Review: Nutcrackers — Movies for the Rest of Us with Bill Newcott

Nutcrackers

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Run time: 1 hour 44 minutes

Stars: Ben Stiller, Linda Cardellini

Writer: Leland Douglas

Director: David Gordon Green

Streaming on Hulu

Reviewed at the Toronto International Film Festival

It’s got Christmas, it’s got orphans dancing in a big production number, and it’s got a hard-driving businessman who, with the help of a selfless woman, discovers that only the love of a child can defrost his icy heart. Honestly, even without a cameo from FDR it’s clear the musical Annie lives in the same thematic neighborhood as Nutcrackers, Ben Stiller’s proudly derivative but thoroughly entertaining family comedy.

Stiller plays Michael, a Chicago real estate developer whose sister and brother-in-law, farmers in rural Ohio, have died suddenly, leaving behind four young boys. The first impression they make is worrisome, to say the least: Sitting in the rafters of the barn and sharing their late parents’ rambling farmhouse with pigs and chickens — which they casually slaughter whenever they get hungry — the kids seem to be auditioning for a live production of Lord of the Flies.

Of course, Michael expects to be playing little more than a small supporting role in that drama: He arrives at the farm in his Ferrari, expecting to sign some foster home papers on behalf of his nephews. But a local case worker (Dead to Me’s Linda Cardellini) hits him with the big surprise we saw coming from a mile away: Not only does he now have legal custody of the kids, he is also responsible for all his sister’s considerable debts (I’m not at all sure the law works exactly that way, but, hey, I’ve never lived in Ohio).

Despite the fact that he’s in the final days of a make-or-break deal six years in the making, despite the fact that he is a singularly self-absorbed bachelor, and despite the fact that he heretofore would have crossed a four-lane highway rather than walk on the same sidewalk as a snot-nosed child, Michael rolls up his sleeves and embarks on a well-meaning but usually disastrous crash course in parenting — at the same time shopping the kids around town, hoping to find someone who will provide a foster home for them.

Yes, none of this sounds like the kind of stuff any actual, breathing human being would do, but Stiller, with his hangdog manner of smoldering exasperation, has always had a way of making us swallow indigestible plot lines and actually like it (Exhibit A: All his Focker movies). Many of the laughs to be found in Nutcrackers — Michael falling in the mud as he chases a chicken; Michael home schooling the boys in sex education; the boys wreaking havoc at a high-class Christmas party — seem so pre-programmed we feel that, rather than that Ferrari, Michael should be behind the wheel of a self-driving Tesla. But they are honestly earned laughs, nevertheless.

Stiller is greatly assisted by his young cast, a quartet of actual siblings: Homer, Ulysses, Atlas, and Arlo Janson. Admirably, the four young actors are more than willing to turn us against their hell-raising, anarch-kid characters from the get-go — then spend the rest of the film winning us over, fair and square. And as the woman who helps soften Michael’s attitude, Cardellini goes full-bore Margot Kidder with a warm, encouraging smile and occasional stern word for the guy only she sees as a possible dad-in-waiting.

Director David Gordon Green, known mostly for his horror movie sequels (The Exorcist: Believer, Halloween Ends), seems an odd choice to helm a heartfelt holiday movie, but his instinctive edginess ably navigates the sentiment-versus-mayhem tightrope walk created by writer Leland Douglas.

Occasionally, Green and Douglas call upon Cardellini’s character to gently remind Michael — and us — that at the heart of the story are four children whose parents have suddenly died (although, to be fair, it’s unclear just how much actual parenting was going on when Mom and Dad were still around). To ease their first parentless holiday — and to give the boys some sense of closure — Michael agrees to help them stage a community production of The Nutcracker that their mom, a popular local dance teacher, had been planning.

Of course, things go comically awry, and also of course the Christmas setting and sentimental storyline converge to provide an ending that will soften the steely resolve of every Daddy Warbucks in the audience.

Then again, few people will sit through Nutcrackers wondering if Michael is going to find someone to raise his orphaned nephews. It may be a hard knock life, but the sun will come out tomorrow.