Movie director David Gordon Green’s road trip to see a college pal in Blanchester, Ohio, inspired his new Nutcrackers comedy — and made stars of his friend’s four sons who had never acted before.
Homer, 12, Ulysses, 10, and 8-year-old twins Arlo and Atlas Janson make their film debut with Ben Stiller in the Christmas movie, which will have two sold-out screenings at Wilmington’s historic Murphy Theatre before moving exclusively to Disney’s Hulu streaming service.
Two years ago, Green met the boys while visiting with their mother, Karey Janson, a classmate at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. She hit pause on her cinematography career to home school her sons with her husband.
“David Gordon Green was so taken with the boys, he called Karey two weeks later and said he wanted to write a movie about them. And he did,” says Annette Williams, their grandmother.
Stiller (Zoolander, Meet the Parents) plays a wealthy real estate agent who rolls into rural Ohio from the big city in his yellow Porsche to settle his young sister’s estate and reluctantly ends up as the primary caretaker for his four unruly nephews. Green’s fish-out-of-water story was scripted by Leland Douglas.
Green, in a statement provided by the film’s publicist, said the boys’ “talent, energy and charisma … and their openness and curiosity to the world was inspiring and they had a way of wording things that was so funny and often wise beyond their years.
“There was a rawness and a realness to them … The idea was to capture that spirit and make a movie that adults and kids could enjoy equally,” said Green, who will attend Saturday’s screening with Douglas and the Janson family.
Nutcrackers received a standing ovation when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, says Williams, who attended TIFF with her grandsons.
Most of Nutcrackers was filmed in and around Blanchester, a village on the Warren-Clinton county line about 40 miles northeast of Cincinnati on Ohio 28. Scenes also were shot in the Murphy Theatre, in suburban Cincinnati in Indian Hill, and Stricker’s Grove amusement park near Ross.
“I tried not to be biased as I watched the reaction of the entire audience laugh, cry and applaud the amazing performances. My heart warmed with pride,” Williams says.
The Hollywood Reporter said that Douglas’ screenplay "appears to allow latitude for semi-improvisation from those boys, playing versions of themselves. That gives the film a disarming sincerity that dovetails with Ben Stiller’s sensitive, understated performance as an uptight Chicagoan thrust into the inconvenient role of parent.
“The Jansons being nonprofessional actors, their dialogue is often mumbled and lost. But they make up for it with the authenticity of their connection to the film’s world and their bone-deep unity as actual siblings, often all talking at once."
Reviewer Steve Pond wrote in The Wrap that Nutcrackers is “about 85 percent of all the Hallmark movies ever made: A driven businessman from the big city goes to a small town and triumphs over misunderstandings to learn how to love. It’s sappy as heck, and maybe not as funny as you'd expect, but boy does it have heart."
The other 15 percent not seen in Hallmark movies consists of the of fart comments, poop jokes, a snake in the toilet and the chaos involving the four juveniles; chickens, pigs and other farm animals; a wakeboard; and a golf cart.
Williams disagrees with the Hallmark movie label.
“It’s more like Home Alone or A Christmas Story. It is a beautiful heartwarming Christmas film. It is the kind of film people need during these days of political unrest and confusion. It will make you laugh, cry, and feel good,” she says.
Her grandsons had no acting experience, she says. They take ballet lessons, which sets up the big finale when the boys perform their version of The Nutcracker in Wilmington.
And this loving grandmother also insists that the four brothers aren’t as out of control as seen in the film. That’s all acting, she says.
“They are extremely well behaved,” she says. “I don’t think I go anywhere with them that people haven’t said what nice boys they are.”
