The “wretched” movie Roger Ebert called “one of the most preposterous ideas” in cinema history
Not every idea, whether it’s good or bad, needs to be made into a movie. There are plenty of other ways to tell a story, but it’s nothing if not bizarre that Roger Ebert hated a feature-length adaptation of a tale that had already been adapted dozens of times across various other forms of media.
That gives the impression that this particular story was well-suited to the big screen, given that it had already been brought there at least half a dozen times before. It had also served as the inspiration behind several TV shows, a handful of video games, and hundreds upon hundreds of stage productions, but when Andrei Konchalovsky got his hands on The Nutcracker, shit went seriously sideways.
Tchaikovsky’s balletic fable has been ingrained in the cultural consciousness for well over a century, and it has been fertile ground for stage and screen for almost as long. And yet, when the filmmaker mounted a lavish, expensive, and three-dimensional take on the festive favourite, Ebert couldn’t believe what his eyes had been forced to see.
“From what dark night of the soul emerged the wretched idea for The Nutcracker in 3D?” he asked, gently easing himself into a one-star review. “Who considered it even remotely a plausible idea for a movie? It begins with an awkward approximation of the story behind the Tchaikovsky ballet, and then turns it into a war by the Nutcracker Prince against the Holocaust.”
Not every adaptation needs to be a faithful one, but Konchalovsky’s decision to use The Nutcracker as the backdrop to a parable about the horrors of World War II, deviating wildly from the source material, and refitting the score into a string of musical numbers didn’t sit well with critics, audiences, or Ebert.
The film tanked at the box office, which was the least it deserved, with the veteran reviewer taken aback by what was supposed to be a family-friendly film. “You may be in disbelief,” he noted. “I was. The Nutcracker in 3D is one of those rare holiday movies that may send children screaming under their seats.”
It was also nominated for a Razzie in the ‘Worst Eye Gouging Misuse of 3D’ category, and he couldn’t have agreed more. “Only one thing could have made this film worse, and they haven’t neglected it,” he ominously intoned. “I’ve seen bad retro 3D, but I’ve never seen 3D as bad as this.”
The woefully misguided blockbuster couldn’t scrape together a shred of praise to save its life, and it was a failure on all fronts; visually, narratively, commercially, critically, and beyond. This being Hollywood, though, it was less than a decade before The Nutcracker was sent hurtling back towards the multiplex.
Had the lessons been learned? Nope. Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms boasted Keira Knightley, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, and Richard E Grant among its cast, but much like its immediate predecessor, it was a box office disaster that took a pasting from all corners, which suggests Tchaikovsky should perhaps take a breather from the big screen for a while.
