TIFF 2024: ‘Nutcrackers’ Completely Misses The Mark

In this review’s first draft, the headline read, ‘Nutcrackers provides cheap birth control.’ I chickened out. That said, the sentiment rings true. No film in recent memory works better as a narrative contraceptive. Directed by David Gordon Green and written by Leland Douglas, the story aims for heartwarming tenderness and familial hijinks. Still, it results in exhausting tedium and frustration at and for these characters.

In theory, the Ben Stiller-led drama/comedy should work. It’s got all of the hallmark indicators of a feel-good classic despite the feel-bad setup. Stiller plays Mike, who lives in Chicago and, years early, had a fallout with his sister. However, she and her husband recently died, leaving their four sons in limbo as a local caseworker (Linda Cardellini) works to find them a foster home that will accommodate all four. Mike is initially called upon to serve as a temporary caregiver but, of course, grows closer to the boys and must decide whether or not to take on the challenge of full guardianship.

Despite the Christmas-time setting and holiday cheer it tries to inflict on us, Nutcrackers attempts to achieve a certain joyous tone without doing the work. When we first meet Mike, he’s a miserable workaholic who can’t even allow enough flexibility for the bereaved kids to call him Uncle Michael instead of Mike. He’s more concerned with getting back for a Monday morning pitch than for the kids who have been left parentless. It’s not that we think he should feel obligated to step into the parent role, but he should at least demonstrate a level of empathy.

Meanwhile, the kids themselves are no prizes, but at least they have the aforementioned grief in their corner. But on the first meeting, Mike is ignored and tormented, from snakes in the toilets to a baseball thrown squarely at his head. Cardellini’s Gretchen keeps trying to placate him by reminding him that they’re just kids who’ve endured something horrible.

But we never see them or Mike fully grow from the characters they start as. Any shift in character is incremental and poorly earned. Instead, any change of heart is done in service of the script rather than the script ever serving the characters. They’re archetypes.

This might’ve even been satisfying had Green’s direction demonstrated any sense of life. Instead, it’s listless and formulaic. Again, it’s not a problem per se when it comes to this type of feature, but it surely hurts the story when all central components align to create something actively aggravating. Because no matter the context or the info-dumps we sit through, these characters aren’t likable. And yes, they’re just kids, but it’s clear that Douglas believed the four brothers to possess greater pathos and heart to help ground their more feral impulses.

Nutcrackers finds its best visual moments when it incorporates dance, as the boy’s late mom ran a dance studio. There’s life in these moments, tangible and heartfelt. And while they lay the schmaltz on thick, it’s momentarily effective. Perhaps because it’s easier to ground out emotion from song and dance than snarky quips.

Stiller is fine enough, but we’ve also seen better variants of this performance in recent years, from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty to The Meyerowitz Story. This is Stiller on autopilot. Cardellini, too, is simply fine, though she’s given one of the worst, most mind-numbing, and reductive lines of the year so far, the true moment that threatens to push this film over the edge of frustrating to trash.

In a moment of anger, Gretchen laments to Mike that he should feel lucky at getting the chance to adopt the four boys because some women in the world are unable to have children of their own. There’s no denying the genuine trauma and hardship of women who deal with these types of fertility issues in real life. And this isn’t to diminish or invalidate that feeling. But as said in Nutcrackers, it makes it seem like childless people should be jumping at the chance to adopt simply because others can’t get pregnant. If this is an intended argument, then it needs a further hand. In the hands of Douglas, it seems wildly out of touch.

Nutcrackers is a soulless and tepid affair that fails to inject itself with heart or compassion. It flirts with humor and sincerely wants to be seen as an optimistic holiday film. But in the end, it’s simply a forgettable story that fails to enliven the plot with bold characters or engaging directions.

Nutcrackers played as part of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival.