The Nutcracker and the Four Realms Wasted One Hour and Forty Minutes of my Life

Life is precious. We can always get more money, we can always make more friends, we can always fix broken things, but the one thing you can not get back is your time. That is why I say in all sincerity that if you watch The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, you will absolutely be wasting your time.

Prior to watching this film, I had high hopes. With a cast of Morgan Freeman and Keira Knightley, I was sure that we were in for a holiday treat. I mean even the synopsis sounds decent:

Young Clara needs a magical, one-of-a-kind key to unlock a box that contains a priceless gift. A golden thread leads her to the coveted key, but it soon disappears into a strange and mysterious parallel world. In that world, she meets a soldier named Phillip, a group of mice and the regents who preside over three realms. Clara and Phillip must now enter a fourth realm to retrieve the key and restore harmony to the unstable land.

I thought to myself “Oh they have Morgan Freeman, his voice alone will carry this film.” And then my heart was shattered.

Let me just explain to you what happens so I can ensure you get to spend at least one hour and thirty five minutes doing anything else in the world other than watching this “film.”

Clara, played by Mackenzie Foy, is gifted a jewelry egg by her dead mom with the message “everything you need will be inside,” because that is obviously what you do when you have too much money and are horrible at communicating affection with other human beings. She is unhappy with her big house, loving siblings, caring father, and decides to, metaphorically, shit on her dad because he asks her for a dance and to attend a ball. He is wounded by her refusal and she feels a twinge of regret.

During the ball, all of the children get gifts that they have to find by following string through the mansion. Clara finds that while others find their gifts in reasonable spots, or at least as reasonable as possible in this unreasonable way to provide children gifts, she finds that hers leads to the top floor of the mansion and then transitions into a winter wonderland. This does not spark any sort of realistic reaction as she continues through this land to find her gift, which is a key.

Then the key gets stolen by a mouse. She chases it, fails, meets a guard who she forces into her employment because he calls her royalty. He takes her to a kingdom that has the leaders of three realms, one of which is Sugar Plum played by, Keira Knightley, while the fourth is a dark and terrible place because reasons. They find out that the leader of the fourth realm has the key and the good guys need the key in order to make more people. And so they take the most incompetent guards with them in order to retrieve said key.

The soldiers almost immediately get overwhelmed but somehow Clara and her trusty guard/slave survive and swipe the key from a disheveled carnival lady. Clara finally unlocks the jewelry egg her dead mom gave her and it is literally a mirror with the same initial note, “All you ever need is in this gift.” She is like, “Well, this is dumb,” and rightly so.  They return to the kingdom and give it to Keira Knightley who decides to use the key in order to make super soldiers that follow her every command. She locks up Clara and friends while she plans world domination, and then Clara sciences her way out of the holding cell.

They rally to the carnival lady who agrees to assist after they realize that Keira Knightley lied about everything and the carnival lady was actually a good guy. Armed with a badass whip, she helps Clara overcome Keira Knightley and executes her via shrinking. Clara then returns home and agrees to be a decent human being and dances with her father. The end.

The best aspect of this film is some of their visual effects and actual ballet dancers who have beautiful but brief scenes. To their credit, Morgan Freeman and Keira Knightley did a great job in their respective roles despite it being so incredibly lackluster. If they made a prequel about the bad ass whip lady losing her power to the lies and slander of Keira Knightley, that is a film I would wanna see. Honestly.

Also notice how I never mentioned Morgan Freeman’s character? Yeah that is because he was in the film so little that it wasn’t worth mentioning.

Overall,

DO NOT SEE THIS FILM

Have a great day!