Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale Blu-ray review

Oct 20, 2020- Permalink

Just in time for the holidays, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has released Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale on Blu-ray. Though WBHE sent me a copy of the disc to review, the views and opinions below are my own.

Originally released as a direct-to-video feature in 2007, Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale is the last film that Joseph Barbera worked on before his death in December of 2006. In this 79 minute tale, our mouse hero Jerry dreams of performing and dancing in The Nutcracker Suite. Suddenly, his dream comes true and he’s off to a world of snowflakes, candy, and toys. He even gets to dance with the ballerina until his dream world is interrupted by Tom and his fellow alley cats. Kidnapping the ballerina and generally causing mayhem, it’s up to Jerry, Tuffy, and friends to save the day.

The style of the story is a bit disjointed, with typical Tom and Jerry Three Stooges style violence (hammers to heads, explosions, etc.) transitioning into more artistic segments that almost recall Fantasia. The Nutcracker music is used faithfully and both the missus and I found ourselves humming it throughout the day.

The 1080p AVC-encoded transfer is in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The video presentation is crystal clear and the line drawings have strong lines. The colour palette is quite good, with primaries that pop in some scenes and muted backgrounds in others. Black levels are deep. Compression artifacts and digital noise are negligible. It’s a good looking presentation.

On the audio side, the disc comes with an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack as well as French and Spanish tracks. Subtitle are available for English SDH as well as French. The music is the real star here. Dynamic and bright, it’ll leave you humming the score and dancing with your kids through the family room. The dialogue has one quirk that bugged me a bit. The mix and presentation of it seems a bit flat with everything at the same level. It almost seems a bit removed from what you’re watching. It’s hard to express, but it almost feels like this was a foreign cartoon brought over to North America and quickly dubbed into English. It’s actually not a big dialogue movie, relying heavily on musical sequences, but there was just something off with some of the dialogue for me.

As for extras, it comes with a digital code and two additional extras: Tom and Jerry: The Night Before Christmas and Tom and Jerry: Santa’s Little Helpers.

With great music and good visuals, families with young children will probably enjoy watching Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale on a cold winter’s day before Xmas.