"Everything you need is inside."
Hello everyone!
The older we get, the more I think we come to realize it isn't presents, but the people that make the holidays bright.
... which is probably why in this house, we still have presents under the tree and will be waiting to open some of them with my sister once she's well enough to come home after a bout with the plague.
Life, eh?
BUT that aside, it's time for another Christmas movie, the last in this series as we move on to something else next week, so of course I had to go with a classic, even if in a re-telling.
Because Disney released their own version: The Nutcracker and the Four Realms.
Links to previous related posts can be found at the bottom of the page, as per usual.
And if you know me, you know I like me some classic.
The Nutcracker as a ballet is something I've been dying to see for years now, and hope to be able to achieve that dream someday - until then, I make do with the stuff I can find online, or watch on streaming services, of course.
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is definitely an older movie by today's standards, seeing as it isn't from this season, and true, it doesn't have MUCH ballet, not in the traditional sense that the story usually encompasses, but, it does have an enchanting cast, an interesting twist, and somehow a Mackenzie Foy that went and grew up without anyone noticing.
Ahem. Back to the show.
Clara has recently lost her mother, and is struggling during the Christmas season, thinking her father (played by Matthew Macfadyen) is incredibly selfish for wanting to keep the holidays the way they used to be, trying to push through and into a sense of normal, something she, as a teenager, can't yet comprehend.
He gives his three children (Clara has two siblings, Louise and Fritz) gifts that their mother had prepared for Christmas, and while Fritz and Louise get, like, tin soldiers and a grown-up gown, Clara receives a locked egg that she can't open.
It should be noted here that, unlike in most dramatizations of the story, Clara is no longer a ballerina or obsessed with the ballet or anything like that, but she is more an inventor, a child prodigy, and tends to tinker (kind of like how Disney made Belle the inventor in Beauty and the Beast, too).
The family head on over to their godfather's party, where Morgan Freeman pretends he's a pirate with his eyepatch, but is actually a brilliant inventor himself, and he'd adopted Clara's mother when she was orphaned as a young girl. He also always gives gifts to those attending, so Clara finds her name on one of the strings leading to said gift, and follows it ... right into a completely different world.
Once there, she finds the key needed for the egg, but the key gets stolen by a mouse, of all things, and she encounters a nutcracker soldier, whose name is Phillip, and who tells her that the mouse has run off into the Fourth Realm, one of the former parts of the kingdom that, surprise surprise, Clara's MOTHER used to be queen of.
Taking her to the palace (after a bout in the Fourth Realm where they're accosted by a troop of mice forming one large solider, as well as an automaton that's ridiculously scary), Phillip passes Clara over to the three regents of the other realms, that of Snowflakes, Flowers and Sweets, the last of which is, of course, looked after by Sugar Plum (Keira Knightley).
They explain that Clara's mother found the realms, devised an Engine that brought them all to life, and then ruled them. She also apparently told them everything about her daughter, so one has to wonder just how long she'd been there and how much she went back and forth; even though time passes faster in the Realms than in Clara's world, there's still some overlap somewhere that's never fully explained, but, you roll with it since it's a holiday movie.
Anyway, turns out, the Engine's power is lost because they've lost the key, and that same key is the one that's in the Fourth Realm. Clara, energized, assembles a regiment and heads on off to get it, and finally encounters Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren), who tries to tell her things aren't what they seem, but the girl takes the key and heads on out of there.
However, upon finally opening the egg that her mother gifted her, she realizes it's just a music box, and wants to return to her own world, but is persuaded by Phillip to remain.
Luckily, because it turns out that Sugar Plum's had bigger plans all along.
See, she's deeply resentful and hurt over the fact that Clara's mother left them, trusting the Regents to rule together and, you know, not fight one another. SHE's actually the one who banished Mother Ginger and who wants to rule them all, instead of the tall tale she told Clara about Mother Ginger being power-hungry.
Locking up Clara and Phillip, along with the other two Regents, Sugar Plum sets off to create an army of tin soldiers that only follow her orders, while Clara orchestrates an escape, with the help of the mouse who initially stole her key. She sends Phillip to Mother Ginger with a warning, while she heads on off to the Engine room.
In the final showdown, after Sugar Plum arrives, Clara outwits her and, instead of turning Mother Ginger back into the toy she used to be, Sugar Plum becomes the toy once more.
Now with the realms at peace, Clara says goodbye, inviting Phillip to come visit her in her world sometime (and you don't have to be an eagle-eye watcher to see the two kiddos have crushes on each other), and returns, thanking her godfather, as well as apologizing to her father for being a brat.
She then says he owes her a dance, and winds up her music box - which turns out to be playing the song that her parents first danced to together.
And in the end, the lesson here is that no matter the loss you suffer, you are still enough, and there are still people around you who are worth living for, as the family finally find some semblance of peace and harmony again after losing the matriarch, dancing away to the tunes of Tchaikovsky's ballet.
The end!
Visually stunning with a fun cast, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms definitely breaks away from tradition and doesn't really incorporate ballet into its storytelling, other than through a sequence of telling the tale of the Four Realms, and the end credits when the Sugar Plum fairy takes the stage. This is an interesting choice, but it's obvious Disney wanted to focus on the young ingenue finding a new realm and dealing with troubles there.
Mackenzie Foy shines the most when she's interacting with her older co-stars, and of course the famous names in the movie (we see you, Richard E. Grant) are delightful.
The story itself keeps hinting at a bigger twist, so it's not really rocket science, and it's an enjoyable watch for Christmas Eve or Day, depending when you get to it. It's not really the Nutcracker - the guy's relegated to captain of the guard, natch - but it IS close enough to still be enjoyable.
It's a lovely movie, not as memorable as the ballet, but enjoyable nonetheless.
xx
*images and video not mine
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