History YMMV / TheNutcrackerIn3D

* AngstAversion: A common criticism of the movie is that the DarkerAndEdgier take on the Rat King and his followers, particularly the use of Nazi imagery (including labor camps and massive piles of burning toys), isn't compelling enough to make up for the massive clash with the source material's whimsical tone, as most people don't go into any version of ''The Nutcracker'' wanting to think about the Holocaust. It's especially off-putting since this film is [[WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids marketed as a family movie\\.

* WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids: Certainly. It's ''Theatre/TheNutcracker'' with toy burning and a town taken over by ''Nazi rats''!

* {{Anvilicious}}: [[PuttingOnTheReich The rats are Nazis!]]

** "I better go to the Little Girl's Room!". Um, what, Mom? Ditto the painful "distraction" musical number.

* NoYay: Mary and NC's weird flirting. The Rat King seems to flirt with her a bit too ("I hope you’re saving the last dance for me") and so does Gielgud the chimp.

** Poor, poor Creator/NathanLane, Creator/JohnTurturro and Creator/RichardEGrant. Whatever they were paying you ''wasn't enough.''

* ToyShip: Literally and figuratively with Mary and NC/The Prince.

** Oddly enough, this is not the first film to insert UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein into a setting via making him a relative to one of the main characters for seemingly no other reason than to make the audience go "Oh look, it's Albert Einstein!". ''[[Film/IQ1994 I.Q.]]'' is a 1994 RomanticComedy set in TheFifties in which Einstein is made the uncle of the female lead.

* WTHCastingAgency: In a work based on a ballet, the actor who dances the most would be... Creator/JohnTurturro? He had a double for some harder moves, but what he did do was much more, and of a much better quality, than you'd expect.

* UnfortunateCharacterDesign: It's a mystery what the hell the filmmakers were even going for with Tinker's design, but they probably weren't thinking about making him look so much like ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy John Wayne Gacy]].''

* {{Anvilicious}}: [[PuttingOnTheReich The rats are Nazis!]] '''''GET IT?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!'''''

* SpiritualAdaptation: Given that the villains are nazi rats armed with wacky technology, this movie is probably the closest thing to a live action version of the [[TabletotopGame/{{Warhammer}} Skaven]] we have seen so far.

* SugarWiki/FunnyMoments: The Rat King quite literally pulling the length of his empire out of his ass.

* {{Anvilicious}}: [[PuttingOnTheReich The rats are Nazis!]] '''''GET IT?!'''''

* UncannyValley:
** As if the CGI in the film wasn't godawful enough, have fun sleeping after you see the Rat King's aforementioned face after he assumes a more rodent-like, but still humanoid form.
** The nutcracker himself, '''[[NightmareFuel GOOD GOD]]'''.
** Gielgud isn't much better.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: Ninety million dollars and 20 years of the director's passion-project work went into ''this'' script? WebVideo/MusicalHell points out how the horribly out-of-place "[[PuttingOnTheReich the Rats are Nazis]]" plotline could have actually served a purpose and helped the movie if the real-world horrors of the actual Nazis was used as a thematic parallel to the fantastical evil of the Rat King in Mary's dream world similarly to the allegorical villains of ''Film/TheLionTheWitchAndTheWardrobe'' or ''Film/PansLabyrinth''. Instead, the actual Third Reich goes completely unmentioned and the Nazi rat plotline isn't used for anything more original than "we'll make the rats look like Nazis because [[ObviouslyEvil Nazis are bad]]."

* AudienceAlienatingPremise: A modern, big-budget update of the timeless yuletide ballet... with little to no dancing, pop lyrics slapped on top of Tchaikovsky's legendary tunes, an abundance of childish humor, awful CGI for everything, and a cast of such child-friendly characters as an UncannyValley-dwelling CGI nutcracker, a creepy obese clown that unintentionally resembles ''[[SerialKiller John]] [[MonsterClown Wayne]] [[WouldHurtAChild Gacy]]'', a similarly-creepy CGI chimp, and [[NightmareFuel ersatz-Nazis rounding up and burning "living" toys]]. This explains why it didn't make a lot of money.

* {{Narm}}: So much, but the most glaring examples are probably Uncle Albert's "Hardest thing to understand is income tax... this is a PIECE OF SHTRUDEL!" and his song about the magic pebble.

* {{Squick}}: Mary and NC's weird flirting. The Rat King seems to flirt with her a bit too ("I hope you’re saving the last dance for me") and so does Gielgud the chimp. Also squicky is the rambling reminiscence Frau Eva relates to Mary, about youthful indiscretion and spontaneous combustion.

* NightmareFuel:
** To start with, most kids would probably not want to play with a life-sized clown doll that looks like an obese middle-aged man. Or a creepily-realistic chimp in a suit. Or a nutcracker doll with an unsettling, dead-eyed gaze. Or vicious robot hunting dogs that tear through wood and metal in seconds.
** Then there's the Rat King brutally electrocuting his pet shark for fun, the Rat King's morphed "scary" face with huge teeth, the Smoke Factory, the Rats invading, and Sticks getting his head ripped off.
** Let's not forget toys (who are said to be alive) being rounded up and burned in factories.

** Oddly enough, this is not the first film to insert UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein into a setting for seemingly no other reason than to make the audience go "Oh look, it's Albert Einstein!". ''[[Film/IQ1994 I.Q.]]'' is a 1994 RomanticComedy set in TheFifties in which Einstein is made the uncle of the female lead.

* OlderThanTheyThink: Some people think that Mary has gotten an AdaptationNameChange from Clara in the original ballet. That actually isn't the case, "Mary" was the name of the little girl in the original book, while "Clara" was the name of ''her doll''. The ballet simply decided to [[CompositeCharacter combine the two "characters"]].

* TastesLikeDiabetes: The {{crowd song}} after the rats are defeated, which doesn't at all match the film's dark tone.

* TookTheBadFilmSeriously: Poor, poor Creator/NathanLane, Creator/JohnTurturro and Creator/RichardEGrant. Whatever they were paying you ''wasn't enough.''
** Andrei Konchalovsky famously spent twenty years trying to get this film made and saw it as his magnum opus, hoping it would be a film that would be beloved by kids and adults for generations to come. The fact that the end result was so poorly received is honestly pretty heartbreaking.

* TookTheBadFilmSeriously: Poor, poor Creator/NathanLane, CreatorJohnTurturro and Creator/RichardEGrant. Whatever they were paying you ''wasn't enough.''

* TookTheBadFilmSeriously: Poor, poor Creator/NathanLane and Creator/RichardEGrant. Whatever they were paying you ''wasn't enough.''

** Andrei Konchalovsky famously spent twenty years trying to get this film made and saw it as his magnum opus. The fact that the end result was so poorly received is honestly pretty heartbreaking.

* TheScrappy: ''Max''. Being a [[DullSurprise poorly-acted]] and obnoxious BrattyHalfPint is bad enough before [[LesCollaborateurs he openly betrays the protagonists]] to the Rat King for [[EvilIsPetty no better reason than wanting to ride a motorcycle]].

* AudienceAlienatingPremise: A modern, big-budget update of the timeless yuletide ballet... with little to no dancing, pop lyrics slapped on top of Tchaikovsky's legendary tunes, an abundance of childish humor, awful CGI for everything, and a cast of such child-friendly characters as an UncannyValley-dwelling CGI nutcracker, a creepy obese clown that unintentionally resembles ''[[SerialKiller John]] [[MonsterClown Wayne]] [[WouldHurtAChild Gacy]]'', a similarly-creepy CGI chimp, and [[NightmareFuel ersatz-Nazis rounding up and burning "living" toys]]. Gee, why exactly [[SarcasmMode did this film bomb so hard again]]?

* EsotericHappyEnding: The movie ends on a positive note with Mary and Nicholas Charles ice skating together... but the story is set in Austria, which will be annexed by UsefulNotes/NaziGermany in 1938. And Mary being UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein's niece means she's at least partially Jewish.

* {{Anvilicious}}: [[PuttingOnTheReich The rats are Nazis]]! ''GET IT?!''
* AudienceAlienatingPremise: A modern, big-budget update of the timeless yuletide ballet... with little to no dancing, pop lyrics slapped on top of Tchaikovsky's legendary tunes, an abundance of childish humor, awful CGI for everything, and a cast of such child-friendly characters as a creepy CGI nutcracker, a creepy clown that unintentionally resembles ''[[SerialKiller John]] [[MonsterClown Wayne]] [[WouldHurtAChild Gacy]]'', a creepy CGI chimp, [[BreadEggsMilkSquick and]] [[NightmareFuel ersatz-Nazis rounding up and burning "living" toys]]. Gee, why exactly [[SarcasmMode did this film bomb so hard again]]?

** "I better go to the Little Girl's Room!" Um, what, Mom? Ditto the painful "distraction" musical number.
** The group of random Russian cossack dolls who randomly appear as the sleigh is coming up the tree. They wish the leads "Mary Christmas" then hurl themselves off the trees like lemmings, to the tune of Tchaikovsky's "Cossack Dance", [[{{Narm}} played at double-speed on kazoos.]]

** To start with, most kids would probably not want to play with a life-sized clown doll that looks like an obese middle-aged man. Or a creepily realistic chimp in a suit. Or a nutcracker doll with an unsettling, dead-eyed gaze. Or vicious robot hunting dogs that tear through wood and metal in seconds.

* TheScrappy: ''Max''. Being a [[DullSurprise poorly acted]] BrattyHalfPint is bad enough before he openly betrays the protagonists to the Rat King for no better reason than wanting to ride a motorcycle!