The Nutcracker is a cultural juggernaut, and yet before watching The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) I had no idea what the actual story was and having now watched the film I am still not entirely sure. For me, The Nutcracker is basically its music which is absolutely etched into my brain. What a shame then that this film doesn’t focus much on the music at all. The film follows Clara Stahlbaum (Mackenzie Foy), who has been left a mysterious egg by her recent mother which has a lock she cannot open. In her quest to find out the secrets of the egg, she finds her way to a magic land which is embroiled in a war which Clara must help to end.
This film is quite a bit of a mess, but it definitely has some positive points. First of all, it is hugely ambitious, and you can see all the hard work on the screen throughout. The film has an almost epic scale to it, and there are some really stunning and creative visuals throughout. From costuming to character design, the film's ambition to be a high-stakes fantasy film has to be commended. And the fact the magical kingdom is split into four realms means that the film has the opportunity to create four distinct worlds and it does a decent job with this. However, this also accentuates an issue with the film’s narrative which I will get into later. The film also has a pretty stacked cast, mostly made up of a lot of who’s who of British actors. Morgan Freeman is your big-name American actor, but he is backed up by Kiera Knightley, Helen Mirren, Matthew Macfadyen, Richard E. Grant, and Jack Whitehall just to name a few. But despite the name value of the cast, the performances overall are not the best. No one stands out as putting in a particularly poor performance, but they are all mostly a little flat and forgettable. That is with the exception of Kiera Knightley who is an absolute blast as the Sugar Plum Fairy. She seems to have been given a little bit of licence to chew the scenery and she takes that opportunity. She is reminiscent of Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter, and she is clearly having fun in the role, and I was having a great time watching it as the film elevated every time she was on screen.
The biggest problem that this film has is that the narrative and script are very sub-par and feel a bit of a mess. It didn’t come as a surprise to me that the film went through reshoots with a different director because the film very much has the feel of a piece of work that has a few too many ideas. And I think a lot of the problems come from the film not being long enough, which is not often a criticism I have for films. But this film has the feel of a fantasy epic akin to The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) but only has an hour and a half to fit in all its themes and ideas and it just isn’t enough time. This makes the film feel rushed with character motivations coming and going at the drop of a hat, or big twists in the narrative having almost no build-up and so leaving no impact. The fact that the film is rushed also means that we don’t get to explore a lot of the environments the film sets up. Despite four realms being mentioned in the title we only really spend any time in two of them, with the other two getting a few seconds within a montage. Another problem the film has is that a lot of its ideas are old hat. Yes, the film is made predominantly for a child audience so I can’t have too much of a go at the film for this, but when the film doesn’t offer much otherwise these things stand out.
There was an opportunity for this film to be good. It clearly has ambition, and its visuals are very impressive throughout. But it often feels like a hatchet job which could have done with having a longer running time to fit in all it wants to fit in. But as it is it feels like a real mess which looks quite pretty, and that alone does not make it worth your viewing time.
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