Tom & Jerry (2021)

"I would love if movies like this respected children -- if they seemed to even remotely care about children and not pander to them or treat them like idiots."

- Chris Stuckmann

Tom & Jerry (also known as Tom & Jerry: The Movie) is a 2021 American live-action/animated slapstick comedy film based on the "Tom and Jerry" franchise, and, based on the titular cartoon characters and animated theatrical short film series of the same name created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.

The movie is also the second theatrical feature-length Tom and Jerry movie, after the original Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1992).

Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures and produced by the mh:greatestmovies: Warner Animation Group, with animation being provided by Framestore, the film was released on February 26, 2021, and, was also directed by Tim Story.

Plot
A legendary rivalry reemerges when Jerry moves into New York City's finest hotel on the eve of the wedding of the century, forcing the desperate event planner to hire Tom to get rid of him. As mayhem ensues, the escalating cat-and-mouse battle soon threatens to destroy her career, the wedding, and possibly the hotel itself.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Just like the 1992 film, Thomas and the Magic Railroad and Looney Tunes: Back in Action, it tends to focus a bit more on the lead human character, or all of them in fact, rather than the main focus who is Tom and Jerry themselves.
 * 2) * However, it's not as noticeable as in the Magic Railroad and 1992 film, as Tom and Jerry are still the most important characters to the plot and its central conflict with the largest character arcs.
 * 3) Some of the humor can be hit-or-miss, with Spike farting, Jerry twerking, the use of dating internet memes such as the scene with Tom flossing, Tom singing full sentences in autotune, the rapping pigeons in the opening scene and the inclusion of some internet slang from the elephants.
 * 4) The trap score, while decent, sounds very out-of-place considering it is a Tom and Jerry movie.
 * 5) While many fan-favorite characters are back, some of those characters, such as Tyke, Quacker, and Tuffy/Nibbles, are still absent from the movie.
 * 6) Some product placement, with the mentions of TikTok and Instagram (as a boomer joke), but, showings of Boosted Boards, Apple, and John Legend.
 * 7) * Not helping was that Boosted, the company that made the Boosted Boards, went out of business a year prior to this film's release.
 * 8) The use of the Liar Revealed trope for Kayla's character arc feels off-putting since Kayla is the film’s protagonist.
 * 9) The story feels more like a feature-length Tom and Jerry cartoon than a feature-length movie. Especially considering HBO Max released a tie-in animated Tom and Jerry short that takes place in the same location to coincide with the recent home-video release of the movie.
 * 10) A lot of the fight scenes have been rehashed from several shorts, although these make great references to the tv show.
 * 11) Poor acting, even from professional actors like Ken Jeong of all people, especially during the introduction of Chloë Grace Moretz's character, Kayla, she mostly has trouble speaking.
 * 12) * Speaking of casting, Nicky Jam is quite miscast as Butch.
 * 13) * Another example of miscasting would especially be T-Pain, a rapper, voicing Tom himself, even if the voice acting was just for a single joke.
 * 14) A lot of the time, the plot about the Royal Wedding, when it involves only the humans, tends to distract viewers too much especially since this is given way more time than Tom and Jerry themselves.
 * 15) It is really predictable, especially at one point where Terrance explained how the glass roof at the hotel he worked at is the most important part of the hotel, and not even halfway into the movie, Tom and Jerry destroy it.
 * 16) While the animals are animated, but the people and the background aren't are quite nice, it makes the animated animals feel out of place due to having a slapstick nature while the humans don’t.
 * 17) Even if many already know the conflict with Tom and Jerry before watching this, there is a lot of wasted potential by cutting out the opening scene that explains how they ended up in this situation in the first place. This would have been the most faithful representation of the source material in the entire movie but is instead replaced by the infamously generic rapping pigeons.
 * 18) *Speaking of which, the pigeons do nothing for this movie but provide useless rapping sequences that have nothing to do with the movie and explain certain things that are happening on screen, and badly at that. Cutting them out wouldn't affect the movie in the slightest, but would make it slightly more tolerable as a result.
 * 19) The screenplay is really weak and not impressive.
 * 20) A lot of the fighting that results in Tom getting beaten up is because of Jerry, making him a bit more unlikable than usual.
 * 21) The side plot where Preeta losses her wedding ring from Ben where Preeta and Kayla have to find it is pointless and is never brought up again later in the film, not only that but removing this side plot doesn't change anything.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Despite its problems, it's superior to the 1992 film of the same name, as it is much more faithful to the franchise and the original source material by having the charm Tom and Jerry stood for from all these years.
 * 2) * The credits are in the style of "That's All Folks" with artwork of different characters and have a vintage feel to them.
 * 3) * With the film taking place in Manhattan, it could likely be a throwback to "Mouse in Manhattan".
 * 4) * The movie brings back some fan-favorites from the TV shows to make fans happy (ex. Spike and Butch). Their voice actors do a great job too.
 * 5) Passionate directing from Tim Story, who is an avid fan of the source material and considers it to be his favorite cartoon, while wholeheartedly even hoping he's doing the franchise justice with this movie.
 * 6) Clever use of its slapstick cartoon violence with hilarious gags and great timing, including the use of William Hanna's Tom scream in it.
 * 7) Great humor containing numerous references to the Tom and Jerry franchise's history and more. For example, the scene with Tom playing the piano while eventually being antagonized by Jerry makes a reference to "The Cat Concerto" and with Tom flying his way in the hotel also referring to "The Flying Cat".
 * 8) Subtle Easter eggs, such as with Jerry reading a Secret Squirrel comic book and with Jerry's business card consisting of the Drawing Jerry and the overall font from "Designs on Jerry".
 * 9) Two heartwarming scenes where Tom loses shelter with Jerry cheering him up with coffee and Jerry wishes to find a new home after losing it due to his and Tom’s antics.
 * 10) Michael Peña and Patsy Ferran's acting is decent and fits the lore of Tom and Jerry while providing great interactions with the titular characters.
 * 11) The action scene with Tom and Jerry pursuing Preeta on an electric skateboard and drone is fantastic, and, makes for an engaging climax to which they finally put their differences aside for once. That is until they fight again at the end of the movie.
 * 12) The film isn't afraid to demonstrate that Tom and Jerry are more than just rivals, with a great arc of them trying to get along if they really want to stay in the hotel: Proving that they may put their differences aside to achieve a certain goal.
 * 13) While the trap score sounds very out-of-place, Christopher Lennertz's score is pretty passable to hear.
 * 14) The vintage style CGI animation is at least surprisingly good when compared to most hybrid adaptations of other cartoons, children's books, and in some cases, video games, where photorealistic CGI is used for the main characters. All thanks to Framestore!
 * 15) The characters are still great and likable, including the cat and mouse duo themselves Tom and Jerry, and especially Spike, who was written back to being a likable, tough-guy bulldog with a good side despite his brutish nature after being written to be a mean-spirited, short-tempered and unlikable jerk who hates and bullies both Tom and Jerry in The Tom and Jerry Show.

Videos
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Reception
While Tom & Jerry was well-received by audiences and fans for its faithfulness to the source material, it received generally negative reviews from critics.

Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 31% of critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 4.60/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "It isn't the worst of the long-squabbling duo's feature-length adventures, but Tom & Jerry is disappointingly short on the anarchic spirit of their classic shorts". According to Metacritic, which assigned the film a weighted average score of 32 out of 100 based on 17 critics, the film received "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 79% of audience members gave it a positive score, with 60% saying they would definitely recommend it.

Chris Stuckmann gave this movie an F grade.

Box office
As of March 22, 2021, Tom & Jerry has grossed $33.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $43.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $77.5 million.

Trivia

 * Chloë Grace Moretz, who plays Kayla (the supporting human character being a young female hotel employee) was born on the 57th anniversary of Tom and Jerry, coincidentally.
 * Uli Meyer, an animator for Who Framed Roger Rabbit and a supervising animator for Space Jam, is the head of Character Animation/Sketch Vis for the movie.
 * This is the first film to officially debut the new Warner Animation Group logo to match with the new shield that Warner Bros. debuted in November 2019, although there is the variant where the logo has slightly more cream-colored, morning sky-style clouds.
 * This is the first theatrically released film about Tom and Jerry since the animated 1992 film.
 * It was originally scheduled to be released in theaters on April 16th, 2021, but was pushed up to December 23rd, 2020. It was later pushed back to March 5th due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but was moved up a week to avoid competition with Raya and the Last Dragon.
 * A float of the characters appeared in the 94th Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade to promote the film.
 * On September 1, 2020, it was announced that Australian toy company Moose Toys made a deal with Warner Bros. to make merchandise for the film along with the film Space Jam: A New Legacy.
 * The movie is dedicated to Gene Deitch, who died a year before the film’s release; he directed the Tom and Jerry shorts from 1961 to 1962.
 * On March 8, 2021, some HBO Max viewers who attempted to watch the film were accidentally shown Zack Snyder's Justice League, a movie which was supposed to release 10 days later. HBO Max quickly fixed the issue within two hours.
 * To coincide with the release of this film, mh:besttvshows: Warner Bros. released two shorts of Tom and Jerry Special Shorts, a revival of the original theatrical shorts produced by mh:besttvshows: Warner Bros. Animation, which made its debut on HBO Max on February 20th, 2021. The show shares the same animation style with Looney Tunes Cartoons, made by the same crew. The shorts were removed a month later for unknown reasons. On July 8, 2021 the shorts has been brought back.
 * The beginning scene of the trailer is cut from the film. According to producer Chris DeFaria, it was cut due to its audience being already familiar with the conflict of Tom and Jerry, aside from saving time to get to the point, where Tom dreams to become a pianist and Jerry finding a new home taking place after the events of both of them losing their previous home and move on for a fresh start to their lives.