If I understand correctly, the lengthened title "The Nutcracker: The Untold Story" wasn't used till the movie had already failed under the simple "Nutcracker" title. I can understand that "The Nutcracker" by itself leads to false expectations. As a matter of fact, I ran into the movie on TV just as it was ending, the kid was singing to the music of Tschaikowsky's piano concerto, and I said to myself, "Wow, they've run through all the beloved Nutcracker music and they've had to add even more Tschaikowsky!" So I made a point of catching the movie again, from the beginning this time, and where were the Nutcracker tunes? Quite absent most of the time, although when they popped up they were sometimes interestingly reworked. They would have made a nice addition to a movie that was not expected necessarily to include them, but they were rather pitiful in a movie that you'd expect to be much more Tschaikowskian than it was. Although the nutcracker belongs originally to Hoffmann rather than to Tschaikowsky, and the basic elements of Hoffman's story aren't all thrown away for the movie, it's not Hoffmann that people care about these days. Keeping the nutcracker out of the title might have been too much to ask, but I think that adding to the title was the right idea. "Mary and the Nutcracker" or some other variation might have warned people that this is far from your standard version. On its own overall merits, rather than just its musical merits, I think the movie deserved to do better, although as others have pointed out, it can't be recommended for kids of all ages and between those too old for the formulaic rescue-the-kingdom story and those too young for the shock moments, the demographic of the target audience is kind of slippery.
Review of The Nutcracker: The Untold Story
