Nutcrackers

• Directed by David Gordon Green
• September 5, 2024 (TIFF) / November 29, 2024 (US)
• Hulu

Four orphaned siblings are left in the care of their estranged uncle who would rather be doing anything else. This is like the worse version of so many other movies.

The premise of the irresponsible adult finding themselves caring for estranged children has been done dozens of times outside of the Christmas genre. A person gets custody of a kid or three and learns responsibility along with what’s important in life. Nutcrackers could have easily blended in with any of them mostly because the season is ultimately unimportant to the plot.

Under a director better than David Gordon Greene this could’ve been the humorous inverse of a Lifetime Christmas romance film or even a holiday riff on the original Overboard. Instead it is bland and generic lacking in humor or any emotion despite attempts which are halfhearted at such. No push to tie the resolution to Christmas/Seasonal magic. Aside from some decorations that can be seen in the background and a riff on The Nutcracker performed at the end there is nothing Christmasy about this.

Ben Stiller as Uncle Mike is Ben Stiller from the Night at the Museum films or There’s Something About Mary or any number of films where he’s the lead. A nice guy but conveniently clueless as necessitated to get to the next chapter. He is blind to the emotional needs of the kids as needed and the growing attraction of caseworker Gretchen Rice (Linda Cardellini) until he suddenly isn’t just because.

Max has been estranged from his nephews and their mother for an indeterminate amount of time. At least long enough for Mike to be a complete stranger. I’m confused why exactly the rift happened between Mike and sister. He gave a loan to her husband and she got angry because he gave a loan to him which led to them fighting and not talking. It sounds like Mike did it of his own free will and was okay with helping them out. She was the one that took it angrily yet he is the character that needs to learn something.

Mike’s nephews-Justice, Junior, Samuel, and Simon Kicklighter (Homer, Ulysses, Atlas, and Arlo Janson respectively)-are unbelievably feral. They cross the line from being comical to being neglected. Where is CPS when you need them? They are not jerking Mike around by doing as they please. They clearly know no better. How were they being treated before Mike showed up?

Aside from Justice who Mike talks to the most, I had a hard time telling the other three children apart. There’s nothing distinct about their characters. While siblings in real life, nothing is done to make each visually distinct or distinct as characters.

Mike has moments of transitory pity for his nephews. Then it is back to developing ideas to dump them on anybody from a woman using foster kids to get money to a local socialite known for being a nice dude. Mike does not want to separate them because that is a step too far but staging a production of something one of the kids wrote as a marketing tool to find an adequate person is just fine. That commercial disguised as community theatre production feels so much worse.

It just does nothing that allows it to rise above so many others. The acting is fine and the direction is fine but ‘fine’ is not necessarily something you want in a Christmas movie. Build on the romance or build on the bonding with the kids. Give us a moment where he obviously falls in love with Gretchen or where they definitely fall in love and where he clearly wants to keep the kids other than after his sales pitch was a big hit. He saw they were good dancers and that was the moment. For all we know he saw a money-making opportunity in the same vein as The Trapp Family Singers. 

Call me a cynic but I was just not enamored with Nutcrackers. It just isn’t special enough for me to recommend. It gets everything wrong about a holiday movie.