A Nutcracker Christmas

Amy Acker as Lily and Sascha Radetsky as Mark play ballet dancers and former flames that are reunited years later when Lily's niece is cast as Clara in a production of The Nutcracker that Mark is directing. Lily long ago left the ballet world and Mark after the death of her sister. Will they reunite, will the ballet go on? A delightful movie answers all of that and more. Worth a watch!

This fairly straight drama, with an element of romance, sees Amy Acker's career as a ballet dancer cut short through a family tragedy, only for her niece's similar gifts to bring her unexpectedly back into the world of ballet and to an old acquaintance. It's clear who are the actors hired to dance and the dancers hired to act, but it just about holds up thanks to an impassioned turn from Acker, if you can get past the niece's cute/grating (delete as applicable) voice.

Headlined by Amy Acker as a ballerina who must face several emotional challenges, A Nutcracker Christmas unfolds as most popular Christmas movies with the rather superior inclusion of actual extended choreographed dance scenes. Unlike the more cult-following ice skating romance feature, The Cutting Edge (1992), a considerable amount of effort as well as physical performance undertaking was required and included in A Nutcracker Christmas with Amy Acker having plenty of opportunity to actually dance. One must assume that an actual Nutcracker cast was used for the last portion of the rousing classic ballet performances. This normally enjoyable romance Holiday movie has the added bonus of its wonderful artistic performances.

This is one of the better Christmas movies and yes I highly recommend it. Great Dancing great love story. James Welch Henderson Arkansas 11/18/2020

Because our granddaughter is a dancer we have learned quite a bit about the effort and dedication needed to be even a decent dancer and the dancers in this movie are much more than 'decent', they are really good. So on that alone this is worth watching. However, it also had good production values, good dialog, and good acting. This is one we watched on the DVR and did not delete after watching. I'm sure we'll watch it at least once more this season.