generic fantasy action-adventure, resembling the other adaptations mentioned earlier.
It would be easy to say the beginning segments with the family recuperating from grief were handled by Hallström and the standard fantasy battles by Johnston, but the film overall is cohesive enough of a piece to avoid coming off as completely disjointed. If there was ever going to be an adventure film made from the Nutcracker ballet, one can do far worse than this. That being said, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms struggles to find its place between honoring its roots in classical music and ballet, and hitting all the beats of a modern-day big-budget fantasy.
A highlight of the film is Misty Copeland’s ballet performance, with excerpts of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker suite adapted by composer James Newton Howard and conducted by Gustavo Dudamel of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. This is the closest The Four Realms comes to being a live-action adaptation of Fantasia (at least a successful one; the less spoken about The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, the better), and even then it is broken up by exposition. The segment is an admirable attempt to marry highbrow and middlebrow art together, something easier to pull off in the early days of cinema’s musicals and revues. However, it manages only to be a tip of the hat, leading the way to a series of quests with the occasional holiday flourish.
The production and costume designs are ornate and intricately detailed, the heroine Clara is an intelligent proto-STEM lead, and the cast is diverse, whimsical and game for anything. I dare say The Four Realms is the first clockpunk movie we’ve had since Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. The script however fails to make an argument for itself, existing solely to remind families of The Nutcracker and of earlier times the older audience members may have enjoyed the story in all its forms. Now that I mention it, The Four Realms may be the first exposure of the Nutcracker tale to young children in this day and age (if not still shown or brought up in schools). There is more nuance and eccentricity in this film than a mere cash grab, but not by much. It may be the case that director Hallström gave Disney something too somber and inaccessible for today’s audiences, and if so I can understand the impulse to ameliorate the movie into a more digestible product with the involvement of Johnston and McCarthy.
Whatever the case may be, the end result is more of the same, removing oddities in line with earlier children’s cult classics like Return to Oz, Labyrinth and The Neverending Story (to be fair, only the latter was profitable in its time) and replacing it with nameless armies battling one another and chasing down MacGuffins. Giving credit where credit is due, the tin soldiers, the Mouse King and Mother Ginger’s nesting-doll minions are all entry-level nightmare fuel, something that Disney has not shirked away from traditionally. Good on them.
Young children should enjoy The Four Realms, and undiscerning filmgoers may find a new or long-dormant appreciation for the fine arts (re)awakened. More demanding audiences will not find a holiday classic here. Though neither a heartless nor lazy film, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms never quite reaches the synthesis of ballet and blockbuster it longs for.
Rating: 2.5/5 stars ⭐⭐½
ABOUT THE NUTCRACKER AND THE FOUR REALMS
All Clara (Mackenzie Foy) wants is a key – a one-of-a-kind key that will unlock a box that holds a priceless gift. A golden thread, presented to her at godfather Drosselmeyer’s (Morgan Freeman) annual holiday party, leads her to the coveted key—which promptly disappears into a strange and mysterious parallel world. It’s there that Clara encounters a soldier named Phillip (Jayden Fowora-Knight), a gang of mice and the regents who preside over three Realms: Land of Snowflakes, Land of Flowers and Land of Sweets.
Clara and Phillip must brave the ominous Fourth Realm, home to the tyrant Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren), to retrieve Clara’s key and hopefully return harmony to the unstable world. Starring Keira Knightley as the Sugar Plum Fairy, Disney’s new holiday feature film “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” is directed by Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston, and inspired by E.T.A. Hoffmann’s classic tale.
