Best known in America for his 1985 thriller Runaway Train, Moscow-born Konchalovsky has also directed plays and operas (War and Peace at the Met, Eugene Onegin at La Scala). Here he combines the action genre with operatic kitsch, mediocre animation and dark, cheap-looking 3D for a disaster of epic proportions, a bloated and staggeringly misconceived update of Tchaikovsky’s 1892 ballet.

It’s Christmas Eve in Vienna sometime in the 1920s, and young Mary (Elle Fanning) and her bratty brother are being minded by their housekeeper (Frances de la Tour) and beloved Uncle Albert – Einstein, no less (Nathan Lane). Soon after he sings a Tim Rice tune about relativity, Al’s gifts of a dollhouse and wooden nutcracker come alive, and the children are transported to an alternate universe of dancing Russian dolls, fairies and a talking chimpanzee. Perhaps Einstein’s space-time continuum also explains the invasion of anachronistic villains, an army of Nazi-uniformed rats who burn toys and oversee forced-labour factories.

John Turturro flop sweats as the Rat King; clad in prosthetic nose, hipster black and a Warhol fright wig, he hisses at the Rat Queen (de la Tour again) and performs the Charleston while warbling lyrics like ‘welcome to the Stygian Era’ (another of Rice’s abysmal contributions). If Third Reich memories spell the holidays for you, Art Spiegelman’s Maus is a more meaningful gift.

Andrea Gronvall

Dir Andrey Konchalovskiy, 101 mins, opens on Dec 8