At the world premiere of “Nutcrackers,” director David Gordon Green subtly acknowledged that he’s been ‘immersed’ in the horror genre for too long, though some might call it ‘slumming.’ After his recent stint with the “Holloween” and “The Exorcist” franchise, he’s far away from his celebrated debut “George Washington.” He posited “Nutcrackers” to be a palette cleanser, a means to get his creative juices flowing again. “Nutcrackers” hardly gets him out of the rut, though, as it is a banal family drama premised on a stale indie-film cliche – the absent father figure who must learn to love his wards. This sub-genre is often streaked with cheap sentiment, and Green adds little to it with story beats that are telegraphed lightyears ahead. A somewhat unusual ballet angle notwithstanding, the safe, templatized filmmaking here is closer to a Lifetime movie than the filmmakers would like to admit.
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The groan-inducing contrivances begin to pile up a minute into the film. Michael (Ben Stiller), a Chicago-based exec, has to check in on his orphaned troublemaker nephews at their Ohio farm since the last babysitter is quitting. The foster parent application that would take the kids out of Michael’s guardianship has fallen through, so he has to stay with them for the time being. But wouldn’t you guess it, Michael has the mostest importest meeting of his life in Chicago next week and can’t afford to stick around. He does get two separate families interested in adopting the kids, but as you would expect, both meetings go terribly awry due to the kids’ unruly shenanigans. Add Linda Cardinelli’s sympathetic family services worker to the mix as another log in the bonfire of dated tropes.
The titular Nutcracker angel is incorporated via a subplot wherein Michael’s sister and the kids mother was a ballet teacher and taught the oldest kid Justice (12 year old Homer Janson) to perform. When all else fails, Michael organizes a ballet performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker by the boys to generate interest in them. Along the way, there is much soul searching by Michael, single, middle-aged, and lonely, and by the children—directionless and lashing out. Lessons are learned, hearts are changed, tears are spilled, and platitudes are dealt out by the truckloads. The excess saccharinity might test your gag reflex.
Any novelty in the film is provided by watching spirited kids being themselves, something Green does manage to capture. The kids are played by real-life Janson brothers—Homer, 12; Ulysses, 10; and 8-year-old twins Atlas and Arlo, both 8. The performance styles in the films are studied in contrast. The children perform with unvarnished greenness and gusto compared to the smooth delivery of the adult professional cast surrounding them.
In a nod to the subject, the soundtrack weaves in some pop-synth renditions of Tchaikovsky’s immortal tunes. The production, consisting of a handful of locations, is modest but competent. Green shot Nutcrackers on film, a distinction the film neither needs nor deserves. He perhaps wanted to prevent the film from going straight to streaming, a fate the film will likely not escape. Honestly, it isn’t any kind of loss. But for Stiller’s participation, nobody would question “Nutcrackers” being a direct-to-VOD film, given the Hallmark of it all.
Can a film be truly “heart-warming” if you can transparently see its diagrammatic, algorithmic construction? “Nutcrackers” sadly leads us to conclude no. More artfulness is to be expected from filmmakers like Green and Stiller. As a bare minimum, the privilege of making movies today must demand that they rise above the level of a script that might have been written by ChatGPT. [C-]
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