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In recent years, Ben Stiller has notably executed a transition in his career. While he was once recognized as one of the industry’s biggest comedic stars, his last leading role in a feature was all the way back in 2017 playing the titular character in Mike White’s dramedy Brad’s Status. His focus instead lately has been more behind the scenes, honing his skills as a director and producer making shows like Showtime’s Escape At Dannemora and AppleTV+’s Severance – but after nearly a decade away, Stiller is now back playing the lead in director David Gordon Green‘s Nutcrackers, which premiered this week at the Toronto International Film Festival.
It’s a welcomed return. The actor has a special knack for playing high-strung characters who regularly reach comedic levels of frustration, and the movie most definitely uses opportunities to exercise that particular skill of his. While that particular bit of the familiar is fun, however, it’s part of a film that is otherwise overly familiar, as it plays out a story that audiences have seen many, many times, and you can predict the vast majority of what’s going to happen before the end of the first 10 minutes.
Written by Leland Douglas, Nutcrackers stars Ben Stiller as Michael, a business-focused, Chicago-based real estate developer who travels out to rural Ohio following the death of his estranged sister and brother-in-law. He is under the impression that he is simply going to sign some papers that transition his four nephews (Homer Janson, Ulysses Janson, Atlas Janson, and Arlo Janson) into a foster home, but he instead ends up being their guardian due to a failed background check.
Michael is horrified to find that the four Kicklighter boys live practically feral lifestyles – as they constantly stir up chaos and their house is a mess that is overrun by animals. The protagonist becomes determined to find them a new home so that he can return to important business deals that are transpiring without him in Chicago, but the more time he spends with the kids, the more he grows to love them.
That is a purposefully vague description of the plot in Nutcrackers, but I nonetheless expect that you already have a pretty clear idea of where the story goes in the movie, and I’ll tell you upfront that there aren’t any twists that will throw you for a loop. The film has eccentricities, mostly involving the very strange Kicklighter lifestyle and their menagerie of in-home critters (cats, dogs, chickens, peacocks, pigs, snakes and more), but they end up being hints of flavor in what is otherwise a mostly lackluster meal.
There is some setup for special fun to be had, with Michael and the boys attending a the Christmas party of a wealthy neighbor (Toby Huss) hoping to get him and his wife to consider adoption, and an odd foster mom (Edi Patterson) who wants the boys to become a part of her home, but both sequences end up petering out without surprises.
To its detriment, Nutcrackers never attempts any big swings or executes any particularly notable creativity, but it can be said that there is an honest earnestness, and without injecting any kind of real cynicism, it never feels cloying or saccharine. The film finds a sweet spot in its sweetness when Michael and the boys visit Michael’s sister’s ballet studio and ultimately find inspiration to put on a performance of an updated version of The Nutcracker – hence, the name of the movie. You’re not going to end up with stomach cramps from laughing too hard, but you also won’t be finding yourself rolling your eyes. (Needless to say, it’s a pretty big tonal pivot from David Gordon Green, whose feature work in the last six years has consisted of the recent Halloween trilogy and Exorcist: Believer.)
Nutcrackers is a “nice” movie, but it’s also pretty forgettable. While it doesn’t have distribution set up yet, it feels like a film that families may give a shot as something new while looking for entertainment during the holiday season between rewatches of Christmas classics like It’s A Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story. It will be enjoyed, but probably won’t end up as part of anyone’s regular traditions.
Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend in the coming days for more of our on the ground coverage of the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, and you can preview all of the features that are on the way between now and the end of the year with our 2024 Movie Release Calendar.