Nutcrackers (2024) review

After the untimely passing of his ballet instructor sister and her husband, real estate developer Michael Maxwell (Ben Stiller) drives from Chicago to a remote Ohio farm to watch over their four boys (real-life siblings Homer, Ulysses, Atlas and Arlo Janson) and wait for case worker Gretchen (Linda Cardellini) to find them foster parents all while scrambling to finish a project for work - when neither of them can locate an adoptive family, Mike decides to have the nimble-footed lads put on a show (The Nutcracker's Mustache) for the locals.  If you guessed in advance the children would initially be resistant to Michael's presence and proceed to mock and torment him before they slowly became acclimated and even fond of each other until Michael lets slip a nasty comment about the kids, they get mad at him and then he realizes he's destined to adopt them himself ... well, that's precisely what happens.  In the past, Green has shown - particularly with his experimental feature debut - an aptitude for working with non-professional youngsters and that's very apparent here, except I wish he'd have displayed a little more creativity instead of settling for too-easy cornball humor (the animals keep popping up everywhere) and "good feelings."  But I guess we should be grateful it's not another horror reboot....