Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1993)

Guys, this is just an opinion, just respect it. This film was great, Tom and Jerry finally talk, should get a sequel. This movie is my favorite because it is Tom and Jerry, and everyone else is acting like complete crybabies saying the film was bad, that needs to stop now because it is making me cry. So forget all of the haters, Tom and Jerry The Movie is better then these babies.I just don't know why the film is so awful. You guys need to stop the bulling. This is making burst into the tears. Cool Cat is dumb, Tom and Jerry The Movie is amazing. Tom and Jerry finally team up. I REALLY LOVE Tom and Jerry. And now I am taking this too seriously because of all of these heads. Thank you for reading. Good night.

This movie is very good! I have 2 copies of it at home.The movie opens up with Tom and Jerry chasing each other and Tom's owner leaves him. Now homeless, he has to find a new home. He gets thrown out on the street, and meets a dog and flea, who teach Tom and Jerry to be friends. They get mugged, and Tom runs into some alley cats. Jerry saves Tom however, and they meet a girl named Robyn under a bridge.We then fast forward to Aunt Figg, the guardian, crying for Robyn, and the girl is brought back. She sends Robyn to her room, in the attic, cause her room was given to the fat dog. Tom and Jerry are separated from Robyn as they are sent to an animal-prison. They manage to escape and get the girl out. They lose each other at sea and Robyn ends up on an island with a carnival. Tom and Jerry end up elsewhere. Lickboot, the lawyer, finds out Robyn's dad is still alive, which Robyn wants, since her mom died young. Determined, they put a reward of a million bucks for the finding of Robyn. Captain Kiddie runs the carnival and sees the reward on a milk carton and traps her on a ferris wheel to get the money.Dr. Applecheek, the owner of the animal shop, is mad at Aunt Figg because Tom and Jerry were the cause of all the animals to escape, Figg disagrees and Dr. leaves. The henchmen kick him out, when he tells them they won't get any of the money, so he steals an ice cream truck to drive to the carnival. Tom and Jerry free Robyn and trap the henchmen when they arrive. But Applecheek leaves them there, as revenge for not letting him stay in the truck. Aunt Figg arrives and they all chase Robyn as she runs away.Captain Kiddie and Applecheek end the race when they hit each other on the bridge after the dog destroyed it. Lickboot, Figg, and dog head for the cabin where Tom and Jerry are headed and make it there before Tom and Jerry. Figg accidentally knocks a lamp and burns the house unintentionally, but Tom and Jerry push them onto the boat they were on earlier and they sail away. Robyn's dad comes and rescues them.They go back to their current house and Robyn gives Tom and Jerry a new house. But they start chasing after resuming their antics.The animation is wonderful, by the original directors of the movie, but takes a different approach on the characters, which is acceptable.10/10

It is doubtful that there is bigger fan of Tom and Jerry then yours truly. It is also doubtful that there is a bigger detractor of their first (and God willing only) feature film effort. Tom and Jerry fit a 5 minute short because the formula is so unbelievably simple: Tom tries to eat Jerry and Jerry foils the attempt.Trying to expand on that relationship is fatal to the material and only one reason why 'Tom and Jerry: The Movie' doesn't work. After their home is destroyed, the pair discover that they can talk (!) and have to stick together as they set out on the road together.Giving them voices is also fatal because what made the pair so irresistible in the first place was that the only way they communicated with one another was through their altercations. T&J are supplied with rather annoying Sesame Street voices by Spin City's Richard Kind and the late Dana Hill.The violence is gone as well in the face of trying to appear more politically correct. If that isn't bad enough they are saddled with an orphaned girl who is being pursued by her evil aunt and they are given forgettable musical numbers that Disney would have gagged at. Try to imagine The Three Stooges without the comic violence and you have the idea.There isn't even a struggle in the movie for the pair to have to be nice to one another. One of the gems in their library of film shorts is one in which Tom and Jerry and the dog Spike sign a peace treaty and use every fiber of their being to keep from pounding each other to death. The movie hardly needs Tom and Jerry because the story has been done so many times that any two characters could have been inserted with the same results.If it ain't broke . . .

The surmounting lists of objections to "Tom and Jerry: The Movie" have been understandably consistent: the famous cartoon cat and mouse actually start talking, they go on good behavior, do not chase each other around with every makeshift club or projectile known, and most of the narrative consists not of what we usually get from them in a seven or eight-minute cartoon. I had some objections to the material here as well, but only on this level: the way it was done. In actuality, I am all for the idea of trying something new with these characters, even if they had been doing the same stuff for forty-some years. After all, if the movie's going to the last 90 minutes, unless the filmmakers really know what they're doing, just seeing the cat and mouse torment each other will lose its spark eventually. So I'm marginally grateful they tried something new.The opening ten minutes of "Tom and Jerry: The Movie" effectively capture the charm of the long-running cartoon shorts, utilizing silent humor and cartoon violence to a gut-splitting max. It's also fun looking at the drawing style, reminiscent of the 1960s where everything exists without excessive detail. The houses are one or two stories, have a single tree in the yard, and surrounded by a white picket fence. And when Tom and Jerry venture into the streets, there is a wonderful, 1960s feeling in the jazz music score playing in the background.What I did not like after this point was not the new ideas, but—and this goes back to my initial statement—the way these new ideas were executed. I do like the tone of the voices given to Tom and Jerry, with the latter being given a sort of husky, little boy tone, just as I always imagined him. I always pictured Jerry as a little kid and Tom as sort of a twenty-something who never quite grew up. And I did not mind so much that the plot unravels to become more of a "The Rescuers" remake, with the cat and mouse befriending an orphan girl wanting to escape the clutches of her domineering aunt. In fact, if Tom and Jerry had stuck with the girl, and been allowed to take center-stage more often, the idea could have worked. Instead, they end up playing second-fiddle, disappearing for obnoxiously long stretches of time, and the little girl, Robyn (though sweetly voiced by the talented Anndi McAfee) is a complete bore.As a result, the story becomes insufferably slow starting around the thirty-minute mark.What I could not stand at all in this movie—the one thing I thought could not work in the least bit—were the songs. I personally do not connect musical numbers with a Tom and Jerry cartoon, even if it is feature-length. But the crushing blow is just how incredibly awful these musical numbers are, and how they become progressively worse as the movie progresses. The first one, in which Tom and Jerry are unsuccessfully talked into trying to be friends, is lame and bad enough as it is. The second one, following much too closely afterward and sung by a gang of not-amusing alley cats who stop the story cold in its tracks, is even worse. The remaining count of songs, if memory serves me correct, is three or four. Each one the cognitive equivalent of sandpaper being rubbed on your scalp. Even if these songs were bland and not horrendous, they would still drag the movie to its doom because there are so many—too many. Even most musicals don't plant this many sing-a-longs in such narrow proximity to each other.Now, in all fairness, the drawing style is beautiful. It effectively captures the spirit of the 1960s cartoons while updating it at the same time. The colors are vibrant and pretty, everything has a lot of gorgeous detail, the movements seem old-fashioned and yet contemporary at the same time—if that makes any sense to the reader; you really need to see the movie to understand (or just look at some silent clips of it, as I would recommend). The director was Phil Roman, who made his fame in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s in continuing the animated "Peanuts" cartoons after Bill Melendez decided to stop. He's got a good style, knowing how to pace shots and sequences. But it all goes back to what Pauline Kael, John Huston, Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock, and so many other movie critics and filmmakers have said about directors and screenplays: the latter is, in so many ways, more important. The director can have as much style as he wants, but without an interesting story and some firm ground to walk on, no matter his still, the picture will probably end up collapsing. And despite its promising start and good drawing, "Tom and Jerry: The Movie" is an absolute thud.