The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures | Release Date: November 2, 2018 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
39
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 38 Critic Reviews
Positive:
4
Mixed:
21
Negative:
13
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
38
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireNov 2, 2018
A weirdly hideous hodgepodge of images and ideas, as convoluted as its confusing title would suggest. Read full review
38
Chicago TribuneKatie WalshOct 31, 2018
This is your warning that if you have any affinity for the ballet, avoid this at all costs. Read full review
38
The Associated PressMark KennedyOct 31, 2018
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is visually marvelous, inconsistently acted and rather incoherent in that fantasy genre way. Read full review
38
Slant MagazineJake ColeOct 31, 2018
One may wish that the entire film had restaged the entirely of Tchaikovsky's ballet rather than reimagine it as an ultimately lifeless epic fantasy. Read full review
38
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 31, 2018
Disney’s The Nutcracker and the Four Realms offers up a heaping helping of eye candy and treacle for the holidays, If only they’d had a coherent story and a good actress in the lead. If only those were the only two serious shortcomings in this brainless, cotton candy bauble. Read full review
33
IndieWireDavid EhrlichOct 31, 2018
For a movie with so much stuff to look at, the only things you really see during The Nutcracker and the Four Realms are all of the recent movies that it’s flagrantly trying to recycle. Read full review
30
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyOct 31, 2018
Disney's attempt to wrestle E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1816 story and the perennially popular Tchaikovsky ballet into a fairy tale with a modern attitude is like one of those big, elaborately decorated, butter cream-frosted cakes that looks delicious but can make you quite ill. Read full review
30
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyOct 31, 2018
It's a Frankenstein's monster. It lacks the captivating charms of Disney's live-action remakes of "Cinderella" and "Beauty and the Beast," or the fabulous distraction of Angelina Jolie that kept the revisionist "Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent," semi-entertaining. Read full review
25
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiOct 31, 2018
Some of the powerful characters you thought were good are evil and vice versa. It’s like “Wicked,” but wretched. Read full review
25
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeOct 31, 2018
Maybe it was the massive reshoots — directorial credit is shared by Lasse Hallstrom, who shot the first go-round, and Joe Johnston — or perhaps the script by first-timer Ashleigh Powell was always muddled and convoluted, but the results are singularly dispiriting. Read full review
20
Rolling StonePeter TraversNov 1, 2018
Slow torture for kids and grownups alike, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms gives a bad name to the very concept of family entertainment. Read full review
20
New York Magazine (Vulture)Emily YoshidaOct 31, 2018
There’s nothing grounding enough here; everything — the sets, the costumes, the performances — seems to drift off in a CGI haze. As a contender for cherished childhood mythology, its methods are cheap. And as a mere child distractor, it seems awfully expensive. Read full review
11
Austin ChronicleJosh KupeckiOct 31, 2018
The film is as bland as Melba toast served on a bed of parsley while snatching sips of water from a nearby puddle following a rainstorm (that actually, in retrospect, could have some flavor). It is the very antithesis of creative destruction. Read full review
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