Ben Stiller in David Gordon Green’s family comedy

In what almost seems like a cleansing ritual after struggling with studio horror franchises, David Gordon Green Nutcracker The director returns closer to his indie roots, observing characters who emerge naturally from their rural or small-town surroundings. This cute comedy about the unexpected rewards of a found family attempts to approximate the naturalism, lyricism and raw emotion of Green’s early work. George Washington And All Real Girlsbut it’s too predictably sentimental to have a comparable effect.

The idea came from Green’s meeting with the four spirited young sons of an old friend, and Leland Douglas’s screenplay seems to give the boys some leeway for semi-improvisation, playing versions of themselves. It gives the film a disarming sincerity that matches Ben Stiller’s sensitive, understated performance as an uptight Chicagoan thrust into the awkward role of parent. But the abundance of montages and exuberant slow-motion only underscores the lack of narrative substance.

Green acknowledges a debt to youth films such as The Bad News Bears And To move awayexpressing his desire to tell a story devoid of cynicism, in which the young characters are unencumbered by the usual cinematic veneer. In this he achieves thanks to the spontaneity of the Janson brothers, who are clearly in their element playing the unruly, homeschooled pranksters, and tending to the pets and livestock that roam freely in and out of the messy house.

Renamed the Kicklighters for this fictional experiment, they range from 12-year-old Justice (Homer Janson); 10-year-old middle child Junior (Ulysses Janson); and 8-year-old twins Samuel and Simon (Atlas and Arlo Janson).

Another of the films Green cites as an influence is Uncle Buckand Stiller’s Michael serves in many ways a similar function to John Candy’s lead character in that comedy. Except Michael isn’t a drunk. But he’s not a classic Stiller neurotic, either. A joyless real estate developer, he arrives in Ohio in his fancy yellow Porsche, hoping to sign some papers authorizing the foster care of his nephews—orphaned since both their parents were killed in a car accident. But things don’t go so well.

The children are introduced to a nighttime funfair, they start one of the rides before a security guard wakes up and they rush across a field, jumping in the air with exultation. Michael is greeted by a…