To be fair, one would never guess that the Janson brothers, Homer, Ulysses, Atlas, and Arlo, are such well-manners kids in their actual life. (Surely, no sane director would have them cast in a movie were it not the case.) Many would not level the same judgement to the unruly orphans these four boys are portraying embattled in this poor chosen Michael Green’s Toronto Film Fest opening “Nutcrackers, where a near wild pack of wolves rely on their uptight uncle Michael Maxwell ben Stiller to rescue them from an orphanage after their parents die in a car crash.
He is what you would expect from a metropolitan resident, a guy with style. He drives into his sister’s farm in a yellow porche only to receive a face full of cow poop. There is Christmas on the doorstep, and Michael is going to take care of the estate for a few days including getting the Kick lighter boys through the adoption process. Then it would be back to Chicago for what could be a career-defining closing of real estate contract.
“Tomorrow when I get out of bed, are you still going to be around?” asks 12-year-old Justice (a child actor with the stage name of Homer Janson who looks like he will soon take up acting professionally). His not so fortunate siblings, disheveled Junior, brought to life by Ulysses Janson, and the twins, Samuel, portrayed by Atlas Janson, and Simon, played by Arlo Janson, have been styled into unkempt teens. In stark contrast is Homer who possesses soulful brown eyes with dark lashes and an adorable lost puppy look. The child seems to be the younger brother of Jacob Elordi, but sharing the screen with actual brothers raised by one dear friend of Green made their antics more believable.
“Guess I was wrong to doubt what my mum was saying,” Justice says, throwing the challenge to his uncle. “She said you cannot love.” For those who consider it true or those impatiently waiting for Stiller’s character to contradict Justice, “Nutcrackers” will not disappoint as a festive treat. More jaded audiences are likely to see the benign family film as something else, a personal “one for me” project for Green who steps out of the business of trashing the classic horror franchises (“Halloween” and “The Exorcist”) to pay tribute to the genre he grew up watching such as what Green calls “lost gems like ‘Six Pack’ and ‘Kidco’.”
What became of those films where mischarged adolescents went on rampages swearing and showing disregard for authority? To start with, Steven Spielberg did. Amblin productions such as “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and “The Goonies” catered thrilling experiences to the youthful audience, while managing to teach them how to behave. It wasn’t long before such images came to replace the invincible myth of the scene in “Paper Moon” or “The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane”.
Shooting on the 35 mm film, Green seems to make an effort to go back to a time when movies were about kids getting into trouble but this ends up feeling more in line with Cameron Crowe’s family friendly “We Bought a Zoo” than with “The Bad News Bears”. Having spent his first night in the Kick lighter home, Michael wakes up to see the brothers mud-dogging in his Porsche.
The children the woman points out are Michael’s sister’s children. She asks, how can a guy who looks like he puts more care into his vehicle than his sister’s kids, deal with more children? Green and writer Leland Douglas speed up Michael’s evolving by offering Linda Cardellini as the family services staff who searches for potential foster homes for the children.
“This is the truth guys; some women want children but their bodies won’t allow. There are women who are annoyed at the notion of motherhood, yet it’s their body that many others wish to inherit,” she tells Michael. Michael tries to get rid of the kids during his stay with his sister. There is Aloysus Wilmington (Toby Huss), a rich franchise owner who has everything … but has no children of his own and Rose (Edi Patterson) who has a plan that works in her favor …she would be receiving 800 dollars each month for every foster and if she gets four more boys as foster kids, she will get even more money. .
Yet both these solutions cannot be said to be satisfactory. Not once in ‘Nutcrackers’ is the case ever made that Michael would be preferable in this scenario. He is not only self-centered but has had no experience, either raising a family or in working on the farm, and it is insinuated that whoever would adopt the Kick lighter children will also have to take care of all of their animals as well. These would be in addition to two pigs, a guinea pig, some goats, a dog or dogs, birds including some pet chickens that Michael finds it ethically difficult to roast and put on the table.
The laughter cannot surprise anyone, as this time Michael falls into the mud and stumbles around the bank. The boys are being educated at home, but the sex ed class they have is also taught in an embarrassing way. Even if Michael eventually takes the boys in, he will have to bring them to school, take care of the farm, look for a new job and teach them discipline. Not very difficult but perhaps more challenging than warming up his Scrooge-like attitude in the few days.
Have you ever pondered about the strange title of the film? It refers to the Christmas show in which the boys together with their mother, some local dance master that enjoyed good popularity, had been rehearsing. The distractions notwithstanding, Michael is determined to watch the new version of Kick lighters’ project ‘The Nutcracker’, which Green regards as his main show. What the film is missing is not an untidy Christmas show for children, but the sort of emotion that can be associated with the fact that four of the characters lost their mother whereas the fifth one should be in mourning for his sister.
When specifically referring to Green’s earlier works and particularly his first indie films, which were their ‘George Washington’ and ‘All the real girls’ it becomes evident that he is quite familiar with grief. Here, however, the focus was on what one family achieves by being in a unit.
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