"The nutcrackers" another awful Christmas movie.

Call me a masochist, but even after watching Dear Santa (one of the worst movies I've seen all year), I still wanted to see a worthwhile Christmas movie, and I definitely didn't find that in Nutcrackers.

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Directed by David Gordon Green and starring the excellent Ben Stiller, Nutcrackers is one of those movies whose narrative course we can define in its entirety before the 10-minute mark: Michael must travel to a small town in Ohio after the death of his sister to take care of her four children while the social worker finds them adoptive parents. Everything starts off pretty badly for Michael, but he gradually grows fond of the children, and, at the same time, connects with what he was passionate about when he was young.

The generic nature of this premise is not as annoying as the false pretensions it has of being a film with any artistic value, something evident from the strange (but relatively attractive) directing style, something that could initially fool us and make us believe that we are closer to a gem like Holdovers than to the remake of Home Alone in terms of quality, however, the dialogues are tedious, strange creative decisions are made, and beyond Stiller's performance we have nothing particularly remarkable.

Does this mean that there is nothing to save in Nutcrackers? It depends, although things start off rather weak and remain that way for almost the entire running time, one has to admit that the ending is touching and a couple of days manage to land appropriately, although they would be better off watching literally any other Christmas movie.

Unfortunately, I continue my relentless search for the Christmas classic of the year, but so far everything I have found has been lamentable, a shame considering that Ben Stiller is one of the best modern actors and could work very well in an organic mix of drama and comedy.

This score was taken from my letterboxd account