I mean Sweets.īecause the filmmakers presumably felt obligated to include the Nutcracker Ballet in some form, the action switches into presentational gear. Grant), Land of Snowflakes and Knightley’s Sugar Plum, Land of Cavities. Clara meets three regents: Hawthorne (Eugenio Derbez) of the Land of Flowers Shiver (Richard E. They make their way past a pair of prissy palace guards (Omid Djalili and Jack Whitehall) who bicker like peevish boyfriends in tiresome shtick that falls flat, like much of the strained comedy. Phillip whisks Clara off to the palace from where the realms are ruled, which production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas renders as an architectural jumble of Russian exteriors, an Eastern courtyard and standard haute European interiors - mirroring the movie’s overall mishmash of styles. She also has her first brush with the banished Mother Ginger ( Helen Mirren), whose fearsome hideout inside a giant mechanical figure in a big top circus-tent gown is straight out of The Wizard of Oz. He warns her against following the thieving mouse into the dangerous Fourth Realm, but Clara is fearless, even when being pursued by a rodent infestation that assumes the mammoth form of the Mouse King. Phillip informs Clara that Marie was the queen of the realms, which makes her the princess. She meets a strategic ally in Captain Phillip Hoffman, a Nutcracker soldier apparently come to life, though you’d hardly know it from Jayden Fowora-Knight’s wooden performance. There she finds the music box key, which is promptly snatched by a mouse.
Clara’s thread leads her to a snow-covered parallel world where time moves much faster - cue lots of clockwork mechanisms, a la Hugo. Rather than just hand out Christmas gifts at the ball, he traditionally sets up a treasure-hunt web of golden threads with the names of each child attending. He raised Marie after she was orphaned at a young age. The family’s arrival at an annual Christmas Eve ball also packs visual splendor as Linus Sandgren’s camera reveals a breathtaking shot of couples decked out in costume designer Jenny Beavan’s impressive period finery, whirling around a dance floor to the romantic strains of “Waltz of the Flowers.” But as soon as Morgan Freeman appears, in familiar “twinkly-eyed, wise, benevolent geezer” mode as the evening’s host, Drosselmeyer, the movie’s wearying more-is-more aesthetic starts to chafe.ĭrosselmeyer, an inventor of fantastical gadgets, is Clara’s godfather. Much of this early setup has a pleasingly old-fashioned feel, with the always excellent Macfadyen suggesting tender emotional depths to be explored.
'Nutcracker and the Four Realms' Team on Diversifying the Classic Tale Clara receives an ornate egg-shaped music box with a cryptic note from her mother that reads, “Everything you need is inside.” But the box is locked, with no key. It’s Christmas Eve, and the children’s sorrowful, distant father (Matthew Macfadyen) summons them downstairs to present them with gifts left for them by their recently deceased mother Marie (Anna Madeley). Clever Clara Stahlbaum and her young brother Fritz (Tom Sweet) are up in the attic of the family home using toys and the laws of physics to rig a complicated mouse trap, foreshadowing a key plot point later on. In the opening sequence, we’re in Harry Potter territory as an owl soars and swoops over Olde London Town, or a mostly CG version of it, setting the Christmastime scene via a massive decorated tree in a public square. She also flutters about on dragonfly wings, just like Tinker Bell.
#Cast of the nutcracker and the four realms movie#
If the conception of the character owes something to Elizabeth Banks’ Effie Trinket in the Hunger Games series, well, that’s consistent with a movie that constantly recalls superior inspirations. And Keira Knightley brings a mischievous campy spirit to the Sugar Plum Fairy, gliding around crowned by an upsweep of cotton-candy curls and speaking in a breathy, excitable squeak until she reveals her not entirely unexpected petulant side. She’s feisty and determined enough to appeal to contemporary sensibilities, yet not so much that she pulls you out of the old-world reality that grounds the story. The movie’s best asset is young lead Mackenzie Foy as Clara, a 14-year-old Victorian girl with the sharp logistical mind of a budding engineer.
0 kommentar(er)
