[Review] The Nutcracker And The Four Realms (5/10)

Title - The Nutcracker And The Four Realms
Studio - Walt Disney Pictures
Starring - Mackenzie Foy, Keira Knightley, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Matthew Macfadyen, Richard E. Grant, Jack Whitehall
Writer - Simon Beaufoy, Tom McCarthy
Director - Lasse Hallstrom, Joe Johnston
Release - 2 November 2018

As much as I don't want to see the disadvantage of having another director step in for reshoots, there is no way around it here. Hallstrom directed it first and Johnston had to step in for very extensive reshoots (for whatever reasons) and Hallstrom was not available (for whatever reasons). And the result was a very poor telling or a rushed story of a Disney classic.

Morgan Freeman had only a handful of scenes. Helen Mirren had a bit more. Mackenzie Foy was the lead and she performed wonderfully. Too bad the movie let her down.

Keira Knightley's performance looked weird in the trailers and still looked weird here. Her character arc had a big and sudden change that did not make sense and made her looked like a very watered down villain.

The dialogue had some good lines and some bad ones. I am assuming the good ones were the original and the bad ones were the reshoots because they felt like they were there solely to move the story along with the simplest and least amount of words. Those were the times when the story felt rushed and unsatisfying.

But what the movie had going for it was the CGI as everything looked beautiful and real. It brought the eerie and the fantastical tone whenever required. However, there were just not enough world building as you wouldn't get to feel how vast the world was.

And there wasn't that Disney magic feel to it.