Hallström’s signature sentimentality goes stiff among a cast that’s choked in one-note roles. To their credits, the finished film isn’t disjointed.

And it’s difficult to know who to blame as The Nutcracker and the Four Realms has Lasse Hallström for the initial production, but Joe Johnston was called in for 32 days of reshoots. She is no fleeing damsel in distress but instead a bold girl who leaps into action and leads her own troops into battle! Unfortunately, the script’s setups are spoiled in execution. Her tweak that turned Clara into a young engineer is a bit heavy-handed but offers some great onscreen representation for girls interestest in STEM, and more importantly, makes Clara a more pro-active heroine than some old-school Disney princesses. Powell’s approach adds more action sequences and encourages the production design to run wild, crafting colorful characters, surreal spectacle, and fantastical fight scenes. With the help of a handsome nutcracker (Jayden Fowora-Knight), Clara must save her mother’s kingdom before it’s too late!

Rowdy ringmaster Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren) is brewing for a war, using her mice minions as her army. But her new pal the Sugar Plum Fairy (Keira Knightley) warns Clara all is not well in the four realms. Instead, she finds a portal to another world, where her mother was queen and she is honored as Princess Clara! She is swiftly swept up in the pageantry of this land of flowers, snowflakes, and candy. At his beguiling holiday party, a grieving Clara seeks out the missing key that would unlock her mother’s final gift to her. The script by Ashleigh Powell re-imagines Clara Stahlbaum (Mackenzie Foy) as a child-genius who takes after her late mother, an expert engineer who was a protege to master toymaker Drosselmeyer (an eye-patched Morgan Freeman). The result is a film that’s very pretty, pretty family-friendly, but also startlingly dull. Hoffmann’s short story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” and Marius Petipa’s The Nutcracker Ballet, but folds in more intrigue, adventure, and a heavy dose of female empowerment to better entice modern audiences.

This ambitious adaptation is inspired by both E. With the success of live-action, female-fronted fantasies like Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and Alice and Wonderland, Disney decided to roll the dice with The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.

The nutcracker and the four realms cast