The Ben Stiller Christmas movie is one series of cliches and not very funny jokes. It tries so hard to pull at our heartstrings that it pretty much snaps them. I'd be surprised if anyone could muster up the energy to care about this predictable and hollow "heartwarmer".
I think the thing that surprised me the most about Nutcrackers is just how unfunny it was. The jokes just never landed. Forget the fact that the film never builds an honest sense of how Stiller's disengaged uncle warms up to his orphaned nephews, of how they somehow warm up to him, but at least the movie could have had a bunch of laughs as the kids terrorized all around them in response to their trauma. But no. The film is about as unfunny as they come.
It's not like that lack of humour is based on the film delving deep into the emotional issues of a family who lost their parents and have to make a new start. Nutcrackers is the kind of film that just goes through the motions and just asks its audiences to fill in the emotional blanks. Like we're supposed to just assume things about these kids, the cliche of the children who act out due to emotional pain. Perhaps the film suffers from the fact that another film that handles this so well and honestly (The Holdovers) was released just last year. Even without that though I imagine Nutcrackers would have rung false.
Holiday movies often cut corners and assume the audience is just going to be onboard without doing the actual work of developing characters or its story. But was it really too much to ask for it to be somewhat funny?
Nutcrackers
Starring: Ben Stiller, Linda Cardellini
Director: David Gordon Green
Writer: Leland Douglas
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