To say I was disappointed by the new Tom and Jerry movie would be a huge understatement. The movie is currently in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.
This movie demonstrates some of the problems of mixing live action with animation. Both live action and animation require a good story in order to work and touch the audience. Neither side of this film, live action or animation, has that. Don’t get me wrong, Chloë Grace Moretz and Michael Peña do a great job of interacting with the animated characters. But they don’t do so well interacting with each other in a weak story. Peña, who is best known as Luis in the Marvel Ant-Man movie series is the “bad guy” of the film and Moretz, known for Hit-Girl in the Kick-Ass movie franchise, is the one who primarily interacts with the animated Tom and Jerry.
While I applaud an effort to reboot a beloved MGM cartoon series; honestly, I think all ages would be bored by this film. And that is a shame because Tom and Jerry (even counting the racist cartoons of the 1940’s) is a funny series provided you stop watching the cartoons made after 1954. It’s more than a cat chasing a mouse (something that’s lost in the current movie). It’s an eighty year old franchise with a great backstory. It’s about the little guy fighting back and winning against his larger opponent. We were all Jerry Mouse who hope to outwit the bigger guy. Occasionally, during the life of the franchise the pair set aside their rivalry in order to pursue a common goal, but the best cartoons were the ones where that didn’t happen. A great video history of Tom and Jerry can be found here.
There were rules to the Tom and Jerry cartoons. The cat and mouse never spoke. All the other characters in the cartoon spoke, but those two never did. But Tom could scream when in pain and his scream by animator, William Hanna, was guaranteed to make you laugh. The new movie kept the scream, but broke another rule by having Jerry Mouse be the instigator of the initial conflict. Finally, because the two main characters in a Tom and Jerry cartoon didn’t speak, the cartoons filled the silence with a loud and often quick paced Scott Bradley musical score. The combination of music, silent characters, Tom’s scream and exaggerated violence made Tom and Jerry a commercial success.
Look, this film didn’t work for me because it wasn’t really a Tom and Jerry movie in the truest sense. It was a Chloë Grace Moretz gets a job in a hotel working for Michael Peña while Tom and Jerry create havoc during a wedding the hotel is hosting film. I know the film is making money at the box office in this era of the pandemic right now. However, if you don’t have HBO Max, save your money and wait for the film to come out on Cartoon Network next year. I had high hopes for this film, but it saddens me to say this film can be skipped.
