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Nutcracker four realms party scene8/17/2023 It seems like Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren, reduced to mugging) is evil. Hope you like headache-inducing vistas that can leave you in a digitally induced coma! And good luck figuring out why the leaders of the realms are at war with each other! Searching for answers, Clara teams up with a Nutcracker soldier named Phillip (Jayden Fowora-Knight), and an animated mouse. Any hope that things will pick up are quickly dashed when Clara enters "the four realms," where it turns out her mum was once queen. If only he could zap audiences out of the multiplex. Frustrating, yes? So is mum's note: "Everything you need is inside." At the party, the young woman seeks out her godfather Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman in paycheck mode), a toymaker who zaps her into another dimension. Clara gets an egg-shaped box with no key to open it. Not to mention that her father insists she wear dead mum's dress - creepy, right? Mum has left gifts behind for her children. Her mum has recently died (there goes Disney again with the dead parent thing) and neither Clara nor her siblings are in the mood to follow their mopey dad (Matthew Macfadyen) to a lavish Christmas ball. It's Christmas Eve in in Victorian London, and clever Clara Stahlbaum (Mackenzie Foy), the 14-year-old embodiment of female empowerment, is in a funk. After that, composer James Newton Howard smothers the sounds of this perennial seasonal favorite in aural swill. Dance fans can look forward to a pair of all-too-brief appearances, including one over the end credits, from ballet great Misty Copeland. What we have here is simply a botch job with two directors - Lasse Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog) for starters and Joe Johnston (Jurassic Park III) for reshoots - and absolutely no personality of its own. Hoffman and a ballet with music by Tchaikovsky. What went wrong? Where to begin?!? On the surface, this Disney debacle seems like a no-brainer for the holidays: It's an 1816 gothic fairytale by E.T.A. Slow torture for kids and grownups alike, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms gives a bad name to the very concept of family entertainment. It's a delightful little Disney movie, don't think so much about the specifics and just enjoy. It's not claiming to be the next Shawshank Redemption so I don't see why it's being drilled so hard. So, although it's far from perfect, it's fun, beautiful, and full of heart. Because of this, I think Clara is a fantastic role model for young girls who will almost undoubtedly take something from her. Women should not have to adopt "masculine" traits in order to succeed. You can be a bad b**** AND enjoy princess dresses. I know gender roles are bull, believe me, but I don't think women should be shamed for being what society deems feminine. The problem is that instead of embracing feminine traits, they diminish them. They're typically made to be a strict "tomboy" who's "not like other girls." This by itself isn't the problem. I feel like so many of the strong heroines we know and love are, in some ways, stripped of their femininity. This is important because it associates these feminine traits with power. And yet, she's still the hero and she still kicks ass. Not that there's anything wrong with being all prim and proper, in fact, Clara admittedly does spend a lot of the film in beautiful dresses and makeup. They make it a point to differentiate Clara from her sister, Louise, a proper (for that time period) young English woman. She's highly intelligent, specifically in engineering and physics. Clara herself should be a strong selling point of the film. Because it's a Disney film aimed at kids, the script is awfully cheesy at times, but not enough to be distracting. The dynamic between Clara and her late mother is great and is the real emotional draw of the film. Though there's a lot of room for improvement, specifically in the script, I really enjoyed the new story. We get to experience the beloved elements of The Nutcracker in a new way. I personally wouldn't want it to be the same. The story is not the same as the ballet, nor does it claim to be. They created a beautifully detailed world and it pays off. The sets are stunning and surprisingly, according to some of the interviews I've watched, most of it is not CGI. The costumes are magnificent as well as hair and makeup. As we can all agree, it's visually stunning. It's no masterpiece but I can't understand all the hate. A lot of the negative reviews seem to be awfully nitpicky for a family Disney movie.
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