Nutcrackers

 David Gordon Green is truly eclectic - in the two decades and a half that he's been making movies, he's dabbled in lyrical indie dramas, stoner comedies, low-key action films, and a series of high-profile horror reboots. I tend to like his stuff, though he's produced his share of shitty films (here's looking at you, Your Highness!).

 Nutcrackers is his take on the highly formulaic family dramedy. Stop me if you've heard this one before: Mike (Ben Stiller), a big-city hot-shot executive, has to drive to a small rural town for a family emergency...
 Yeah, it's that sort of movie, and despite Gordon Green's best efforts and a great cast... well, it's still very much that sort of movie. The family emergency is that his sister and her husband have just died, and someone needs to look after their four rambunctious children (real-life siblings Homer, Ulysses, Arlo and Atlas Janson) while they're shuffled out into foster homes. Will the four almost feral but sweet kids melt their new guardian's stuck-up heart, and will his newly gained humanity find a real connection with the good-hearted social worker (Linda Cardellini) who's trying to find them a new home?
 Will there be a big dramatic gesture towards the end to give the movie some shape? Will Mike say something nasty about the kids while they're within earshot leading to conflict?

 Yes, yes, yes and yes; Add some truly terrible, beyond on-the-nose lines ("Mom always said you were incapable of love" or "haven't you learned anything?" when the protagonist makes it clear he hasn't learned anything) and by this point I'd normally be tapping the fuck out. The plot beats are downright ossified, to the point where the only thing missing is that Mike does not miss their recital because he had to go to a big meeting. So it's a testament to everyone involved that the movie isn't actually bad.

 I have no idea what the story is behind the production, but the feeling I'm left with is of tension between a hoary script (by Leland Douglas) that could easily belong to a straight to TV Disney movie from the 80s, and the weird hippie weirdness injected by David Gordon Green and the collaborators he's brought along (which includes the kids, who are family friends.) There are fart and poop jokes - Stiller's character is introduced stepping on poop with his fancy city slicker shoes - and a lot of the gags seem to be improvised by (very young, very enthusiastic) kids, but on the main the film eschews humour to tell a more ramshackle, messy story that sometimes manages to overpower the clichés baked into its events. It made me laugh more when it's being willfully weird, as in our introduction to the kids, where one of them dresses up like one of the baddies in the videogame Hotline Miami (see above) to creep Mike out.

 "Sometimes rising above a morass of clichés" isn't exactly glowing praise, but it is true that the film does find its own groove after a while, even if it's still shaken out of it by some trashy plot development or another. There are some good scenes, it settles onto a very cute finale, and the acting is excellent throughout - Stiller and Cardellini do wonders with characters that are basically stock material, and the kids are wholly believable as bereaved kids - ornery and raw - and the film laudably does not really do a huge amount of work to put you on their side (no such subtlety is extended to any of the other characters).

 Would I recommend it? Eh, maybe. If it sounds like your sort of thing, it might be your sort of thing. But even then I'd go for David Gordon Green's utterly excellent George Washington over this, which also shows off his remarkably light touch with kid actors while completely avoiding all this Hollywood bullshit. Or Riddle of Fire, which lets the kids have the sort of movie they truly deserve. They're not Christmas movies, though, so there is that.