Disney's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms: Another Dead Horse

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms was released on November 2 of this year. As stated in the title, the movie is based off of Tchaikovsky's infamous ballet The Nutcracker, a two-act piece including the scenes of The Stahlbaum House, The Pine Forest, and The Land of Sweets. Disney's new remake does include these scenes (whether in setting or discussed in conversation), but fails at all else. The lighting key was very bright for the entirety of the movie (even though the characters walk through an "evil" forest) making the supposed scary scenes more humorous than actually fearful. In addition to poor lighting choices, the costumes worn by the Sugarplum Fairy, Flower Realm King, Snow Realm King, and Mother Ginger were so overly elaborate that it took away from anything happening around it. Dialogue between characters were too rushed to understand what they were talking about. In fact, due to the awful mise-en-scene choices, mediocre acting, and lousy screenwriting, it seems that the whole film was rushed.

When I first saw the trailer to this movie almost a year ago, I was pretty excited. I had always respected Tchaikovsky's work and loved the shows premiered at the NYC Ballet. However, Disney once again tried to make an original, creative film by using unoriginal, overused tactics. Morgan Freeman couldn't even impress me (probably because he was only given five minutes). The acting of some of the characters made me chuckle as well as the plot. The only part of the movie that was at least mediocre use of the CGI, creating a fantasy realm of snow and candy. However, Disney's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms completely failed in all else. The saddest part I think is the fact that it barely used the Tchaikovsky's pieces, which were written specifically to tell this story. Out of all 100 minutes, only about 20 actually use the songs to enhance the plot. Once again, Disney took an incredibly classic text and just beat it to dust. Children under the age of seven will now think of this monstrosity instead of the actual Nutcracker. I give this movie a bad, bad for it's horrendous directing and writing, as well as making me pissed off while writing this review. It doesn't even deserve the full 400 words, which is why I'm stopping at 374.