Title: TOM AND JERRY
Director: Tim Story
Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz, Michael Peña, Colin Jost, Rob Delaney, and Ken Jeong
Movie length: 1 hours 41 minutes
TOM AND JERRY is directed by Tim Story, the same person who directed the Fantastic Four movies with Jessica Alba, as well as the Ride Along movies, and just like those movies you either love them or hate them. I am somebody that has never seen the Ride Along movies but I have always enjoyed the Fantastic Four movies.
The TOM AND JERRY movie is nothing you haven’t seen before, if you watch the trailer and you think to yourself, this movie isn’t for me then the movie is not going to win you over. But if you are a fan of Tom and Jerry then I would recommend checking this movie out. It’s nothing new or original just like Yogi Bear or the Smurfs movie. The animated characters act as a supporting character to the live-action actors and not the other way around.
The movie oddly starts with rapping pigeons which throughout the whole movie kept showing up to tell you what just happened as if the Tom and Jerry story is so complex that you need rapping pigeons to tell you what just happened. The movie soundtrack is also very offsetting in my opinion it’s not a very diverse soundtrack it’s just R&B and that’s it. Anybody that has watched Tom and Jerry throughout the years knows that Tom and Jerry had classical music and that’s how a lot of kids knew classical music because it was showcased in Tom and Jerry. And it was a great way to introduce classical music to kids.
The songs chosen weren’t bad but they always took me out of the movie. For example imagine if the BAD BOYS FOR LIFE soundtrack was just Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, there are a lot of fans for those songs but I think we could agree that they would not work well in the context of Bad Boys for life. Remember how weird it was seeing Gangsta’s Paradise in the SONIC THE HEDEGHOG trailer? That’s a great song but I don’t think it works with Sonic the Hedgehog.
The same could be said for the voice acting, all the voice acting seemed very one note. I think having different voices for different characters makes for a better movie, like if you close your eyes you should be able to distinguish who is talking.
And now let’s move on to animation, the other issue I think this movie has is that the characters seemed brighter than their elements. It also really brought me out of the film the characters almost had a glow to them even when they were in a dark area. The background will be dark but they were always well lit. I am not an animator but it seems like the shading or contrast was off. It’s like driving on the road and the car behind you has there left headlight brighter than their right headlight it’s not the end of the world but it’s very distracting and unappealing. It is nice to see that all the animals are animated not just Tom and Jerry. I also love that they are credited as Tom and Jerry, I think that was a very nice detail and well done. Tom and Jerry were played by Tom and Jerry.
Now let’s move over to the story. The story doesn’t do a good job of explaining how they ended up in New York. What happened to their previous living arrangements, or why they both ended up in New York if they went their separate ways? You just see them trying to look for a new place without elaborating what happened that made them get kicked out of their original House. The movie does have some call backs to the show which is nice, classic Tom and Jerry action hitting each other with heavy objects, but then it becomes a Chloë Grace Moretz movie and Tom and Jerry get downgraded to side characters.
The adults in this movie are like the adults you would find in The Simpsons or South Park everybody just believes her no questions asked. And then the movie ends with no real resolution. I mean sure the wedding happens but this is not a wedding comedy movie, this is a Tom and Jerry movie so the resolution should come from Tom and Jerry. Not from the human characters, the conflict and resolution all revolve around the human characters and Tom and Jerry have no real growth.
They start the movie one way and they end the movie exactly the same way. They cause problems and chaos and instead of learning that them causing chaos makes people around them unhappy. They just continue with their destruction, never actually settling down anywhere, which I thought was the point in the beginning of the movie. the movie doesn’t find a way for them to not have problems so they create human problems and resolve the human problems while Tom and Jerry just act and stay the same.
In conclusion TOM AND JERRY is is a missed opportunity but it is a fun watch and it is a movie I would watch again. In the end I had a good time watching it and you might too.
I give this movie a B- for its Batman style.
TOM AND JERRY is streaming on HBO Max until March 28th.
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