The Nutcracker: The Untold Story

Earlier attempts to translate Tchaikovsky's ballet to the big screen have failed for a variety of reasons—including, in one case, Macaulay Culkin's inability to dance—but filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky's version takes the cake for sheer wrong-headedness. First bad decision: drop the dancing entirely and just employ snippets of the score as background music, sometimes adding insipid English lyrics to the melodies. Then throw in a bit of Broadway pizzazz in the person of Nathan Lane, playing Uncle Albert (the Drosselmeyer character) with all the subtlety he'd employ if aiming for the furthest row in New York's largest theater. As for the story, it's now a “family” adventure in which young heroine Mary (Elle Fanning) and the animated nutcracker prince try to save the latter's kingdom from the evil Rat King (John Turturro), who's turned it into a dark fascist realm where citizens are marched through the streets like captives being herded off to camps, and children surrender their toys to stoke furnaces that belch out black smoke. An utter travesty that is likely to terrify children and appall adults, this is not recommended. (F. Swietek)