I thought Burnt By The Sun 2 was the worst movie I’ve seen in a long while. It’s not, though. It’s the The Nutcracker in 3 D. The two Russian brothers are getting so burnt they crack, and go virtually nuts in the sun, and I don’t see exactly why I have to suffer when I take my child to the only multiplex in Minsk the first day of the new year.
If you don’t remember your Freud from your Einstein, if the formula E = mc² has become somewhat hazy, or you are looking forward to constant mind games with character names (the Nutcracker, Sid, NC, the Prince, circle the right variant), go ahead and waste your ten bucks on this Christmas ‘fairy tale’. I was looking forward to this for a year. Turns out, the trailer is the best thing connected with the whole project. My oh my.
Andrei Konchalovsky has been dreaming about this a little longer. 20 years. That is a bit sad. Because the writing here is so tedious and exhausting, the editing so slack, the choreography and the painful dialogue so, well, full of pain, that it’s difficult to understand what they’ve been doing with this all this time. Aha. The 3 D thing.
This so-called Christmas movie is dark and exhausting. If you think you are in for some magic, forget it. The only thing you’ll be dreaming about is the EXIT and the lights on the arrow luring you – run, run! Just when you get a glimpse of the finish line and you can go home to nurse your damaged brain cells, there goes another outmoded, silly plot twist. There are even two endings, the one in the dream land, the other in the real world. No wonder I had nightmares of explaining the dated Freudian hypotheses to a class of dropped jaws the previous night. I have a good intuition, it’s just that I have to listen to it more often. I am not sure what the director is trying to do with these big names and theories, give the children a passing lecture or entertain the adults, but he fails at both. This is completely unsustainable for grown-ups, certainly nothing like the ambiguous, smart, multi-layered Pixar tales or even the breathlessly effortless Tangled.
The film is ugly, period. I saw it in 2D, thank God, I cannot even begin to imagine the post-production 3D. The rats are ugly, period. They are not ugly cute, not ugly scary, not ugly peculiar or ugly tim-burton ugly. They are ugly disgusting, end of story. I felt like turning away from the screen, and I did. My child was virtually asleep. On our way home she asked me to retell the story for her and I was struggling with the overstuffed plot impossible to be digested for a confused almost-four-year-old.
Vysotskaya, who is usually lovely, especially when she paces around her kitchen blabbering about French herbs, is unflattering both as Mum and the fairy, too made up as the first and sporting a ridiculous curly blonde wig as the second. The girl actress is cute, but nothing can save a movie that is so tedious I wanted to sleep but so loud I was unable to. It was dated 30 years ago. Thankfully rottentomatoes has not given it a single positive movie review. I feel a deep connection with anyone who had to endure it. Hats off, guys.
Those who haven’t seen The Nutcracker in 3 D I would urge to rerun Up or Toy Story 3, or even Shrek The 4rth. For those who had the misfortune, I have a few questions remained largely unanswered to me:
What is up with the size of Mum’s (Vysotskaya) clothes?
What the hell happened to the shark?
How do you like all the post-apocalyptic dystopian Nazi agenda – is this his answer to his little brother’s last year ‘masterpiece’?
How are the drug/rat-poison references for you?
And finally, in all honesty, was that a horror movie?
I am off to see The Crazies, 2010, but I am sure it’s not what my tonight’s nightmare will be.
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