I know we had a Tom & Jerry movie in 2017, but this one actually has a budget and some actors.
Chloë Grace Moretz and Michael Peña. Directed by Tim Story.
That looks great! I love they used the classic bit of Jerry moving over the mouse hole and then walking through Tom’s head.
Oh man, my kids are going to freak. For some reason they’ve developed a taste for vintage cartoons like this, Woody Woodpecker, Droopy Dog, the works.
You’d think, after the recent success of Cats, they’d have gone for full live action. Hunh.
Seriously, though, forgive me if my memory is faulty, but wasn’t Tom & Jerry, like, the most unredeemably violent of the Saturday morning cartoons? Like, it was just violence for the sake of violence, and that was the only joke? Isn’t that why Itchy and Scratchy exists?
And, watching the trailer, looks like yup. Violence is the joke.
Yet also so much more at times. I’ll submit the episode Mice Follies as one of the most captivating and joyful pieces of animation in all of history. ‘Violence’ or no.
Classic Tom and Jerry is some of the hardest I’ve seen my kids laugh at TV. It’s just classic slapstick stuff, dialed up a couple notches.
What was the last major animation+live action movie? I feel like that’s something we haven’t seen in quite a while.
Sonic?
Yeah, and the Ryan Reynolds Pokemon movie and a host of other films that use CGI. The difference is those have 3D animation that is meant to look like it fits into the live-action space. This one is straight cartoon+live action.
I’m pretty sure this is 3D CG meant to look like 2D cel animation. I’m assuming you’re using “cartoon” to mean 2D animation.
I dunno, that looks terrible to me. But then, I’ve always felt that Hanna/Barbera stuff sucks.
Well, I mean animation designed to look like classic hand drawn cartoons or comic books. Like this
or this
Not this
or this
LOL I had a grin on my face while I watched this, I noticed. This looks like a lot of fun. Any idea when/where/how it’s coming? Probably in 2022 to theaters near you around the time we finally get to see the new Wonder Woman and Black Widow?
Mary Poppins Returns?
I think this movie was. Oh wait that’s just Jim Carrey.
That was less violent than I expected as I initially thought Tom was trying to electrocute Jerry.
The music in these shorts was wonderful as were the sound effects.
This looks more like the Rocky and Bullwinkle remake movie with Piper Perabo, i.e. looks like a movie reboot from 20 years ago about a cartoon from 60 years ago.
Can’t say I ever liked Tom & Jerry, though. :-/
I think the closet comparison style wise has to be Space Jam, with deep nods to Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Both of those movies had cartoon logic and physicality applied (eventually) to the “real world” humans.
I finished watching this yesterday.
Things I really liked
- Callbacks to classic Tom & Jerry bits, like moving over the mouse hole, walking through Tom’s head, etc.
- The emphasis on music. Tom & Jerry, even back in the old days, transmitted so much musical knowledge to me without me realizing it. So it’s appropriate that a modern Tom & Jerry would emphasize music once again, but this time it’s hip hop/rap instead of classical. And it works! Starting the movie with “Can I Kick It?” from 1990 was just genius.
- I love that there’s no real bad guys, and that the movie is very pleasant while still keeping Tom & Jerry fully at odds with each other.
- Michael Pena is a comedic genius. Just looking at him makes me laugh. He should be in more movies. He can do serious and comedy so well.
Overall though, I was still bored at several points, which lead me to put this movie more in the “Ok” column instead of “Like” or “Love”. I feel like they had a winning formula here, but there’s also a lot of fluff that could have been cut. They needed a better editor and they needed to cut a lot of bits that weren’t needed to make it a tighter movie, and I feel like it could be a classic.
Ha ha, you saw Tom and Jerry.
How about poor little Chloe Moretz Grace flexing her comedic talents? Yeesh. So painful. I had to re-watch Shadow in the Cloud afterward as a palate cleanser.
-Tom*
*not the cat