Tom & Jerry (2021) Review

Tom & Jerry are arguably the most prolific of the classic cartoon stars. Sure, Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny may be more widely known, but in terms of the short films themselves, I think it isn’t too far of a stretch to say Tom & Jerry boast the most acclaimed resumes (at least in the days of their MGM shorts. We could all do animation history a great service by forgetting the era when Tom and Jerry were thrown into those poorly-animated Czech shorts). While Mickey may have had a role in Fantasia, and Bugs Bunny has starred in a movie or two (including 1990s fever dream Space Jam), Tom & Jerry have never had a feature film deserving of their names. Though that isn’t for a lack of trying.

1992 saw the release of the aptly-named Tom & Jerry: The Movie, an animated feature so misguided that it gave its titular cat and mouse duo cutesy cartoon voices! The less said of that disaster, the better. During the late 2000s and throughout the 2010s, Tom and Jerry were thrown into cash-grab straight-to-video movies that featured gimmicks like pirates, wizards and even Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory thrown into the mix. 2021 finally saw Tom & Jerry return to the big screen (which was given a simultaneous streaming release on HBO Max) with a film simply named after the franchise itself. Could this finally be the Tom & Jerry movie that does justice to its two iconic cartoon stars?

In short, no. It isn’t. Though this live-action/animated hybrid film is an improvement over Tom & Jerry’s previous feature-length efforts, it will surely be a disappointment for anyone hoping to see the slapstick royalty of Tom & Jerry stretched into a 90 minute film.

Some might say that Tom & Jerry, the tale as old as time of a cat and mouse wanting each other dead, wouldn’t work as a feature film. But how could we know, since no one has ever actually attempted that simple transition? Studios always feel the need to include human characters or some big plot that Tom and Jerry somehow find themselves entangled in. Yes, movies are a storytelling medium, but storytelling doesn’t necessarily have to mean plot. The classic Tom & Jerry shorts could provide top notch entertainment by the situations the cat and mouse’s rivalry would take them to. We can’t know if their schtick can carry a feature film if no one tries.

Shaun the Sheep is a series of fifteen minute animated shorts about a sheep and a dog doing human-y things behind the farmer’s back, with no dialogue outside of some animal noises and mumbles. I bring this up because Shaun the Sheep has now had two feature length films that utilize the same formula as the show, and they’ve been some of the best TV-to-movie transitions I’ve seen. If Shaun the Sheep can carry two movies, why has no one had enough faith in Tom and Jerry to carry a single movie by themselves? Why do there always need to be humans and their troubles and bigger stories thrown into the mix?

The primary human here is Kayla (Chloë Grace Moretz), a resourceful young woman who manages to fudge her way to a job at the Royal Gates Hotel after passing someone else’s resume off as her own. A big problem with the film is that it spends far too much time on Kayla’s work life in the hotel and her trying to avoid the suspicious event manager, Terence (Michael Peña), and not nearly enough time on the chaotic battles of Tom and Jerry. Though credit where it’s due, Chloë Grace Moretz is always charming, and she does a good job at making the audience care about Kayla.

Things get more complicated for Kayla, when Jerry moves into the upper-class hotel. The Royal Gates Hotel is set to host a major celebrity wedding, and the hotel staff worries a mouse living in the hotel could ruin their image before the big event. Kayla attempts to catch Jerry herself, but when the mouse proves craftier than she expected, she ends up getting Tom a job at the hotel as well, so that he might help catch Jerry.

Honestly, that’s a fair setup for a Tom & Jerry movie. Take their usual antics, but put it in a big, fancy location as a means to distinguish it as a “bigger” motion picture makes sense. The issue is, again, that Tom and Jerry’s actions are often in the background, and the film dedicates too much time to its subplot of the celebrity wedding. I can accept a human character like Kayla being added to the proceedings, but the film should have stuck with her, Tom and Jerry. Instead, the celebrity couple and the rest of the hotel staff members become players in the plot. It’s just so unnecessary.

Now, Tom and Jerry do get a few moments of slapstick battles and chase sequences, but they are too few, too brief, and too spread out. The movie even teases a big, chaotic finale on the day of the wedding, but when it occurs, it’s over with as quickly as it begins.

I don’t want to sound completely doom and gloom in regards to Tom & Jerry’s 2021 outing though. I admit there were some bits that made me laugh (though I could live without the bathroom humor centered around Spike, who here is the pet dog of the celebrity couple). I also liked the look of the film. Though it would have been nice see Tom and Jerry hand-drawn as they were back in the day, the film does the next best thing by giving the CG characters a cel shading that makes them look like their painted past-selves. In fact, all the animal characters in the film are cartoon characters, which is a nice little touch. With all the big budget sci-fi and super hero movies we have these days, live-action and animation have never coexisted as regularly as they do now. Usually, however, the animation is used as a special effect to enhance the visual look of a live-action world. So a movie like this, where the animated characters are blatantly animated characters interacting with real humans, has become something of a rarity. And call me a sucker, but I appreciate some of the film’s sentiment and the little lessons it has to say to younger audiences (even if some of these lessons feel a bit shoehorned in). Maybe I’ve grown a bit soft, or maybe the rough times the world is currently living in has just made me appreciate these things more in movies, even when they have shaky execution.

Though I may be going a little easy on this 2021 Tom & Jerry (young audiences might really like it), I can’t deny that the film misses the point of Tom & Jerry. Just because something is family entertainment doesn’t mean it has to be sentimental. And if any cartoon duo should be allowed to go the Godzilla route and simply have their movie “let them fight,” surely it’s Tom and Jerry.

5