The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

The latest Disney movie, so off I went with Noshi to the movie theatre and hopefully enjoy the latest release from the studio.

Now, from the trailers it was imminent that this would be a visual spectacle, but was it any good?

In Victorian London in England, one Christmas Eve, Mr. Stahlbaum gives his children Christmas presents to fulfill his wife Marie's dying wish. The younger daughter, Clara, receives a handcrafted egg-shaped box, which she is unable to unlock. In the package, she discovers a note from her mother that states that the inside of the egg is all she would ever need. The Stahlbaum family then heads to a Christmas Eve ball, hosted by the children's godfather and skilled engineer Drosselmeyer. Refusing to dance with her father, Clara scurries from the crowd to ask Drosselmeyer how to unlock her egg. He then reveals to Clara that the egg was a creation of his that he gifted to Clara's mother when she was younger, and that her mother's wish was to bestow the gift to her daughter.

Returning to the ballroom, Clara gets scolded by her father for disobeying him and not dancing with him. She calls him self-absorbed and obsessed with his family's image since her mother's passing, after which Drosselmeyer announces it being time for the children to receive their gifts. Clara finds her string with her name on it, signifying her gift, and follows it into a forest in a parallel world where she sees the key. Before she can grab it, a mouse snatches it. Unable to reach the mouse, which crosses a frozen-over lake, Clara approaches Captain Philip Hoffman. He leads her across the bridge into the Fourth Realm, but they are unable to obtain the key from the mice. Captain Philip then guides Clara to the palace, where she meets three regents of each land. They tell Clara that they are at war with the Land of Amusements which they now refer to as "the Fourth Realm".

Watching a ballet that tells the story of their world's creation, the Sugar Plum Fairy, regent of the Land of Sweets, explains to Clara that her mother created this world as a young girl. She later explains that Marie animated everyone with a machine that can turn toys into real-life people. Sugar Plum says that she can use this machine to defend the other three realms against Mother Ginger, the Regent of the Fourth Realm, but it needs a key. Clara notices that the machine's keyhole matches that of the one on her egg. Clara and her soldiers head towards Mother Ginger and steal the key the mouse had snatched. However, Clara is disappointed upon discovering that the egg is only a music box.
Once Sugar Plum obtains the key, she uses the machine to turn toy soldiers into life-size soldiers that obey her every command, including her command to attack the Fourth Realm. She reveals that the machine can turn this world's people back into toys as well, and intends that to be the fate of the other regents, revealing she had lied about Mother Ginger who, with her people, only resisted against Sugar Plum's plan. Clara resists, and Sugar Plum imprisons Clara, Captain Philip, Shiver, and Hawthorne.
When Clara opens her egg-shaped music box again, she discovers that the top flips up to reveal a mirror, illustrating that all she needed was herself. She and the other prisoners escape and she and Captain Philip are then greeted by one of Mother Ginger's mice who shows Clara another way into the machine room and guides Captain Philip to Mother Ginger to convince her to help Clara overthrow Sugar Plum. Clara enters the machine room and shuts down the machine while fighting off soldiers. Mother Ginger comes to her aid and helps her to fight off the soldiers. Sugar Plum ultimately traps Mother Ginger and attempts to turn her back into a toy with the machine. However, Clara tinkers with the machine so that it aims at Sugar Plum. The machine zaps and turns her back into a porcelain doll as punishment for high treason to the Realms, saving Mother Ginger.

Thanked for restoring peace among the Realms, Clara promises to visit the Realms in the future and returns back to London, where time has hardly passed since she left. She then approaches her father, apologizes for her earlier behaviour, and asks him to dance. He accepts, and Clara opens her music box. Clara's father becomes emotional and reveals that the music box's song was the first song that he and Clara's mother had ever danced to. The two then continue to dance throughout the night.

Well, it was indeed a beautiful movie, but it was NOT a cinema tailored film.  Therefore, the adaptian of this russian fairy tale is just to week in story and "impact".  It was however, the sort of christmas movie you can expect to see in a few years time during the weeks to and after Christmas, on the couch under a blanket and with a hot coco in your hands.

An amusing family film in other words, but nothing more than that.