“The Nutcracker” is usually a beautiful story about a young girl and her Christmas present, the titular nutcracker, as they go on an adventure through a new realm. The music is gorgeous and all they need is to add some dancing (as it is mainly a ballet) for it to be a perfect story. 

“The Nutcracker in 3D” is the worst Christmas movie I have ever seen, and I have seen the Jack Frost horror movies.  

Given a rating of 0% by Rotten Tomatoes, “The Nutcracker in 3D” was released in 2010 and directed by Audrei Konchalovsky. It stars Elle Fanning as Mary (the main character), John Turturro as the Rat King and Shirley Henderson as the voice of the Nutcracker. 

Konchalovsky once said he had dreamed of making this movie for over 20 years. If his dream was a group of fascist rats and the worst Christmas movie ever, then he succeeded. 

And, yes, fascist rats. They steal toys from children and burn them in chambers. They also dress very similarly to German soldiers from WWII.  

It does not end there. Albert Einstein shows up. I honestly don’t know why. But he sings a song about the Theory of Relativity. Yeah, there is literally no reason for him being there. 

The only thing that could make this movie worse is crappy 3D technology. Of course, that is what we got. It is very reminiscent of those really bad 3D horror or action movies. It’s like Konchalovsky watched “Jaws” in 3D and said, “You know what? I could make this worse.” 

They also used CGI. I’m sure you can guess how bad it was. But imagine the cartoony-looking CGI from the first few “Harry Potter” movies and make it gross. That’s this movie. 

Along with the really bad effects, “The Nutcracker in 3D” is just really dark and dingy. I don’t know who was handling the lighting for this movie, but they did a bad job. There’s good dark and dingy (like “Les Misérables”) and then there’s this dark and dingy where you can barely tell what’s going on at any point in time. 

“The Nutcracker” is supposed to be whimsical and beautiful. This movie was ugly and in poor taste. There is absolutely nothing redeemable about this movie. You would think that after dreaming about making this movie for 20 years, Konchalovsky would have actually made this a good movie. 

Don’t watch “The Nutcracker in 3D.” You’ll thank me later.