The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

Maybe you like the story, or the music, or the dancing. Whatever aspect or version of the Nutcracker is your favorite, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is unlikely to match your lofty expectations.

The classic holiday coming-of-age story is now a hyperactive CGI extravaganza, with its sense of wonder replaced by earnest platitudes and forced sentiment. And it reduces some of the more iconic musical passages from the source material into periphery snippets.

The film follows Clara (Mackenzie Foy), a precocious teenager in Victorian London who becomes intrigued when she receives a golden egg-shaped music box as a Christmas gift from her late mother. Except it didn’t come with a key.

That cryptic realization leads Clara to her eccentric godfather (Morgan Freeman), whose clues send her to a parallel world of anthropomorphic Nutcracker soldiers, mischievous mice, and princesses who oversee realms named after flowers, snowflakes, and sweets. Apparently her mother was a big deal there.

As the title suggests, there’s a fourth realm that she must visit, with a Nutcracker (Jayden Fowora-Knight) as her tour guide, to unlock the secrets about her music box and her legacy. During encounters with the sorceress Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren) and with a duplicitous Sugar Plum Fairy (Keira Knightley), Clara reluctantly transition into a tough-minded heroine to save her friends in the fantasy world.

The exquisite visuals are a highlight,  unhindered by any potential behind-the-scenes turmoil that might have resulted from a change of directors — from Lasse Hallstrom (Chocolat) to Joe Johnston (Captain America: The First Avenger) — during reshoots and post-production.

However, rookie screenwriter Ashleigh Powell’s adaptation of both the E.T.A. Hoffmann short story and the Tchaikovsky ballet doesn’t do either of them justice, turning into an Alice in Wonderland-style adventure of self-discovery overloaded with oddball quirks and Rube Goldberg gadgetry. The lovely Misty Copeland ballet sequence midway through the film almost feels out of place.

Perhaps the intermittently charming result is meant to celebrate the power of imagination by telling its tale in a more easily digestible format. Yet while children might identify with the curious protagonist, they’ll likely be dismayed by the unnecessarily mean-spirited twists in the final act.

In other words, the film might introduce a new generation of youngsters to the material, but it won’t leave them — with apologies to the unrelated Christmas poem — with visions of sugar-plum fairies dancing in their heads.

Rated PG, 99 minutes.