There are a certain number of movie plots that are so inherently appealing that filmmakers have to be derelict in their duties not to produce something that's watchable. "Down-and-out former hotshot who gets one last chance at redemption" is one of them. "Band of losers who learn a new skill and become unlikely winners" is another. Put the two together and you get probably 90% of all sports movies. Another one on the list is "Curmudgeon who never wanted to be a parent is forced to become one, and turns out to be okay at it."
And that's "Nutcrackers," starring Ben Stiller as a workaholic single Chicagoan who ends up having to play dad to a group of young, orphaned brothers.
"Nutcrackers" is written and directed by David Gordon Green, who established himself in American cinema with a pair of sensitive, low-budget dramas about people who could actually exist ("George Washington" and "All the Real Girls") and then took an unexpected (for fans) left turn into knucklehead comedies with films like "Pineapple Express" and "Your Highness." "Nutcrackers' integrates the two modes, setting the action in a recognizably real version of the American Midwest (suburban Ohio) and channeling classic films starring a seemingly very unsuitable candidate for parenthood ("Uncle Buck" and the various iterations of "The Bad News Bears" are never far from the movie's mind), and pushing the misunderstandings and slapstick situations right up to the edge of ridiculousness.
The Kicklighter boys are a quartet consisting of 12-year old Justice (Homer Janson), 10-year old Junior (Ulysses Janson), and 8-year-old twins Samuel and Simon (Atlas and Arlo Janson). Stiller's character, Michael, zips into town in a yellow Porsche to handle the paperwork to deliver the siblings, his nephews, into foster care after losing their parents in a car wreck. Michael is supposed to be in Chicago putting the finishing touches on a huge real estate deal. The Kicklighter boys are what used to be called "juvenile delinquents" and that are now called "at-risk youth"; they're introduced breaking into a fairground and jerry-rigging one of the rides.
Mike makes it clear that he's only interested in Mike, which means getting out of there as fast as he can, without any messy entanglements involving human feelings, like empathy. But you know how things have to go: when crunch time comes and Mike has to choose, he'll make the correct choice, because that's the kind of movie it is: heartwarming but not too mushy. There's also a hint of romance in the form of a foster care agent named Gretchen (Linda Cardellini) who tugs at the hero's conscience after the assigned foster family doesn't work out.
Stiller has become a deeper actor with age, and he's perfect here: you know he has a good soul, because this is a comedy, and not a dark one, but he keeps you guessing. Casting the Kicklighters with the real-life Janson brothers probably went a long way towards selling the idea that these boys are actually related to each other, and Green, who has always been a low-key wizard with actors, stresses performance rhythms over everything else, letting the film move according to the energies of the performers and allowing for digressions that may not always drive the plot forward, but feel like a little touch of life.
On Hulu on November 29th.
