Ralph Almost Wrecked My Turkey
Traditionally we like to go see a movie on Thanksgiving Day. This year we were in Texas visiting family and after the dinner we all waddled into the movie theatre. With nieces and nephews in tow, we were headed to see Ralph Breaks the Internet, an animated feature staring Wreck-It Ralph. I was not excited. I wanted to see The Nutcracker and the Four Realms or The Crimes of Grindelwald, but had been out voted by a pack of six and seven-year olds.
So what did I do? Waited till they were all situated in front of the Ralph screen and snuck off to another of the 30 theatres in the Megaplex. (Don’t worry, their parents were with them.) I was super excited to see The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, loving the idea of taking that Christmas classic and expounding on the story. I’d been a ballet dancer growing up and spent many a Christmas vacation dancing as a snowflake, waltzing as a flower and flouncing around in the various variations as one of Tchaikovsky’s woodnymphs, Arabian, or Chinese characters, so I was very familiar with the piece.
The Crimes of Grindelwald
I sat in the empty Nutcracker theatre. The show still had ten minutes to start, so I snuck out once more and popped in for a second to The Crimes of Grindelwald—which instantly hooked me, even though it was dead center in the movie and I had no idea what was going on—that J.K. Rowling—what a story teller! But I had to stay focused, so I pulled myself from the grasp of Grindelwald and went . . .
Back to The Nutcracker
It’s a Disney film so it started with the Cinderella castle and a Tinkerbell star-dust blast, through which a stately owl swooped, caught the attention of the camera and led us across the screen straight into a Dickens-esque London. Everything was lovely, beautiful, be-decked with old-fashioned Christmas lushness and I felt my heart soar with the hopes that I was certainly in for a treat.
The young lady playing the iconic role of Clara (Mackenzie Foy) was captivating, right from the get-go. Her character was smart, a mechanical genius, actually, who pronouncedly didn’t care much for party frocks or parties for that matter like most young ladies her age. And ironically, of course, she is whisked off to a party at the first possible moment of the plot. Upon arriving she is told by her father not to “disappear” but stay and dance with the others
Moments later she, of course, wanders off to help the master Toymaker, Drosselmeyer (played by the enigmatic Morgan Freeman—curiously the only actor not using a British accent in the film. Choice? Or can Mr. Freeman’s enigmatic voice only work in American?) fix a miniature swan carousel. From there she is transported into a fairyland filled with characters suggested by Tchaikovsky’s ballet who sadly have turned against each other causing a strife that only our young Clara can cure.
Ah! Keira Knightley
That’s where we run into Keira Knightley and her brilliantly played Sugar Plumb Fairy. It is worth the price of admission to see Ms. Knightley’s work in this film. I’ve never seen her so on point, so to speak. She is scrumptious as a Sugar Plum with her voice pitched high, movement fluid as a butterfly, her language peppered with un petit peu de français, and her intentions full of both sugar and spice. She is riveting. There is something about her performance I have never seen in her before, a sense of reality and truthfulness mixed with pure splendor and fantasy. Transporting.
Another treat in the show is the legendary Misty Copeland. If you don’t know who she is get ready to have your mind blown. Misty Copeland is only the reigning Queen of ballet. One of the first African American women to hold the position of principle dancer in any major ballet company, Ms. Copeland has raised a consciousness for both ballet and minority women long overdue. She is featured as the principle ballerina in the film’s snippets of the actual Nutcracker ballet.
But Still . . .
OK, so The Nutcracker and the Four Realms had a lot of GREAT things about it . . . BUT it ended up not exactly . . . er . . . cracking my heart. Why? It was not because of the acting. (Is it ever? There seem to be so many good actors out there, a least in the big films.) It was certainly not because of the set and costumes—they were spell-binding, transporting and ingenious. Nor was it because of the sound design, special effects (always great), or the music—carefully selected from Tchaikovsky’s classic score.
The culprit was, as it sadly is in so many films nowadays, the story. It was conventional at best, soggy at worst, with the usual paint-by-numbers plot “twists” which were easily untwisted by a word or two from a character. Whatever happened to real dramatic action? Do you know what I’m talking about? The forces of antagonism pitted against each other in a death grip until someone makes just the right move and suddenly the story is sublimely resolved and we all sigh that special sigh of being transported? Yeah, that. It used to happen a lot in movies, back in the day, but now they seem to be so formulaic. Is it the “suits” back in corporate afraid to take risks with their films? Is it a lack of understanding of true story structure? Is it simply that nobody has any new ideas anymore? Is it big budgets and timelines needing to be met so we have to take story shortcuts? I’m not sure. But I have a really great idea.
Come With Me
Why don’t we find out together? Wanna crack the code of banal stories with me? Wanna start to get down to the bottom of the story dearth that plagues us all like mindless zombies crowding a horror flick? I think it will be fun.
All I know, is I’m sick of seeing movies with BRILLIANT actors and scenery and special effects and sound and music and art direction and production quality—and sucky stories!!!
We’ll call it StoryQuest—watch for the series right here on our blog.