their thundering bluntness retains a primal cinematic appeal. Coyote and Road Runner, or the wiseass narrative intricacy of Bugs Bunny & Co. While they have certainly gone through many iterations over the decades and are maybe not as well-regarded today - with little of the surreal inventiveness of Wile E. The classic Tom and Jerry cartoons were engines of wordless slapstick joy: fast, clever, and fun. Maybe the filmmakers were just trying to cash in on the Secret Life of Pets gravy train, but it also makes some narrative sense: After all, the city is full of cats tasked with catching mice, in bodegas and apartments and even some movie theaters.īut look, this is already way too much work to do for a Tom and Jerry movie.Ī cluttered, awkward, pandering mess, Tom and Jerry (which debuts on HBO Max today) is a good example of what happens when the filmmakers don’t understand (or maybe just forget) what made their subject exciting in the first place. Dinkins, will you please be my mayor?” - the idea here is presumably to situate Tom and Jerry in a modern-day version of the city.

It just screams ‘Mouse House.’ Wait, can I say that?”) Ignore the anachronism of lyrics like “Mr. Tim Story’s Tom and Jerry opens to the strains of A Tribe Called Quest’s classic “Can I Kick It?” as the camera swoops over the New York City skyline and finds Tom relaxing between subway cars and Jerry looking at rental properties with a shady rat real-estate agent. You know you’re in for trouble right at the start, when the pigeons begin rapping.

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