The Nutcracker Movie Review and Movie Summary (2024)

There are a certain number of movie plots that are so inherently appealing that filmmakers have to neglect their duties to not produce something watchable. “Down-and-out former hotshot who gets one last chance at redemption” is one of them. “Band of losers who learn a new skill and become unlikely winners” is another. Put the two together and you probably get 90% of all sports movies. Another on the list is “Curmudgeon who never wanted to be a parent, is forced to be one, and turns out to be okay with it.”

And it’s “Nutcrackers,” starring Ben Stiller as a workaholic single from Chicago who ends up having to play father to a group of young, orphaned brothers.

“Nutcrackers” is written and directed by David Gordon Green, who established himself in American cinema with a pair of sensitive low-budget dramas about people who could actually exist (“George Washington” and “All the Real Girls”) and then took an unexpected ( for fans) left turn to screwball comedies with films like “Pineapple Express” and “Your Highness”. “Nutcrackers” integrates the two modes, sets the action in a recognizably real version of the American Midwest (suburban Ohio), and channels classic films with a seemingly highly unsuitable candidate for parenthood (“Uncle Buck” and the various iterations of “The Bad News” Bears” is never far from the film’s mind), pushing the misunderstandings and slapstick situations right up to the edge of ridiculousness.

The Kicklighter boys are a quartet consisting of 12-year-old Justice (Homer Janson), 10-year-old Junior (Ulysses Janson) and 8-year-old twins Samuel and Simon (Atlas and Arlo Janson). Stiller’s character, Michael, zips into town in a yellow Porsche to handle the paperwork to deliver siblings, his nephews, into foster care after losing their parents in a car accident. Michael must be in Chicago putting the finishing touches on a huge real estate deal. The Kicklighter boys are what used to be called “juvenile delinquents” and are now called “at-risk youth”; they are introduced to break into a fairground and jerry rig one of the rides.

Mike makes it clear that he’s only interested in Mike, which means getting out of there as fast as he can, without any messy complications involving human emotions, such as empathy. But you know how things have to go: when crunch time comes and Mike has to choose, he’ll make the right choice, because that’s the kind of movie it is: heartwarming, but not too mushy. There’s also a touch of romance in the form of a foster care agent named Gretchen (Linda Cardellini), who tugs at the hero’s conscience after the assigned foster family doesn’t work out.

Stiller has become a deeper actor with age, and he’s perfect here: you know he’s got a good soul because this is a comedy and not a dark one, but he keeps you guessing. Casting the Kicklighters with the real-life Janson brothers probably went a long way toward selling the idea that these boys are actually related, and Green, always a low-key wizard with actors, emphasizes performance rhythms above all else. lets the film move according to the energies of the performers and allows for digressions that may not always drive the plot forward but feel like a little touch of life.

On Hulu November 29.