Item: Tom & Jerry
Rating: 3
Author: Matt Rooney

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

PLOT: Iconic cartoon rivals Tom & Jerry are back in a new movie, bringing their brand of cartoon chaos to a lavish New York hotel on the eve of a very important wedding.

REVIEW: Tom and Jerry are iconic, timeless "frenemies" for several reasons, chief among them that their rivalry is so simple. Tom is a cat, Jerry is a mouse, and as hard as Tom tries to catch Jerry, the mouse is far too clever and makes the cat look like a fool. As a cartoon, it makes for perfect slapstick that easily stands the test of time. Where the formula starts to implode is when you take that very direct premise, blow it up into an unreasonable 100 minutes, factor in an ensemble of useless humans who do more to hurt Tom & Jerry’s classic dynamic than add to it, and scatter them all across a story that just makes you wish you could get back to the cartoon hijinks. The result? A family film about as headache-inducing as watching an actual cat and mouse tear through your home.

Leaping out of the all-cartoon realm, this updated take on Tom & Jerry keeps the characters looking like their classic animated selves but places them in our very real world. Reading that, you probably don’t need me to go any further, as you’re likely already fearing – as you well should – all the cinematic crimes the movie will commit. Less Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and more the onslaught of films like Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Smurfs, and even the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie, Tom & Jerry makes the mistake in believing that the key to keeping these characters relevant and fun for new and old audiences alike is to take them out of their very colorful cartoon world and placing them in our very bland and dirty real one. Worse yet, to also pair them alongside human characters so lacking in charm or humor you would forget their names if they didn’t have to wear nametags for their jobs.

tom and jerry, review, 1

Taking place in the thrilling location of a fancy New York hotel, Tom, a down-on-his-luck cat who dreams of being a famous piano player, and Jerry, an ambitious mouse who wants to live the big life in the city, are thrust into scenario after scenario of the combative hijinks they've done best for years, all so they can have a shot at living a life of comfort in said hotel. In the middle of it all, for some reason, is small-time con artist, Kayla (Chloë Grace Moretz), who lies her way into an important job helping plan the hotel wedding between a hot, rich couple, Ben and Preeta (Colin Jost and Pallavi Sharda). This involves her teaming with Tom to get rid of Jerry (because who wants a lone mouse minding his own business in a hotel where rich people come?) and allowing chaos to ensue. Whatever creative decision led to the mesh of real and animated beyond wanting to do the bare minimum of making these characters feel modern is a mystery, but what this approach only achieves is making you wonder one thing from start to finish: Why is this a movie?

The premise – Tom and Jerry run amok in a hotel – is perfect for a several-minute segment in a series of cartoons, but for the movie, it’s a stretched out, mostly aimless exercise with a bevy of uninteresting humans having the impossible task of trying to pad it all out. Even the actors themselves seem to know they’re in the way, rushing through dialogue and letting jokes evaporate into thin air so the movie can get to what the people came for – elaborate pranks and shenanigans between a cartoon cat and mouse. When these moments of cartoon antics do get to play out do we get a sense of fun, with their back and forth offering up some old-school entertainment. Not every bit lands, and those usually are the result of the two (mostly Tom) having to deal with the limitations of a cartoon character interacting with the real world. However, when the effects do get kicked up a notch (like when Tom tries to sneak into the hotel via a clothing line in the middle of a thunderstorm), do we see the classic Tom & Jerry spirit come alive.

But as soon as the antics go, the humans come back in to ruin the fun. Moretz, who is normally great in much of what she’s given, has the impossible task of holding up so much of a movie where the only characters worth seeing are the cartoon cat and mouse. It’s a thankless role she’s in, and one that doesn’t even have the decency of being well-written, playing a sort of grifter with not much depth to her. We have little reason to like her until maybe the final 15 minutes, up until which she comes off as mostly a jerk. Michael Peña plays the overly-dedicated hotel higher-up, and luckily he’s talented enough in comedic roles to get some chuckles out of how seriously his character takes hotel event coordinating. Other funny people like Rob Delany (Deadpool 2) and Ken Jeong (a lot) are left stranded here, perhaps mercifully, knowing they don't have as much responsibility in following up the real stars.

tom and jerry, review, 2

Humans even manage to ruin the exploration of the movie’s ultimate theme – which is putting aside your grievances and embracing what makes you a team. Logic would dictate that would be explored with some sweetness among the title duo, but instead, it's mostly via Ben and Preeta. Ben is a schmuck who is ruining the couple’s wedding, and Preeta seems to be regretting marrying him at all. It would be worth it to see the two learn to love each other again if only Jost and Sharda had any chemistry with each other during the good times. But they're humans in a cat and mouse world, and like the rest of their kind, are of no value here. Director Tim Story doesn’t seem to know what to do with his cast except get them through the scenes without messing up lines, and the script from Kevin Costello does nothing to make those scenes worthwhile, losing grip on what depth there is even in Tom & Jerry themselves before the 10-minute mark. The idea was to do something with Tom & Jerry so the names don’t die with the incoming generation, and together, they’ve done the barest of the minimum amount.

But Tom & Jerry are not the only animals here. Every animal in this world is a cartoon and many are callbacks to the original cartoons. Some of them talk, others don’t, but mostly, humans both live with them comfortably but are completely taken by surprise by the destruction they can cause. You would think they would have found a way to prevent “animal tornadoes” by now, but no. While a lot of money and valuable artistry was poured into meshing the animated with the realistic, it mostly looks…misguided. Sometimes the effects look okay – mostly when Tom & Jerry are going at it – and other times they look wildly out of place against the numbing artificial light of the sets. Again, it all begs the question of why the money was spent on a forgettable movie and not at a shot at creating a re-vamped cartoon series.

Of course, it seems nitpicky to go to town on a children’s film. But being a children’s film doesn’t give you the license to be terrible. Maybe with more innovative minds behind the scenes, this could’ve been great. A big, colorful world could’ve been created for these two classic characters to play in, but instead, they get New York on an uneventful Tuesday afternoon. My problem isn't that it's never funny; sometimes it can be. It's just that when it's not, it's painfully dull and uninspired. Parents will get tired of the nostalgia after ten minutes, and kids will likely run to the other room when the cat and mouse aren’t on screen. This is a shocker because, clearly, if there’s anything that’s going to get young audiences to pay attention to the cartoon antics of Tom & Jerry, it’s the live-action supporting roles of Colin Jost and Ken Jeong.