The plot was okay: instead of the Nutcracker fighting the mouse and Clara saving him by throwing her shoe at him, we have Clara running around after the mouse who stole the key to her magic egg, and the Nutcracker running after her whining don't do it, don't go there it's dangerous.
And then at the end they make the Sugarplum fairy (who never does her beautiful dance) the bad guy. Sheesh.
the girl who plays Clara is too old to be the young lady of the story (who is supposed to be just at puberty, just awakening to her sexuality). She meets the Nutcracker (black, of course, but then they did have Blacks in the Russian military so let's not quibble). But he is a boy, not a young man, and again the awakening sexuality hinted to in the original story just isn't there because he is too young, not very heroic, and there are no "sparks" between them.
But the main reason I disliked the movie was that it was visually ugly.
The design was full of fancy designs, which usually I love, but whoever did the cinematography or graphic design had no colour sense,
and the fairies in the hidden realm looked more fake than the three angels in Disney's Wrinkle in Time where Oprah had swarovski crystals on her eyelids.
and I won't even get into the "nano particle" like mouse king.
The plot is to find a key: What, no locksmiths exist? And once the magic egg is opened, all the heroine finds is a mirror (a modern idea: No magic, just believe in yourself honey).
Clara's dead mother was supposed to be a magical woman, yet the father is a dork, played without humor or emotion when they actually give him his five minutes in the story...( making one wonder how and why the mother married him in the first place).
finally, where was the glorious music? Yes, I heard some of it in the background, but it was muted.
The entire movie lacked joy.
I read that the movie was a flop, which encourages me that maybe the Movie watching public is not a stupid as Hollywood think they are.
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