Cast:
Elle Fanning (Mary), Nathan Lane (Uncle Albert), John Turturro (the Rat King), Charlie Rowe (Prince Nicholas Charles "N.C.", the Nutcracker; Shirley Henderson as the voice of the Nutcracker), Frances de la Tour (Frau Eva / The Rat Queen), Aaron Michael Drozin (Max), Richard E. Grant (Joseph), Yulia Vysotskaya (Louise / The Snow Fairy), with Jonny Coyne (Gnomad), and Peter Elliott and Daniel Peacock (Gielgud; Alan Cox as the voice of Gielgud) Directed by Andrei Konchalovsky (#1876 - Tango & Cash)
Review:
“Our goal was to create a world in which fantasy was intertwined with reality, the way children experience the world. Toys spark their imagination, and we, like children, with incredible technology at our disposal, decided to play with these toys and give our fantasy absolute freedom."
Once upon a time, in 1816, E. T. A. Hoffman wrote a literary fairy tale called "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" that was published in Berlin. Alexandre Dumas later did a retelling of the work in 1844 (a loose translation) before 1892 saw the premiere of a two-act ballet with music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Apparently, the first feature film of the Nutcracker was in 1967 in Poland. There have been versions in stop motion (Nutcracker Fantasy [1979]), a version with the Pacific Northwest Ballet (Nutcracker: The Motion Picture [1986]), a 1997 short in IMAX, you get the idea. Apparently, Andrei Konchalovsky (director of films such as Runaway Train) had an interest in doing a film version for forty years, but plans finally came together in 2007. You might wonder what is different, well, it is The Nutcracker music to go along with lyrics written by Tim Rice (known for various things, such as the lyrics for The Lion King) that has the songs based on the dances of the ballet (songs such as "It's All Relative" ended up never getting a soundtrack album release); the movie is cited as a UK-Russia-Hungary production, as one does when filming in English. Apparently, in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, the movie was known as "The Nutcracker in 3D" while Russia called it "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It was first released on November 24, 2010 in Canada and the United States to the thunderous applause of nobody. Budgeted at roughly $90 million, the movie made less than a quarter of that back at the box office. Konchalovsky actually argued that the movie just didn't have good enough marketing in America (where it made little money) because the critics "completely misunderstood it" as a dreary movie rather than a "fun fairy tale", and Europe just didn't go to see it besides Russia. No movie with a noted reputation of being a flop is complete without some weird funding: the movie was primarily financed by VEB.RF, a Russian corporation chaired by none other than Vladimir Putin, and they actually sued the producers for unpaid loans in 2020 (in fact they helped to pay for the 3D conversion). The next to try a Nutcracker movie was in 2018, when Disney did The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, which was almost as big of a failure. At least Andrei Konchalovsky kept on directing, doing so as recently as Dear Comrades! in 2020, when he was 83 years old.
Apparently, Konchalovsky had to figure out the movie was about loneliness, specifically children who are not heard at home. If Roger Corman watched this movie, he probably would've shook his head at the idea of a movie like this being made for $90 million...because where the hell did the money go? 1920s Vienna could've easily be curtailed for setting this movie in dreary Anytown with how the movie operates. This is supposed to be a fun fairy tale? The movie where the rats are made to look like Nazis? The movie where one character is implied to Albert Einstein for no apparent reason? The movie where barely anyone registers a performance worth mentioning? As a fairy tale, it is a plodding movie, managing to evoke the smallest of interest in the alleged Christmas spirit. As a family movie, the 110 minutes move along with a good deal of nothing actually happening to really latch on to, particularly since the songs don't really make an impact. If the ballet feels like a Christmas tree in its majesty and sense of wonder, this movie basically is the equivalent of a rotted synthetic tree, filled with a whole lot of nothing. Even making fun of the Nutcracker for looking like they mugged Pinocchio (specifically from Shrek) feels like it is stating the obvious, at least when compared to the clown and a person in a monkey-suit. It isn't so much that the cast is bad as is the fact that they feel like cardboard with little to actually latch on to. Lane basically looks like he is staring at one's soul with an expression of "the money, the money, the money", while Grant is bafflingly in a father figure role when he probably seems born to chew the scenery of a villain (hey, I liked Hudson Hawk, sue me). Turturro has the look of Phil Spector but strangely sounds like Bernie Kopell from Get Smart that manages to evoke eye rolls rather than heightened interest. You could say it is meant to be campy, but it isn't particularly funny, at least when compared to his plan of blocking out the sun by putting toys in furnaces to make black smoke. You know, for kids! One wonders if they had a loose inspiration from Life Is Beautiful (1997), which was set mostly in a concentration camp where a father uses his imagination to shield his son from the horrors of the camp. The Producers (1967*) had the idea that if you flung enough absurd things, people will view something as a satire as opposed to being offended by what they saw. Here you get mecha-rat dog things and weird double roles because, uh, reasons. The Nutcracker: The Untold Story proves that you could fling middling visuals (in 3D!) and Nazi-rats to people and they would reject it out of hand rather than accept what the filmmakers were peddling (or smoking). As a whole, this is just a sad little misfire by someone who clearly thought they knew better in making a movie fit for families. The only people who ended up watching the movie either strove to check out the ballet or read the book just to get the taste out of their mouth.
Overall, I give it 3 out of 10 stars.
Next up: King Kong Lives.
*Did you know Nathan Lane was in the 2005 edition of The Producers, the one that was based on the musical?
