I like Tom and Jerry. I used to have a compilation of their cartoons on VHS-rotation as a child. Although bringing beloved animated characters into the real world for a movie extravaganza is a road well worn, and sometimes so bumpy it’ll make you sick…… yeah, nope, I have nothing more to add to that caveat; I braced myself.
Tom and Jerry have made their way to the big apple; New York City – Jerry is looking for a place to stay, while Tom dreams of becoming a big music star. Concurrently, Kayla (Chloe Grace Moretz) needs a job, and shysters her way into a management position at the Royal Gate Hotel; a prestigious location that Jerry has just decided will make for perfect lodging. With a big socialite wedding looming, everything at the hotel must be perfect, which excludes a crafty animated mouse running amok. Sensing a history between Tom and Jerry, Kayla teams up with Tom to help exterminate her little mouse problem, and as you can already imagine… that’s going to be easier said than done. On top of that, there’s a lot more going on, like the groom-and-bride-to-be getting off the same page with how glorious they think the wedding should be, and the hotel’s head manager, Terrence (Michael Pena), growing rightfully suspicious of Kayla’s false recommendations. Tom & Jerry is directed by Tim Story.
The choice to keep Tom and Jerry as 2D-animation intrigued me, and it really works well, with the movie shaping a live-action world where all animals are naturally animated. At one point, Tom is soaking in the rain, and it appears as if 3D water is bouncing off a 2D cat, and I just think it looks so cool. If I were to watch this movie again at some point, I think I’d spend the whole time just marvelling at the techniques where the two formats overlay, like when the pet cat Toots, is scratching at the couch, and the scratches appear, when clearly there isn’t a real cat there. It’s probably all done with CGI (zzzz) but once upon a time this would have been done practically, so here’s hoping for that, and I haven’t been well fooled. From the posters, and the general advertisements I’d glimpsed for Tom & Jerry, I had it in my head that Tom & Jerry might be coming to us like The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, with a wink and a bit of self-depreciating humour – Chloe Grace Moretz acting crazily out of her element on some signage, looking like this generation’s Piper Perabo – but I think this universe that combines 2D animals and humans to explain Tom and Jerry’s presence finds just the right blend of serious and silly. With that settled, the next most important element becomes incorporating Tom and Jerry’s antics into a human plot, and I think the movie gets that right too. I really like the early joke that because Tom isn’t blind, a regular cat playing keyboard does not deserve a busker’s ransom.
Criticisms of Tom & Jerry would come towards an uneven tone, due to the movie trying to cram in too many moving pieces. The movie is bloated, and I personally, would have trimmed down the subplot between Ben (Colin Jost) and Preeta’s (Pallavi Shardi) and their wedding miscommunications – after some thought on the matter, I doesn’t take long to realise that this movie is ‘Tom & Jerry’, and if cutting out some relationship drama makes Tom and Jerry better, then it should have been a no-brainer. On the other hand, the large and commendably distinguishable list of hotel employees we come across are gallant, and it’s never a sore point having to deal with any of them – I was so excited to see a freed-up Ken Jeong in early introductory scenes (after all, he is the Spanish teacher of Greendale ‘who can never die’), but as the hotel’s chef, he’s underutilised, making way to fit in everything else. We never see Tom’s desire to become a famous musician fully actualised either; a simple acknowledgement from the hotel owner Mr. Dubros (Rob Delaney) that Tom can play piano for the hotel after he and Jerry have saved the day would have been enough. At one point early, I was prepared to make a really big statement that Chloe Grace Moretz makes this role her own, and coming off Shadow in the Cloud where she did the same, that would have been a real sign of her growth, but she does get outshone by Tom and Jerry’s hijinks eventually, which is what the role calls for in essence anyway, so it’s no big deal – Tom and Jerry are the stars, and I was fine with reliving the same clever mindless humour from my childhood on the big screen. The decision to combine Tom & Jerry’s antics with a hip-hop mix from an early nineties house party was inspired (and probably comes about from the movie thinking to entertain the parents taking their children along to the screening).
I had a big smile on my face at the opening pigeon singing ‘Can I Kick It?’, and I’m satisfied enough that my buzz carried on throughout. Maybe I’d conditioned myself to lower my expectations going into this one, to try to enjoy it for as long as possible – it worked, or maybe I was just in a good mood. Or maybe the movie ain’t half bad; I don’t know. In any case, never did I ever think that I’d be watching Michael Pena, the bloke who doesn’t have a friend who fixes doors in Crash, picking up frenemy-dog Spike’s doodee in the street – if that’s not every indication that anything in this world is possible, then I don’t know what is. And I see you Warner Bros., having fun with your Batman properties, recreating the shot of the Batwing backdropped by the moon from Batman Returns, and displaying a Joker-style poster of Droopy, and I approve.
3.0
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