Every year, Hallmark is becoming a must in homes across the country during the holiday season. The heartwarming movies that get families excited about the holidays don’t disappoint.

Hallmark release multiple new movies each year, and this year one of the movies that was released was “A Nutcracker Christmas”.

The movie follows ballerina Lilly Jamison, who suffers a terrible tragedy that causes her to never be able to perform her dream role as the Sugar Plum Fairy. After she ends her dancing career, she moves home and raises her sister’s daughter. As her niece, Sadie, grows older, she becomes a ballet prodigy and is offered the lead of Clara in a company’s performance of “The Nutcracker”.

Conflict arises when Lilly learns her ex-boyfriend, Mark, is the director. After multiple dancers quit and get injured, Lilly must step into the role she was never able to perform when she was younger after many years of not dancing.

Hallmark did an excellent job in casting and did a great job of representing dance as well.

The cast features real-life dancers Sascha Radetsky and Sophia Lucia, who play Mark and Sadie respectively. As a dancer myself, I find it irritating when other movies just have actors playing the dancers and not real-life dancers, so the fact that multiple members of the cast had a dance background was a very special thing.

Radetsky was a joy to watch. From viewing his dancing in the movie, it is obvious that he has had many years of ballet traning, which shines through in his excellent technique. Viewers watching can tell that he has a passion for what he is doing and has seen multiple productions of “The Nutcracker”.

As I have grown up, I have performed in “The Nutcracker” multiple times over the years, and have also viewed it many times. Radetsky kept the integrity of the original nutcracker by Tchaikovsky, and it was appreciated.

Lucia was also an excellent surprise. I have watched many videos on Youtube of Lucia dancing, but have never seen her act any more than her brief time on “Dance Moms.” I was concerned at first about how she would do, but was more than impressed with her performance. Lucia has made it clear that she knows what she is doing when it comes to dance, but she also made it clear that she has acting down, too.

Overall, the cast was excellent, and they made the dancing enjoyable to watch. I would recommend anybody who likes heartwarming stories to watch the movie. It has a great plot that is interesting and keeps you guessing. “A Nutcracker Christmas” is a great movie to watch during the holiday season and get you excited for Christmas.