A Review of: The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

Release date of film: November 2, 2018; Run time: 1h 39m; Number of directors: Two; Non-exhaustive list of other movies with two directors listed: Menace II Society, Super Mario Bros., King Kong (1933), Singin’ in the Rain, Poltergeist, American Splendor, Fargo; Where reviewer saw movie: AMC on West 34th Street, New York City; What the author ate while watching: leftover Halloween candy; Type of candy eaten: Twix bars; Size of candy eaten: fun-; Other things named Twix: reviewer’s dog

Central Question: Why does Disney keep live-actioning its animated canon?

The first thing to note about Disney’s The Nutcracker and The Four Realms is that it’s not about retelling the original, 1816 story by E.T.A. Hoffman, but you knew that. The intent, it seems, is simply to Disney-ify “The Nutcracker,” which was made by simplifying both Hoffman’s story plus a later version by Alexander Dumas pere, into a ballet by the Russian choreographer Marius Petipa, director Ivan Vsevolozhsky and composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1892. It was this ballet which was subsequently imported piecemeal to America and remade (and remade and remade) into the phenomenon it is today. The modern Nutcracker is pretty much peerless as a theatrical production that Americans feel comfortable treating as a combination Santa sack and pre-recycling-era garbage bag: it’s a law, it seems, that you can throw anything into the Nutcracker: it’s OK. The ballet has had a zillion iterations, with different soundtracks, settings, and characters, usually reflecting local tastes. (In my hometown of New York City alone, yearly productions include the bedazzling, classic “Nutcracker” performed by The New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center; the modern dance of “The Hard Nut” by Mark Morris (in which the Stahlbaum family has been transported to the 1970s); The “Hip Hop Nutcracker” featuring MC Kurtis Blow, which features hip hop choreography and an electronic twist on the score; and “Nutcracker Rouge”  by Company XIV, which is the ballet reimagined as a “baroque burlesque”). It’s just one of the many remarkable things about this ballet—that otherwise, untouchably arty art—that it has come to serve as a distinctly American fun house mirror we are not afraid to jiggle until we see ourselves in it.

The Four Realms is not just Disney movie-ifying this elastic Nutcracker, though, it’s Disney live–action movie-ifying, it, which is really kind of funny, given that the Nutcracker is a ballet, for God’s sake. One would think you’d have to be crazy to try and out live-action ballet dancers breathing hard, sweating, on a stage, in front of your...