Mackenzie Foy and Jayden Fowora-Knight in The Nutcracker and the Four Realms Credit: Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios

Oh, if they had just left well enough alone.

The original Nutcracker is based on the classic E.T.A. Hoffmann story of a Christmas nutcracker that comes alive to defeat the evil Mouse King and whisk Clara away to a magical kingdom populated by dolls and tin soldiers. With those memorable waltzes and marches of Tchaikovsky’s romantic music, and the ethereal ballet of fairies and snowflakes, it has captured our imagination since it was first performed in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1892. The Balanchine 1954 staging of this orchestral ballet is now included in the standard Christmas repertoire of most of America’s performing arts centers, with worldwide productions too.

Flash forward to over a century. Let’s make a movie. Let’s make a Christmas special. Let’s create a budget for this extravaganza that likely exceeds the GNP of most civilized nations. Let’s spare no expense in set design, costumes, SFX and production values so that the list of credits of all those involved in the making of this film takes up to 56 pages in the press kit that also reminds us how many crystals went into the making of Clara's coronation dress (1,800 pin-prick pink crystals around the edge of the cape and 2,500 Swarovski crystals on the dress with 1,428 little twinkling lights). Let’s have Swedish director Lasse Hallström and American Joe Johnston (brought in for 32 hours of reshooting — what's up with that?) helm this retelling of the story of the girl who finds a Nutcracker doll and is charged by her parents to take care of it.

But to what avail?

Here, Hollywood, specifically Disney, sinks its nut-cracking teeth into the the story, transforming it with CGI effects and an inane script (Ashleigh Powell and Tom McCarthy) that overwhelm and pulverize the gentle, delicate narrative of a girl on the cusp of adulthood transformed by her encounter with the Nutcracker.

The account gets the full-throated and full-bloated Disney treatment, which means the tale, the tune and the dancing toes essentially go MIA.

When the film hews closer to that original storyline with godfather Drosselmeyer (Morgan Freeman) setting up clues for Clara (Mackenzie Foy) as she tries to find her way, with the help of Phillip (the stiff and wooden Jayden Fowora-Knight), the heroic and helpful soldier, and when we have the glorious Tchaikovsky music and that graceful ballerina (the fantastic and mesmerizing Misty Copeland), then we watch and listen and ache at the beauty.

But in most of the film, Disney ditches the elegant music and dance for a convoluted, lumbering storyline of Clara’s search for a lost key through three realms (Snowflakes, Flowers, Sweets) that involve a Sugarplum Fairy gone bad (Keira Knightley) and the tyrant of the ominous fourth realm, Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren), who holds the key, so to speak, for a return to peace and harmony. A severe case of MEGO sets in — My Eyes Glaze Over.

Our ache turns to disbelief, then exasperation, finally to a soul-sucking resignation on how tiresome and ponderous, labored and lumbering, it all is. Maybe it will become the basis for another Disney theme park, for sure, another glitzy princess to add to the Disney harem, ready-made for parades, costumes, and Nutcracker-themed birthday cakes. Already there is a miniaturized Sugarplum Fairy Barbie available at fine toy stores everywhere.

Though the film opens with an exciting owl’s eye-view soaring across London, soon enough the owl becomes a leaden fantasy that never gets airborne (hot air balloons notwithstanding). The movie reeks of an extravagant mashup of Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Willy Wonka and Chronicles of Narnia, and minutes into the film, begins to sink under its own weight.

L to R: Richard Grant as “Shiver”, Keira Knightley as “Sugarplum Fairy”, Eugenio Derbez as “Hawthorne”, Mackenzie Foy as “Clara” Credit: Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios

Who is this film for? There were petite children in their tights and tutus at the preview, eager for the familiar story, but I cannot imagine any of them were able to follow the torturous and tangled plot or make sense of the Cockney accents. Tin soldiers come to life to give the Sugarplum Fairy a chance to channel her inner Mae West as she oozes, “I love a man in uniform… especially when he brings his weapon.” I guess it’s a sop to the adults who might be watching, but it fell flat like a detumescent cold shower. And it's a creepy thing, too, when Clara dresses in her dead mother's gown so she can dance with her mourning father (perpetually morose Matthew Macfadyen).

Like most films, there are previews with announced embargoes where reviewers cannot publicize any social media, online, or print reviews until there’s been time to build up word-of-mouth between preview and release. Here, however, previewers saw the film on Tuesday night, with the embargo till midnight Wednesday night Halloween, and movie opens on Thursday. That’s less than 24 hours between previews and release. I think Disney knows it’s got a turkey on its holiday hands, and the classic Christmas story is not enough to save this dud. Showing the preview just hours before it opens to the public, so there’s little chance for reviewers to put out lots of criticism suggests Disney doesn’t like what its got. Disney had a similar late-term embargo for its Christopher Robin, indicative that the studio just doesn’t trust its product to bring in the box office receipts.

The trailers are magical. The film is not.

Previewers have to offer some brief and cogent commentary to the PR staffer with a clipboard after the movie. My comment: "I want my two and a half hours back." Her reply: "It was only an hour and a half." It seemed oppressively interminable to me.

Ben Wiley taught literature and film at St. Petersburg College. At USF/Tampa, he was statewide Director of the Florida Consortium/University of Cambridge (UK) International Summer Schools. His interests are film, books, and kayaking Florida rivers. He also writes the BookStories feature in Creative Loafing Tampa. Contact him here.

This article appears in Nov 15-22, 2018.