If you tilt your head and squint, “Nutcrackers” resembles a Hallmark movie, though it certainly is not one. Michael (Ben Stiller), a big-city real estate guy, is on the verge of closing the deal of a lifetime when he’s called away from Chicago to rural Ohio. There, his estranged sister and her husband have died tragically, leaving behind four feral nephews to whom he is now technically guardian. He intends to stay just long enough to get them placed in foster homes, but mischief of all kinds ensues. Also, Christmas is in three weeks. You can see where this is going.
The best part of “Nutcrackers,” directed by David Gordon Green, is those four kids, whose easy demeanor with one another makes them feel less like child actors, more like a pack of little hooligans who happened to wander onto set. They come by it naturally, presumably, since in real life, they’re brothers (delightfully named Homer, Ulysses, Atlas and Arlo Janson). The movie’s most clever line readings and funniest bits are all them, and I’d love to know how much they improvised and deviated from the screenplay.
That screenplay, by Leland Douglas, lacks imagination. It’s a mash-up of the often feminine-coded Hallmark formula and its closest variants are “Garden State” or “Elizabethtown,” in which a world-weary guy finds himself in small town life. So two minutes into the movie, it’s obvious what will happen: This mean metropolitan man will come to grudgingly enjoy, then love, both his nephews and small-town life; a lady will happen along (in this case, the social worker, played by Linda Cardellini); and probably they’ll figure out how to save Christmas or enjoy its true meaning or whatever. The pattern is set in stone, seemingly since the dawn of time.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a formula, especially one that has been so richly successful and beloved as the Hallmark one. Clearly the idea of the urbanite who can only regain their soul away from the hustle and bustle taps into some vein of desire or anxiety in audiences. It’s what makes the movies comfort viewing: You always know what will happen, and they make you feel like the world is a safe and good place.
But most of these movies do not star Ben Stiller, nor do they have extended scenes in which an uncle tries to teach his home-schooled nephews the correct word to use for the male anatomy as they reel off a string of possibilities. (The title of this movie is, indeed, a double entendre.) Stiller’s mode here is reminiscent of his years in the “Meet the Parents” franchise, just a guy who’s kind of a jerk trying to escape erratic chaos. When he walks into his late sister’s house, the mess is overwhelming, as are the pigs and chickens poking around the place. He wakes up the next morning to discover his very young nephews doing donuts in the front lawn in his yellow Ferrari. A much more patient man than Michael would be out of his mind, too.
I don’t know what to do with this movie, mostly because I can’t quite figure out who it’s for. It’s not really a family film, at least not for many families — the home-school lesson tells you why — but it’s not really a grown-up comedy either. It hovers in an uncanny valley, and the tonal swing is unpleasant. The film gets better whenever Stiller recedes into the background, but the movie’s insistence on Michael’s redemption story as the main narrative thread hurts it. It’s impossible to care too much about this pompous, uptight, strangely boring guy. Especially because we know how his story will end.
The post ‘Nutcrackers’ Review: Christmas With a Crank appeared first on New York Times.
