The Nutcracker and the Four Realms 4k Blu-Ray Review

January 30, 2019 at 4:12pm
By Jason Stettner

This is a live action film that takes the classic tale and adds extra layers of fantasy to it. The narrative directly follows Clara (Mackenzie Foy), a young girl that's dealing with the loss of her mother. She's given a present she doesn't understand and stumbles into a magical world that her mother had previously ventured into. Things aren't great here, there's a certain level of mystery and war is in the air. The concept, while interesting isn't given the best execution in this situation and it was about as boring as my initial theater viewing of this.

The plot takes a bit of a dive at a certain point and gets somewhat generic after that. There are also some rather poor instances of CGI looking rather distracting, which is a shame because so many of the sets and costumes are excellent. The designs really did stand out as every regular character looks wonderful with a bright array of colors and shapes. The more generic individuals look like an odd CGI creation as opposed to an authentic material, trying my best not to spoil things which is why I'm vague here. There were also some rather weak acting performances in this and just strange moments that didn't feel unique to this experience.

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms 4k Special Features

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms 4k Blu-Ray comes with a number of special features. These are available to view on the traditional Blu-Ray disc as opposed to the 4k one. They include the following selections that can be viewed individually. "On Pointe: Misty Copeland"; "Unwrapping The Nutcracker and the Four Realms", "A Number of Deleted Scenes", and two music videos

The features were alright, they covered the strong points of the film which makes sense. You get a really good look at the costumes, and the special ballet sequence with depth. A good offering for the target audience, same with the music videos. I appreciated the many deleted scenes as well, interesting to get more background context.

The Conclusion

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms 4k Blu-Ray package is alright, the extra features do add some value to this weaker live action Disney tale. Again, it did have some strong points to it and it just goes off the rails at a certain point. Instead of doing something new, they went rather generic with it and that didn't help the film out.

Some of the CGI was glaring, even worse at home as I thought the quality might improve it. I was also a bit disappointed by the HDR in this one, it looked a bit off at times. I think this is really great for a particular younger audience whereas others won't get as much out of it. They nailed some of the fantasy bits, the right things were in place yet they just don't pull it off.

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms 4k Blu-Ray Review
Provided by Disney

Rating Overall: 4.9