We’re reaching a point with Tom and Jerry where they’re becoming the ultimate guest rappers of animation. They’re the kind of artists who will show up on everyone else’s projects while only occasionally putting out an original EP. This new T&J film, directed by Tim Story (the man behind Barbershop and the first Fantastic 4 films), has that same issue, where by the end I was still left wanting more of what the trailers promised. When you’re advertising “TOM AND JERRY” in bold, giant red letters, one would expect a bit more than ten or fifteen minutes worth of animation footage.
Not to say the iconic cat and mouse don’t have their traditional energy, what animation we do get looks quite sharp, and some of the old-school toony gags are funny (there’s also some newer stuff mixed in such as Tom’s Dark Knight imitation when trying to go through a window). But they’re overshadowed by what’s unfortunately kind of a dull B-plot revolving around an overplanned wedding in a stuffy hotel, and as talented as some of the supporting cast is, they struggle to make some of these half-baked jokes work.
Much of the narrative bulk is given to Chloe Grace Moretz in the role of Kayla, a down-on-her-luck kid who bamboozles her way into a cushy position at the Royal Gate Hotel. Her new supervisor Terence (Michael Pena) is skeptical about her qualifications, but general manager Mr. Dubros (Rob Delany) has faith in the young girl. She crosses paths with Tom and Jerry after the mouse decides to set up his new apartment inside the hotel, where then Kayla decides to recruit Tom to catch Jerry before he can potentially disrupt their huge planned wedding for the couple of Preeta (Pallavi Sharda) and Ben (Colin Jost).
But Tom and Jerry’s ongoing friction, combined with the additions of Ben’s bulldog Spike (voiced by Bobby Cannavale) and Preeta’s pet cat Toots, complicates things a bunch. Throughout the story Tom’s bullied a couple of times by Butch (Nicky Jam) and his gang of alley cats, who can’t fathom why he’s so hesitant to eat the mouse he’s constantly brawling with, but it’s a plot thread that doesn’t lead to anything major.
Watching this movie, I was reminded of those old Wendy’s commercials where these senior women are surveying a big-bun sandwich and one of them asks “where’s the beef?” It’d be fine if the filler between what people paid to see was interesting or more engaging, or at least tied into the franchise better.
Sadly, the human cast aren’t given a lot to work with here. Ken Jeong as a frustrated hotel chef is clearly trying, as is Michael Pena even when he’s forced to tend to Spike, who does gross stuff just to seemingly irritate Terence (and the audience). Moretz eventually sparks a connection with a hunky bartender (Jordan Bolger) in the hotel’s lobby, but he doesn’t evolve much beyond a generic love interest.
At this point, I started thinking back to 1993’s Phil Roman-directed Tom and Jerry film (of which my parents took me to see in theaters, it was a slow Saturday that weekend). In that movie, our heroes run around on the street for a bit until they encounter a young runaway girl named Robyn Starling whose father’s gone missing in a mountain expedition, and her evil aunt has captured her family fortune.
She seems like a sweet enough kid, but the moment Tom and Jerry start talking with her (yes, Tom and Jerry were voiced respectively by Richard Kind and Dana Hill in this version), they basically stop their own movie to take part in hers. It’s as if another film was playing in the theater next to T&J and somehow the lines just suddenly got crossed. Maybe she’s got an interesting story to tell, who knows, but she’s not who we paid to see that day. And Moretz does show a bit of charisma here, but she’s still this movie’s Robyn except less likable.
And that’s a weird, consistent habit of a lot of recent Tom and Jerry media, in how they spend so much time in the stories of other characters. In “Tom and Jerry’s Giant Adventure” which is a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack is the owner of a theme park that’s about to go out of business. For why I don’t know he’s wearing this trench coat and fedora, and the beanstalk leads him to a giant who sings, and the giant uncannily resembles the businessman trying to buy his struggling park. And for some reason, Tom and Jerry are his pets tagging along, but why? That premise I described is weird enough to be interesting on its own without them. And when you talk about Tom and Jerry and Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory, it’s practically the same damn movie, expect with Tom and Jerry chasing each other around and a few MGM characters scattered in different cameos. There’s no reason for them to be there.
Thinking about it, are T&J really suited for deeper stories to begin with? Here, Tom’s a piano prodigy who dreams of one day sharing a stage with John Legend, and tries to serenade Toots before Jerry upends everything (which has some nice visual callbacks to the iconic Cat Concerto short). We also have a small arc with the duo trying to get along for once, but it’s only developed so much in favor of more hotel stuff (their biggest bonding experience involves the New York Yankees getting pissed at them). I don’t think it’s impossible for a writer to have us care about Tom and Jerry on a deeper level, but there’s only so much one can do with them while sticking to their standard chase-around format.
I’m not sure how a 100-minute long Tom and Jerry film that was strictly like the 50’s shorts would necessarily register to an audience, since the stories of these cartoons were pretty simplistic conflicts that gave you some quick laughs for roughly seven to eight minutes before the main feature. But I also came away from this movie thinking it’d be better for this franchise to go back to basics for a bit longer.
I’m not against an IP evolving over time or trying out different approaches, but I felt the 2014 T&J series I felt was a bit underrated because of how well it understood what worked about many of those classic shorts. Maybe there’s the perfect feature-length Tom and Jerry script out there that has yet to be discovered, but as of now we’re still waiting for it. Mr. Story tried his best here, and I did enjoy the soundtrack choices, but I’d say skip this and just watch the old shorts if you want the best Tom and Jerry experience to date.
But how did you feel about it? If you loved it, or hated it, just in-between, if you’ve checked it out on HBO Max or in theaters, hop by FAN’s social media and let us know how you felt!