Nutcrackers
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Director David Gordon Green has had a very strange career. Starting off with artistic indie films like George Washington and All the Real Girls (this period was undoubtedly the height of his career), he then dipped into stoner comedies, like the beloved Pineapple Express and the detested Your Highness (we can’t even bring up The Sitter). After the catastrophe of the latter film, Green ventured back into more respectable filmmaking, with Prince Avalanche, Stronger, and Joe to point to as examples (mind you, I have a soft spot for Pineapple Express from the slacker era of his career). We’re not done with Green’s experiments, yet, as we now reach the slasher film period of his filmography: three Halloween films, and an abhorrent Exorcist sequel to boot. Just as quickly as he tired of his stoner comedies, Green has moved on from his horror fix and back into indie cinema with Nutcrackers: his latest effort, which feels like a feel-bad holiday answer to last year’s excellent The Holdovers. There’s something interesting here to say the least, in the sense that Green cast a real life group of siblings — the Janson brothers — who aren’t professional actors to play a family of orphans who live on a farm and with complete anarchy. I appreciate the chemistry and naturalism between these siblings, given the film’s concept of grief, struggling, and stunted growth.
Otherwise, I hate Nutcrackers. If it wasn’t for the niche element of having these non-actor brothers (who feel like naturals at times), I’d like this film even less. This comedy-drama (bereft of laughs and with good intentions to have lessons that get squandered by annoyances) is a frustrating watch: one that feels like there is so much potential, given the cast, aesthetic, and story of the film. Instead of a film with highs and lows that remind us of the complexities of the holiday season, we have what feels like a rash that won’t go away despite how hard I’m scratching. Nutcrackers opened the 2024 entry of the Toronto International Film Festival, likely not because it’s good (it isn’t) but because TIFF was keen on celebrating the prioritization of having the festival operate as a market for distributors to go shopping (again, The Holdovers was a massive success, including its purchase during a private screening at TIFF in 2022). Nutcrackers, like its central characters, was a film in need of a home. It got one via Hulu, but, if it wasn’t for the star power or TIFF’s intentions, I wouldn’t know why.
Nutcrackers certainly feels painful in the way the title describes.
Mike Maxwell (Ben Stiller) heads to an isolated part of Ohio in his bright-yellow Porsche to connect with his nephews (the Janson boys) who are recently orphaned once their dad and mom — and Mike’s sister — pass away. Mike is to watch over them until they find a suitable foster family, being set up by social worker Gretchen Rice (Linda Cardellini). The nephews are insufferable at first, but they are grieving children trying to wrap their heads around the unfortunate loss of their parents. Nonetheless, they prank and taunt Mike, their farm animals — from pigs of the swine and guinea variety, to chickens — roam around the house freely, and they have the diet of cockroaches after the apocalypse where all the food that is left are processed and candied junk. Mike, on the other hand, is both not ready to be a father (at all, let alone to these boys) and occupied with work (which proves to be a problem when he cannot get reception or wi-fi at his nephews’ house). As Gretchen tries to help Mike and his family, they both start to develop feelings for one another. In the meantime, Mike connects with his nephews in ways he never thought was possible despite trying to find them a new family (like almost every single other film of this variety, to no one’s surprise).
Unfortunately, even though Green and company mean well with Nutcrackers (you can sense every time the film is meant to be a serious look at unconditional love and the weird ways in which humans heal and nurture during tragedy), the screenplay is so lousy that I cannot connect with this film at all. It is shot with a haze and an interesting colour palette, yet what we see is usually stupid and immature. The sets have something to say with all of the little details and nuances within them, but we never have enough time to enjoy them because we’re being yanked by hijinks and nonsense. Stiller, Cardellini, and even the Janson boys are owed a far better script because they really make the most of the drivel they have. Whenever a tender moment is about to blossom, something idiotic and unfunny sours the moment. Worst of all, much of the film — from its comedy to its plot points — feels derivative of other similar films to the point that you can call Nutcrackers one of the worst labels any film can get: cliched.
Stiller feels like he’s forced to relive his character as Dr. Focker in Meet the Parents, except, this time, he’s trying to remain sane with children instead of future in-laws. The boys feel coached to resemble the youths in films like Captain Fantastic or Moonrise Kingdom where imagination can run amok and go against societal normalcy, yet it doesn’t work when they’re reduced to cheap gags and typically raunchy dialogue (this also prevents the exercise of having non-actors come into their own on screen). The film itself feels like a worse Big Daddy (where an unfit parent is in charge of a chaotic child in much need of proper guidance, and they bond over their eccentricities), and you know it’s an issue when a low-tier Adam Sandler gross-fest feels like the stronger, more level-headed, better-conceived film.
Nutcrackers is tonally confused, narratively hobbled, and creatively bereft. It has some interesting elements going on and with the best efforts of those involved, but it is so miss-matched, incomplete, and reliant on the tropes of old that it feels like it really doesn’t matter outside of seeing what involving the Janson children can turn out (and I guarantee there is a better result capable with these kids). As a result, Nutcrackers is not only dull and awkward: it’s outright excruciating at times. No amount of the very brief moments that work (like the climactic dance that aims to tie the film together, which actually is quite beautiful and meaningful) can save how punishing Nutcrackers feels for the most part. A strong ending does not make a film great, especially one that I was itching to stop watching a handful of times before I got to the closing sequence.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.