Mark Reviews Movies: TOM AND JERRY

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 26, 2021

With Tom and Jerry, screenwriter Kevin Costello has the unenviable task of coming up with a plot around which to frame the animated hijinks of the eponymous cat and mouse. He makes the unfortunate mistake of letting that plot overtake what actually works here.

It's difficult to believe, but at one point, the manically mischievous cat-and-mouse duo were the most popular cartoon creations in existence. They've still been around, appearing every now and then since William Hanna and Joseph Barbera created the cartoon foes in 1940 (for a series of shorts that were released over the course of the next 18 years) and at the height of the animated pair's popularity in the 1960s. The nostalgia machine that is recent Hollywood, though, seems to have overlooked them. Until now, that is, with director Tim Story's occasionally admirable mixture of several bits of cartoon mayhem and far too much live-action business.

The good news is that Story and his team of animators have chosen to retain the old looks of Tom, the cat, and Jerry, the mouse (as it says on his scented business card)—as well as every other animal that appears in the movie's world. The creatures are obviously computer-generated creations, which we can tell when they move or the camera moves around them. There's just the hint of depth when, say, rain starts dripping from Tom's fur or cake frosting covers Jerry's head.

They're not flat, in other words, in the way to which we're accustomed to these characters, but the animation team has kept some illusion of the flat, traditional drawings. It's a decent compromise, and at times, we might be fooled that someone actually hand-drew some of these animated characters. Once they start moving, the trick is spoiled, but considering the possible alternatives of a computer-animated Tom and Jerry, there's really only little reason to complain about how these characters look and move and interact with the real world around them.

Indeed, in the earlier section of this movie, there's not really any reason to complain about what Costello and Story are doing here. Sure, the soundtrack, beginning with a rapping pigeon, feels as if the filmmakers are trying a bit too hard to modernize the material for a contemporarily young audience, but the heart of material itself, founded upon the idea that Tom and Jerry hate and are willing to inflict as much harm as possible on each other, remains.

There's barely any plot at first, as Tom is a cat that can play the piano, trying to raise enough money to buy a real one by playing an electronic keyboard in the park, and Jerry is a mouse looking for a home in New York City. Jerry sabotages Tom's performance, trying to steal the cat's earnings from spectators by pretending to conduct the feline and then dancing. Eventually, the mouse gets the cat to yank his own tail, sending him upward in a spinning summersault and smashing his instrument.

It's funny stuff, as are some the following bits, with Jerry shacked up in a swanky hotel and Tom trying to sneak into the place. This movie may be set in the real world, but that doesn't stop the usual cartoon logic and physics—seeing a cat being struck three times by lightning within a minute, watching a mouse slam an entire into his foe's face, observing how the two move so fast chasing each other that it's as if there are multiple cats and mice bolting and bouncing around the room.

The spirit of this stuff—slapstick and sometimes pretty violent but, because Tom's face morphs back from its flattened state, mostly harmless—is right. Then, we get into the human plot, which sees young hustler Kayla (Chloë Grace Moretz) faking her way into a job at the hotel, where a big, celebrity wedding is about to take place. The mouse might be a problem, so Kayla decides to hire Tom to catch Jerry.

That's a fine enough setup for more chaos (Moretz gets it, matching the cartoon-ish energy in her performance without trying to outplay the actual cartoons). There even is some, with Tom building an inordinately elaborate mousetrap and a swirling dust cloud of animals wreaking havoc in the lobby.

There's also, though, an increasing amount of human complications, which include Terence (Michael Peña), the events manager, trying to sabotage Kayla and the bride-to-be (played by Pallavi Sharda) having relationship problems and the future groom (played by Colin Jost) trying to make the wedding as big as possible. Tom, Jerry, their feud, and the mayhem that results from it get shoved into the background for all of this, eventually working together to keep Kaya employed and, later, to save the wedding.

This stuff doesn't necessarily fail. It's just the wrong stuff for this particular story and these particular characters, who need neither story nor humans for their gags to work. Tom and Jerry knows that at the start, but then, the filmmakers seem to go out of their way to forget it.

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