The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is a 2018 American fantasy adventure film directed by Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston, and written by Ashleigh Powell. The film received mostly negative reviews, with critics calling it a "boring and soulless adaptation".

Summary
Young Clara Stahlbaum 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.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Many poorly grasped disloyalties to the source material, as it takes away most of the magical and adventurous tone that the original story and ballet had.
 * 2) The plot can get very boring throughout most of the movie.
 * 3) The writing also feels very clichéd.
 * 4) Some "racebending" with the characters, giving two black actors the roles of Drosselmeyer and the Nutcracker.
 * 5) Some mediocre acting here and there, such as Mackenzie Foy’s performance as Clara.
 * 6) The title is somewhat misleading as it's called The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, yet Captain Phillip Hoffman (aka The Nutcracker) feels like more of a side character who barely gets enough screen time or chemistry with Clara. You could easily remove Hoffman from the movie and it wouldn't affect the plot even the slightest.
 * 7) The Nutcracker (Captain Phillip) and Clara don't share much chemistry on-screen; in fact, there is more of it between Clara and The Sugar Plum Fairy.
 * 8) Another one of Disney's cliché twist villains: We're led to believe that Mother Ginger and the Mouse King/Mouserinks are the villains of the movie when it's really (SPOILER ALERT) the Sugar Plum Fairy.
 * 9) * Sugar Plum is supposed to be a heroic good character in the story, but is turned evil here to pull off an M. Night Shyamalan-style twist, which ends up falling completely flat.
 * 10) * Also, The Sugar Plum Fairy's motivations for wanting to take over the four realms are very generic, and make her come as evil for the sake of being evil. In addition to this, her voice sounds annoyingly high-pitched.
 * 11) A huge plothole about how the time in the real world moves way slower than the time in the Realms.
 * 12) The film tries way too hard to be like a Tim Burton film. but fails miserably. Ultimately, it caused the downfall of Lasse Hallström's directing career.
 * 13) The side characters are bland and forgettable.
 * 14) The idea of an entire secret world that Clara's mother created, while interesting, feels like a rip-off of both Alice in Wonderland and Narnia.
 * 15) There are several points in the plot that are left unresolved, like how the Sugar Plum Fairy's death leaves the Land of Sweets without a regent.

Good Qualities

 * 1) While the acting is not the best, it's surprisingly not too bad and the actors actually give some decent performances, such as Morgan Freeman as Drosselmeyer and Keira Knightley as The Sugar Plum Fairy.
 * 2) The visuals and CGI are beautiful, amazing and very well-done.
 * 3) The costume designs look great and have a lot of effort put into them.
 * 4) James Newton Howard's soundtrack is wonderful and captures the magical tone that the movie was trying to go for, the movie even uses some music from the original ballet.
 * 5) The setting for the movie is both stunning and astonishing.
 * 6) Clara's backstory with her mother is heartbreaking.
 * 7) The cinematography and camera angles are beautiful and very well-shot.
 * 8) The movie sometimes can have its moments, like the ballet scene that tells the story of how Clara's mother created the Four Realms.
 * 9) The pacing's pretty decent.

Reception
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms received generally negative reviews, with criticisms of its story and dance routines. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 32% based on 202 reviews with an average rating of 5.10/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Lacking a transporting yuletide story or dazzling dance routines, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is a hollow holiday confection that's lovely to look at – and easy to forget.". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 39 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it 49% "definite recommend".

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