There is no doubt in anybody’s mind that the youngest of the Janson brothers, Homer, Ulysses, Atlas, and Arlo are very cute and polite children in real life. (Absolutely, nobody in their right mind would employ them in a film if this was not so). The same cannot be said of the four boys acting as undisciplined orphans in director David Gordon Green’s bizarre Toronto Film Festival starter ‘Nutcrackers’: a pack of wild children who rely on their strict uncle, Michael Maxwell (Ben Stiller), to save them from a foster home after losing their parents in a car crash.
It does not go without notice then that the glamourous Micahel shows up driving a yellow Porsche. While at it he steps into droppings. Christmas is fast approaching and Michael only needs a few days to manage the estate which involves adopting out the Kicklighter boys. More off to Chicago where a major real estate deal was about to be completed.
“What a weird thing to ask!” replies the mother. “Is this the state of our world today that children ask such absurd questions? Are we that bad? ” I could hear Justice’s timid voice whispering to his ‘dada Daddy’ about how he was a dreadful person and how one day he hoped to find his way home. Homer Janson, a 12-year-old boy who seems ready for an acting career, asks, “When I wake up tomorrow, are you still gonna be here?” Older boys, including twins Samuel and Simon and their older brother Junior, seem to resemble homeless children, yet these brothers are absolutely hideous. It is Homer who captivates me with his big brown eyes, thick black lashes, and his general lost puppy aspect. No wonder he is turning out to be a younger version of Jacob Elordi. A real treat. Of course, raising all of Green’s friend’s sons means that their pranks are believed even more.
Justice says while taunting his uncle, “If what mom said about you is what I am thinking then I won’t be surprised.” Justice’s kidding turns into Provocation when he cites that his mother said that his uncle was incapable of love. Now if you hold that view or are just terribly eager to see Stiller’s character disprove coexistence then “Nutcrackers” should be an entertaining festive treat. More challenging viewers will probably regard routine family movies quite differently: it is a rather innocent exercise in nostalgia for fans of Steven Green who specializes in desecrating respectable horror franchises (Halloween, Exorcist) in passes and pays tribute to the genre that raised him, namely ‘lost treasures’ such as, and, ‘Six Pack’ a ‘Kidco.
But how does such a fellow who seems even more interested in his car than in any of his sister’s kids become mature enough to figure things out? Green and screenwriter Leland Douglas hasten Michael’s evolution by casting Linda Cardellini in the role of the family services worker searching for a placement for Michael: one of the foster families.
“There are people who cannot get pregnant,” she says to Michael. “There are people, believe me, who would be happy to take such a headache.” While staying in the house of his sister, Michael makes genuine efforts to get rid of the children. There are a number of others including Aloysius Wilmington (Toby Huss) a rich local resident who has got everything But children. Rose has devised a plan in which each of her fosters earns eight hundred dollars per month from the government. She would not mind having four boys more on her list.
None of these options seems to fit either, however, Nutcrackers does not put forth any arguments to demonstrate that Michael would be a better alternative. He is not only self-centered but totally unqualified to being a parent or even living in a farm environment and the insinuation is that whoever takes on the parental role of the Kicklighter kiddies will be expected to take care of all their pet animals too. These comprise two pigs, a guinea pig, a few goats, a dog or two or more, and several birds including chickens whom Michael, to his utter dismay, simply cannot more than a few at a time and expects them to become the dinner.
The mayhem of the boys and their father Michael will not surprise anyone as they show him slipping in the mud here, and stumbling into a pond there. Rather, he’s them a sex-related subject which is quite unbearably awkward to them. If, instead of all unwanted prospects, he adopts the boys, the first step is putting them into school, then understanding the farm, looking for a new job is a restless chore, yes but nothing more unbearable than battling with the frosty heart of a Scrooge for a chance of a few days.
What about the film’s semi-blasphemous title where does that come from? Well, that’s the Christmas show that the boys had been rehearsing with their mother a popular local dance teacher, mother dear. Not deterred by trivialities, Michael chooses to attend the Kicklighters’ revised version of ‘The Nutcracker’ which, as it happens, Green intends to stage as his last. The movie has to find answers for what happens to a family where the mother dies and the lost sister should be mourning one there is nothing in its overview about a messy Christmas performance.
Returning to their best films Green, the first worthy of attention is his debut “George Washington,” or the next one – “All the Real Girls”, it should be noted, that he understands loss perfectly. Here, however, he has chosen to explore how a family moves forward by focusing on all the togetherness they gain.
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