The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

Premiered November 2, 2018.

On a Christmas Eve in Victorian London, the Stahlbaum family is preparing to celebrate their first Christmas without their mother Marie.  Middle child Clara (Mackenzie Foy) is having an especially tough time getting through the holiday.

She receives an egg for Christmas that’s accompanied by a note from her mother.  It tells Clara that everything she will ever need is inside the egg.  Unfortunately, the egg is locked, and there appears to be no key.

Drosselmeyer takes a look at Clara's egg in his workshop

The family attends a Christmas party hosted by Clara’s godfather Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman).   As per tradition,  the children at the party follow ribbons through Drosselmeyer’s mansion to locate their Christmas presents.   Clara’s ribbon leads her to a strange alternate world where she finds the key to her mother’s egg. 

Almost immediately,  a mouse steals the key and takes off.  With the help of a nutcracker soldier named Captain Phillip Hoffman (Jayden Fowora-Knight), Clara pursues the mouse and winds up in a palace.

She meets rulers of three realms who are at war with the Land Of Amusements, which is ruled by Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren).

The Sugar Plum Fairy (Kiera Knightley), regent of the Kingdom of Sweets,  hosts a ballet which tells the story of the creation of their world.

The Four Realms owe their existence to Clara’s mother’s invention of a device that made toys come to life.

Sugar Plum believes the key to defeating Mother Ginger’s forces is to make use of the device (which operates with the same key as the one for Clara’s egg) to turn toy soldiers into a real army.

However, Clara may not have the whole truth about the conflict!

Can Clara bring peace to the Four Realms and make it back to her world and her family?

J.A. Morris says:

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is a beautiful looking film based on a classic Christmas story.  Mckenzie Foy is a likeable, talented lead and it’s nice to see a girl on the big screen who is interested in science.  The cast is full of big names who give solid (if not great) performances. 

However, there’s not a lot of substance to the movie and it felt like a lot of content was edited out.  This gives it the feeling of being both too long and not long enough at the same time.

Since this film was recently released and is still playing in some areas, I’m reluctant to reveal much more about it..

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is decent and it’s worth seeing once, but the movie isn’t likely to become a classic.

J.A. Morris’ rating:

.5

2 and a half candy canes.

RigbyMel says: 

This movie is a visual feast with amazing colors, elaborate costuming and steampunk-ish design, but as J.A. Morris says, the Narnia-retread story with a feeling of being written by committee in a bad way is unfortunately not quite as fun as the visuals.

Pretty! 

There is fun use of the musical source material throughout as well.    We get a lovely ballet performance to tell the story of the Four Realms featuring Misty Copeland with a cool life sized Victorian toy theater set design.

This sequence also includes a visual nod to the use of Tchaikovsky's music in Disney's Fantasia as we see a conductor mount a podium in front of an orchestra in silhouette.

So, although the movie is worth seeing on a big screen for the production design and solid performances by its cast,  but the lack of compelling story will keep it from becoming a perennial holiday classic.

RigbyMel's rating: 

.5

2 and a half candy canes.