Think you're getting a turkey this week? This fearsomely misguided piece of kid-targeted trash hits theaters with that rarest whiff of all-time bomb---call it the scent of Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio. (We don't generally report on Hollywood's business, but someone's nuts are definitely getting cracked.)
Be warned: This isn't a 3-D version of the Tchaikovsky ballet---which might have been cool---but rather a headache-inducing musical set in twinkly 1920s Vienna. Doting Uncle Albert (Lane, in an Einstein wig and shtick) visits his improbably goyish relatives with a wooden doll, one that leads the children into some cheap-looking digital adventures.
You don't expect movies to be this foul, but the gasps keep coming: Today's inappropriately sexualized Fanning (Elle, younger sibling of Dakota) weeps lustily over her broken nutcracker and then a human boy after its transformation, while John Turturro vamps it up like a camp Hitler as the Rat King. Someone must have thought the constant nods to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will were clever; same with the heaping piles of toys set to be burned. Who will save them before the next painfully awkward action sequence or psychobabble lyric arrives? Russian-born schlockmeister Andrei Konchalovsky has flirted with the good kind of bad in the past (Tango & Cash), but here, he's finally made his disaster-piece. Unclean.
Watch the trailer