Andrei Konchalovsky made a Christmas movie.

The same Andrei Konchalovsky who made Maria’s Lovers, Shy People, Runaway Train and, oddly, Tango & Cash.

This was his passion project for twenty years.

It is not good.

He was inspired to adapt it into 3D as he thought it “would be useful in conveying the fantastical nature of the material, capturing the emotions of CGI characters, and appealing to a family audience.

He also made The Nutcracker, a ballet, with no ballet sequences because, because he believed “ballet cannot work in cinema very well.”

It was primarily financed by VEB.RF, a Russian state development corporation chaired by Vladimir Putin, and at the time was the most expensive Russian film ever.

In 1920s Vienna, Mary (Elle Fanning) and her brother Max (Aaron Michael Drozin) are being babysat by their Uncle Albert (Nathan Lane) while her parents Joseph (Richard E. Grant) and Louise (Yulia Vysotskaya) go to a Christmas Eve party.

That’s Uncle Albert Einstein.

Einstein gives the kids a dollhouse and a nutcracker by the name of NC (Charlie Rowe, voiced by Shirley Henderson) who soon comes to life and introduces her to his friends Gielgud (Peter Elliott and Daniel Peacock, voiced by Alan Cox), Sticks (Africa Nile) and Tinker (Hugh Sachs). They climb to the top of the Christmas tree and meet the Snow Fairy (also Vysotskaya), who informs the children that NC is really Prince Nicholas Charles, who has been deposed by The Rat King (John Turturro) and his mother, The Rat Queen (Frances de la Tour) and turned from a boy into a nutcracker. He’s a real boy again, but not for long, because when he comes back home, he’s transformed and we learn that the rats are, well, all Nazis.

Look at that line again. A kid movie with Nazi rats — like Art Spiegelman’s Maus — that’s an adaption of the Nutcracker with no dancing and lyrics by Tim Rice that was funded by Vladimir Putin and it’s in 3D.

Roger Ebert said it best: “From what dark night of the soul emerged the wretched idea for The Nutcracker in 3D? Who considered it even remotely a plausible idea for a movie? It begins with an awkward approximation of the story behind the Tchaikovsky ballet, and then turns it into a war by the Nutcracker Prince against the Holocaust.”

Roger Ebert, suffering from cancer, had to spent time in his slowly dwindling life watching this movie.

A Nazi movie, yes, but set in 1920. This movie has destroyed my mind.

Let me just get this all out of my head.

The Rat King says that he will create an empire that will last a thousand years, as well as a scene where he electrocutes his pet shark. In a movie for children. For Christmas. About The Nutcracker. Yet also the rat people are also shown as being persecuted. Why am I wondering so much about the politics of a 3D CGI rat movie? Should I leave the house and finish my Christmas shopping?