Nutcrackers (2024)

Nutcrackers feels like a good movie, which is to say it's well shot, it (mostly) maintains a whimsically somber tone, and it features a relatively high-profile lead actor in an otherwise low-budget production. I've seen countless holiday movies with a similar premise (or at least a similar initial premise), but very few that veer away from the Hallmark vibe this completely. Before you read any of that as an outright endorsement, however, I want to draw your eye to a key detail in the opening sentence: I said this feels like a good movie.

Actually, it feels like two good movies. Or perhaps the first third of a one decent movie followed by the second half of an exceptional one. The problem here is the pieces don't snap together. The payoffs at the end of the movie are largely covering stuff hastily established directly beforehand. There's a series of comedic set-ups and ideas introduced early on that are just kind of forgotten. The disconnect isn't quite as jarring as it sounds, but it means the ending lacks the emotional catharsis it needs. It also means the narrative and resolution feel unbelievable.

Which is ironic, because all of that is grounded in reality. In fact, a great deal of what sells the content of the movie as good (or at least impressive) is due to the fact the four young actors - here portraying fictional farm kids trained as ballet dancers by their late mother - are actually professionally trained ballet dancers who live on their parents' farm. The farm in the movie is their farm. Those are their animals they're interacting with.

All that gives the movie a sense of authenticity you don't usually encounter on film. The kids act natural with each other and their surroundings. Only their uncle, played by Ben Stiller, feels out of place... and he's supposed to. But while Stiller plays the lead, the movie seems to be built around showcasing the kids. The director, David Gordon Green, is apparently an old friend of their mother. Reading between the lines, this feels like a situation where the movie was crafted as an opportunity to give the kids an opportunity to appear in a movie and to use their farm and existing skillsets as a foundation for an independent production. Assuming everyone was happy with the result, that seems like a good arrangement: Green got to make a movie outside the Hollywood system, and the Janson brothers got to star alongside Ben Stiller in a relatively big movie. So, on that level, I suppose this was successful (or as successful as something picked up by Hulu for a holiday release can be). Even if the end result is... well... mixed, maybe? We'll circle back to appraising this.

First, let's at least touch on the story and movie. On the surface, this is a premise you've almost certainly seen before: a relative travels to take care of his recently orphaned nephews, who he barely knows and over the course of the movie finds meaning in his new surroundings while discovering the power of family. Likewise, you won't be shocked to hear that Stiller's character, Michael, is a big-city real estate executive trying to get back to his job in order to help close a deal.

What it is a little surprising is the movie is less interested in mining this for cheap laughs than you'd expect. There's some of that, granted, but for the most part it's trying to settle you into a sense of unreality. Michael is, in a very literal sense, entering a world alien from his own. He also has no intention of staying: he's here to facilitate getting them into foster care, not become their new parent.

But of course this is complicated by the fact these aren't well-behaved boys. They're wild, latchkey kids who have no interest in listening to Michael or any other adult for that matter. They have a better understanding of their farm and world than Michael does, and they know it. They know he only intends to stay long enough to get them into another home. And, to the movie's credit, they're conflicted about this. Their feelings towards Michael evolve over the course of the movie, but they're guarded against emotional attachment as a protection against further loss. They want him to want to stay, but pressuring him to do so would be against their ethos. These kids were raised by hippies, after all.

That backstory is key to the movie and represents a big part of what makes this at least interesting. Before becoming farmers, their mother was a dancer and their parents were - for a while - part of a cult. When they broke away, their parents resolved to raise their kids not to defer to authority. They're homeschooled but not religious - one of the boys has cobbled together a sort of spirituality seemingly drawn from hearing humans (along with everything on Earth) is made of stardust, presumably an allusion to Carl Sagan's famous quote.

When the movie shifts to actively trying to pawn the kids off on potential families in the second act, religion quickly becomes a red flag. The movie doesn't call this out directly, but we see Michael hesitate as he perceives parallels between the dogmatic faith practiced by local individuals and the cult his sister and her husband rebelled against. Church, in this movie, is presented as a cult.

Okay, you sure as hell wouldn't see that in a Hallmark movie.

This section of the movie also includes a fairly by-the-numbers sequence in which the boys' mischief wrecks a holiday party being thrown by a wealthy local family who'd been entertaining the possibility of taking the boys in. It's all fairly rote, with them sending an out-of-control golf cart careening through a nativity and into a swimming pool: the usual holiday carnage comedies set around Christmas seem obligated to stick in.

After all this, Michael sees the boys practicing ballet, a skill they learned from their mother who'd been classically trained as a child and ran a popular dance school in town before her death. He realizes they're quite good and convinces them to put on a show (a version of The Nutcracker modified by one of the boys), hoping families will see them and want to take them in. The remainder of the movie is about them putting this show together, casting additional parts, marketing, renting a performance space, and so on.

On the night of the performance, one of the boys overhears Michael arguing with the local social worker, who... look, her name's Gretchen, she's played by Linda Cardellini, and she's sort of presented as a potential love interest for Michael, but the movie leaves that ambiguous. Anyway, the kid hears Michael say angrily say he doesn't have space in his life for the boys, so they bail on the performance at the last minute.

Then they put on the show, anyway, but they do so at the intersection where their parents died. It's a public performance, everyone (Michael included, of course) sees it, everyone's moved, Michael has a awakening, and there's a shooting star in the background letting the audience know that, while the movie isn't endorsing organized religion, it's not entirely atheistic, either.

Michael naturally decides to stay with the kids, and the movie ends with a montage. What Michael's going to do for work isn't explained, assuming he has to do anything - maybe he's got enough set aside to just retire. I guess it doesn't much matter.

In terms of the holidays, this one's a bit unusual. Christmas is a minor plot element thanks to the performance of The Nutcracker, and it's referenced throughout the movie through occasional decorations (and of course the holiday party culminating in the destruction of a nativity scene). However, it isn't as large a presence as you'd expect given the subject matter. The "we come from the stars" spirituality, coupled with the shot of the shooting star at the end (shooting stars were part of the kid's spiritualism) bear a resemblance to the Star of Bethlehem, but the movie is surprisingly adamant it's not here to sell organized religion or dogma.

Of course, there's also the parallel between the holidays and the sense of otherworldliness experienced by Michael as he enters the farm, as well as the similar sense experienced by the kids, who are still in shock from the loss of their parents. But if the movie intended to explore that angle, it didn't quite come through: frankly, the Christmas elements aren't widespread or overbearing enough to make us feel like this is set in a world overrun by the holidays.

If nothing else, this is of course mirroring the whole "big city executive finds a better life in small town America" thing Hallmark movies have become (somewhat unfairly) equated with. Here, of course, it's a man instead of the more cliched businesswoman, but the outline is the same. The ways this both adheres to and subverts Christmas movie tropes is somewhat interesting, I suppose, such as the inclusion of a potential love interest that doesn't go anywhere (or at least isn't resolved in the narrative: the movie certainly implies Gretchen and Michael may have a future together).

So, is this good? Is it worth watching? I think it depends what you expect or want out of it. The Janson brothers (Homer, Ulysses, Arlo, and Atlas) behave naturally around each other - I suspect some sequences were adlibbed or possibly taken from outtakes where they were just hanging out. These kids don't feel like typical Hollywood characters, and that's a good thing. Likewise, this is directed by David Gordon Green, who's best known for making the recent Halloween legasequel trilogy. I haven't seen those movies, but this feels like it was made by someone with horror sensibilities - and I mean that in a good way. The movie wants to control how you feel, which makes for a more compelling experience than just tossing jokes at the screen.

But all that's detail. The problems arise with the piece as a whole. The experience is compelling, but the story isn't. And the main reason for that is this attempts to cram two movies worth of content into one, essentially pivoting from one story to another halfway through and hoping you won't notice. To be fair, the mother's dance background is established early on, but it's only one of many details surrounding the family's backstory. When the entire third act centers on this, seemingly forgetting about the farm in the process, you're left confused and uninvested. I want to be clear about this - I am a sucker for the kind of schmaltzy, magical realism they're playing with in the whole "dance for their mom's ghost" sequence, and I felt nothing watching it. This is the right ending to the wrong movie.

There's enough good and unusual stuff here to make for an interesting alternative to the typical holiday movie with this sort of premise. But the parts are more than the whole, so I can't recommend it to those looking for a satisfying movie.