‘Nutcrackers’ Review: Ben Stiller Gets Saddled with a Farm and Four Rowdy Kids in Easy-Target Heart-Tugger
variety.comPeter Debruge Chief Film Critic No doubt, the Janson brothers — Homer, Ulysses, Atlas and Arlo — are lovely, well-behaved kids in real life. (No sanity-respecting director would cast them in a movie if that weren’t the case.) Few would say the same about the undisciplined orphans these four boys play in director David Gordon Green’s odd-choice Toronto Film Festival opener, “Nutcrackers”: a near-feral wolfpack who depend on their uptight uncle, Michael Maxwell (Ben Stiller), to spare them the indignity of an orphanage after their parents both die in a car accident.
A big-city, fancy-shoes sort of guy, Michael shows up at his late sister’s farmhouse driving a yellow Porsche and promptly steps in a fresh pile of animal dung.
Christmas is right around the corner, and Michael has committed a few days to sorting out the estate — a task that includes trying to get the Kicklighter boys adopted — then it’s back to Chicago, where a career-defining real-estate deal is about to close. “When I wake up tomorrow, are you still gonna be here?” asks 12-year-old Justice (Homer Janson, who seems ready for an acting career).
Whereas his disheveled siblings, Junior (Ulysses) and twins Samuel (Atlas) and Simon (Arlo), have been made to look like long-haired flower children, Homer has soulful brown eyes, dark lashes and obvious lost-puppy appeal.
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