‘Nutcrackers’: Toronto Review

Dir: David Gordon Green. US. 2024. 104mins 

Ben Stiller has made a career out of portraying neurotic, unfulfilled men who need to reconnect with their sense of joy — maybe even their inner child. His latest film, the comedy-drama Nutcrackers, capitalises on that persona as he plays a focused executive who thinks he doesn’t have time to take care of his deceased sister’s young children, only to discover that they tap into something he had suppressed within himself. Unfortunately, David Gordon Green’s wholesome throwback to rambunctious family films like The Bad News Bears strains to sell the openhearted spirit of this Christmas-themed lark.

Strains to sell its openhearted spirit

After making three Halloween films and an Exorcist sequel, the director returns to Toronto with a lighter, sweeter picture, which will probably work best for those who appreciate Nutcrackers’ undemanding humour and familiar contours. In recent years, Stiller has focused on directing for television, so this film represents his first major big-screen role since the 2017 pair of The Meyerowitz Stories and Brad’s Status. Sadly, Nutcrackers is a less appealing proposition, and theatrical prospects look modest at best.

The holidays are on the horizon as Michael (Stiller), a high-powered real estate exec, drives from Chicago to the Ohio small town where his sister and brother-in-law lived before they died in a car crash. Michael has been summoned to safeguard his four nephews — Justice (Homer Janson), Junior (Ulysses Janson) and twins Samuel (Atlas Janson) and Simon (Arlo Janson) — but he insists he must return to Chicago imminently to finalise a lucrative deal he has spent six years shaping. 

With that premise, audiences can easily guess where Leland Douglas’ screenplay is headed, and arguably one of Nutcrackers’ pleasures is its reliable predictability. No matter how grumpy the all-business Michael is about trying to find a foster home for his estranged nephews, inevitably he will come to find their wisecracking ways endearing. Adding to the picture’s cosy vibe is the fact that the Janson boys are actually the sons of one of Green’s longtime friends, and it seems clear that the director allowed his young stars to improvise certain moments opposite Stiller’s slow-burn straight man. 

But the comfortable narrative twists and turns would be more satisfying if the story had real resonance. For a film about grief, Nutcrackers is almost too cheery, never pinpointing the right balance of poignancy and cathartic humour. There’s a perfunctory quality to Michael’s mission to locate a good home for the nephews, a quest that forces him to get chummy with some of the locals — including the wealthy Al Wilmington (Toby Huss) — in order to unload these crass kids. But these sequences’ sitcom-y quality shortchanges any emotional underpinnings. As expected, Michael will eventually realise Justice and his brothers represent a link to the sister who had drifted out of his life, but Nutcrackers fails to make that recognition heartbreaking or profound. 

With the Janson brothers, Green is so focused on adolescent shenanigans that he shows little insight into the complexity of children, especially ones reeling from tragedy. Homer is the most expressive — in addition, he is a superb ballet dancer, which will become a crucial element of the Nutcrackers’ finale — but the nephews are too often merely adorable rather than being permitted to demonstrate any dimensionality. Consequently, Stiller has to do a lot of the heavy lifting comedically, and the script does not provide him with enough zingers.

Near the finale, Nutcrackers pivots from broad comedy to a tear-jerking tone in which the nephews mount their own take on The Nutcracker as a tribute to their late mother, who was an accomplished dancer. Shooting in 35mm, which further burnishes the picture’s warmth, Green unapologetically aims for a sentimental ending in which our characters learn the importance of family and the need to prioritise happiness over success.

Stiller has often portrayed harried characters undergoing this internal transformation, and he executes it with such offhand grace that it helps paper over some of Nutcrackers’ more  threadbare qualities. He’s well-paired with Linda Cardellini, who plays Gretchen, a sympathetic social worker happy to give Michael advice about how to be a better, more considerate person when the story requires it. But turning those trite homilies into something truly touching is a challenge Green’s film never cracks.