The Nutcracker and the Magic Flute review – fairytale mashup is a right turkey

9 months ago 99

Rolling backmost the years, The Nutcracker and the Magic Flute returns america to the epoch earlier the advent of feisty young heroines successful kids’ animations – backmost erstwhile the destiny of a pistillate character, arsenic often arsenic not, was to hold astir for a prince to amusement up, duff up the atrocious guys and marque her his princess. That thankless relation goes present to pretty, bland ballet dancer Marie (voiced by Alyson Leigh Rosenfeld), a young pistillate who, successful the look of danger, shrieks and hides her look successful her hands.

The movie opens connected Christmas Eve. Marie’s begetter has died leaving the household successful debt. Odious pawnbroker Mr Ratter (Pete Zarustica) makes Marie a repulsive offer: wed him and he’ll fto her household support their house. Singing a sappy forgettable opus (a informing – determination are much to come), Marie dreams of being a carefree kid again. Hey presto, her privation comes true. Marie shrinks to the size of a doll, and her toys travel to life. A nutcracker turns retired to beryllium a real-life prince called George (Dan Edwards), turned into a artifact by an evil spell.

At this point, arsenic the communicative switched to a magical kingdom ruled implicit by Prince George’s father, the movie mislaid my five-year-old entirely. (Her verdict was a damning thumbs down – her archetypal ever for a film.) The muddled crippled involves a sinister stepmother and a magic flute. There are mates of bully details – champion of each a fantastic talking scroll with airy beams for eyes. But the animation is mean astatine best, and it truly is careless to nick 2 fairytale storylines and cobble them into thing this unmagical.

In the end, astatine the eleventh hour, the film-makers bash springiness simpering Marie an enactment infinitesimal – though disappointingly, adjacent that involves a graceful ballet leap. What a festive household turkey twizzler.