Nutcrackers (2024)
Directed by: David Gordon Green
Premise: A single man (Ben Stiller) from the city moves to the country to care for his four unruly nephews when their parents are killed in a car accident. Feeling inadequate, he tries to find them a permanent home.
What Works: The strongest aspect of Nutcrackers is the quartet of young boys played by Homer Janson, Ulysses Janson, Arlo Janson, and Atlas Janson. They are very un-Hollywood. The kids are funny but they are also obnoxious and filthy. The filmmakers don’t try to make them cute and the children feel authentic. Nutcrackers is set in a rural location and the kids are feral and live in a squalid farmhouse. Their life has a Lost Boys quality and the brothers fit organically into this environment. They are the town weirdos but the film gradually puts us on their side; we don’t want to see them split up or forced into normalizing circumstances that would squash their personality and creativity. Those eccentric qualities are put to effective use in the climax in which the boys stage an interpretation of The Nutcracker ballet as a tribute to their deceased parents. Their grief plays convincingly. The filmmakers don’t get maudlin but the children act out their grief through dance in a way that is dramatically and emotionally effective.
What Doesn’t: Nutcrackers relies on a familiar narrative template. Ben Stiller plays the uncle who has a career, a nice car, and a life in the city but reluctantly becomes a parental figure. He initially regards the children as a nuisance but gradually warms to the paternal role. The formula shows through the drama; within the first ten minutes viewers will be able to map out exactly where the story is going and it never deviates from the template. The transformation of Stiller’s character is not convincing. He’s torn between his duties to the children and his career and there is mounting pressure to return to the office but this conflict is dropped without a resolution.
Disc extras: Available on Hulu.
Bottom Line: Nutcrackers is faintly heartwarming and there are some real moments among its child characters but these organic elements are framed within an artificial and obvious narrative framework that’s full of cliches.
Episode: #1028 (December 22, 2024)