I’m one of those people who firmly believes that the inherent value in a movie lies in the feelings it evokes for each person watching it. It’s highly subjective. So, I generally do not deal in movie critic absolutes (in fact, when someone ~tells~ me to do or not do something, I’m twice as likely to do just the opposite). And yet, I’m about to make a pretty demonstrative statement: Nutcrackers is one of the best new holiday movies to come out in years.
The movie marks Ben Stiller’s return to acting after producing and directing for the better part of a decade, and the best part is that he isn’t even the best part. Don’t get me wrong; he’s great. If you’ve always been a fan of Stiller’s brand of bitey, physical, slapstick humor, you won’t be disappointed. But where Nutcrackers really shines is with Stiller’s costars: Homer, Ulysses, Arlo, and Atlas Janson.
Yes, they’re real-life brothers. Who aren’t even actors. And therein lies a lot of the magic.
In the film, Stiller plays an uptight, workaholic real estate developer named Michael who must unexpectedly travel to Ohio to handle the estate of his sister after her tragic passing. There, he discovers that her estate primarily consists of a working farm along with her four mischievous sons. A kindhearted social worker (the always amazing Linda Cardellini) steps in to help find the boys a foster home when Michael says he can’t take them in… but you can see where this is going.
Michael must stay and care for the boys in the meantime, getting looped into working with his nephews to create a one-of-a-kind adaptation of The Nutcracker ballet.
Not surprisingly, Michael’s adjustment to farm life — not to mention uncle life — yields some pretty hilarious moments. It all feels even funnier when you know that Nutcrackers wasn’t filmed on some soundstage; it was literally filmed on the Janson family’s rural homestead surrounded by their actual animals, including chickens, goats, dogs, hogs, and even guinea pigs (“They’re sweet, but there’s a little edge to them,” Stiller tells me. Confirms Homer, “They’re a little sassy.”)
“It was just sort of an immersive experience,” Stiller shares when I sit down to Zoom chat with him, Homer, and Arlo. “You turn around, the kids are on the roof. You turn around, they’re riding their dirt bikes. I had to jump in the pond. It was all kind of happening in real-time. The animals were everywhere — it’s not like there was a special place where [they] went. They just stayed, basically, in the house. The cats were always on the stairs. The chickens were the chickens, and the hog, Mabel — that scared me the most.”
You can’t get much more authentic and organic than that. Well, maybe a little more…
When I ask the boys if the pranking in the movie translated to any pranking on set, Homer reveals that the brothers didn’t intentionally pull any hijinks on Stiller. Unless, that is, you count the fact that their dad would collect real dog poop for Stiller to step in during one of the movie’s opening scenes.
“I was told right before we shot the scene,” Stiller says, laughing. “I was like, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute — come on, there’s special effects.’ It was like, ‘No, this is the movie.’ It felt like the movie was always happening. It wasn’t like we’d stop, because we were in their house. These guys are the real deal.”
See? That’s truly about as organic as you can get.
Everyone always talks about how the movies of the ‘80s and ‘90s had a certain magic, and there’s been a slow shift in recent years to try to recapture some of that. This movie has pulled it off. Its rough-around-the-edges vibe puts it in the same canon as classics like Overboard, Jumanji, Goonies, Home Alone, Hook, Adventures in Babysitting — I see shades of all of those favorites in the slightly feral Nutcrackers brothers.
The movie is silly and unpretentious and maybe a little inappropriate at times, but in the way that so many of the movies from our youth were. The “sex ed” lesson? I couldn’t stop laughing. And if talk about “boobies” and “floppy penises” makes you clutch your pearls, you clearly don’t have tween boys.
But much like those classic movies from our childhood, Nutcrackers also has an emotional core. These boys are grieving. They’re trying to find a new normal. They’re different and wild and special in a world that prefers homogeny, and that’s a testament to the parents they lost — who manage to tug at your heartstrings without actually being in the film.
And in case you’re wondering, the charm and charisma you see from the boys onscreen is about a zillion times greater in real life. If only you could hear little Arlo sweetly say of filming, “It’s a really good experience just watching Ben act so we could be a good actor like him when we grow up.” Between that and the dance scene crescendo, your heart might grow three sizes.
As for Stiller, who’d always wanted to work with director David Gordon Green, he describes Nutcrackers as the most welcome surprise.
“I read the script … and at first I thought, Is he trying to satirize or do a meta version of this kind of movie? He’s like, ‘No, this is actually not cynical. We’re going to tell this kind of story and make movies like they made 30 years ago. We’re going to do it on the farm with these kids,’” Stiller recalls. “When I saw it, something just said, Yeah, let’s go do this. Let’s go hang out with these people for a couple months. And it was really one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.”
You can stream Nutcrackers on Hulu now.
