{"id":47591,"date":"2021-03-01T16:42:49","date_gmt":"2021-03-01T21:42:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=47591"},"modified":"2021-03-01T16:43:18","modified_gmt":"2021-03-01T21:43:18","slug":"tom-and-jerry-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2021\/03\/tom-and-jerry-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom and Jerry Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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            I didn\u2019t really grow up with the \u201cTom and Jerry\u201d cartoon. I was more into Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, but I understand the two pairs have similarly adversarial relationships. The key difference is that while Wile E. definitely wants to eat the Road Runner, I don\u2019t think Tom the Cat would know what to do with Jerry the Mouse if he ever caught him. The two need each other as enemies to give their lives purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The new film takes place in a world where all humans are live-action and all animals are animated. At least the animated animals are 2-D cartoons and not CGI abominations. Tom moves to New York City with dreams of becoming a famous pianist. Jerry moves to NYC with dreams of lazing about in a luxury apartment. Frankly it\u2019s hard not to side with Tom here for following his passion, as opposed to Jerry, who wants to get ahead with as little effort as possible. Tom tries to earn a living by playing music for people in Central Park, and it takes just a few seconds of Jerry trying to upstage him by dancing for the entire act to be ruined and Tom\u2019s only keyboard to be destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Tom\u2019s not the only one to lose his job in the fray. Delivery girl Kayla (Chlo\u00eb Grace Moretz) is knocked from her bike and her package destroyed, which gets her fired. She\u2019s the kind of person who gets fired a lot, so now she\u2019s really at the end of her rope. She goes to a nearby hotel to soothe herself with free cookies, where she learns that they\u2019re hiring temporary staff for an upcoming high-profile wedding between social darlings Preeta (Pallavi Sharda) and Ben (Colin Jost). She steals an impressive resume from a snobby applicant and cons her way into an interview. Hotel General Manger Mr. Dubros (Rob Delaney) takes an instant liking to Kayla and hires her on the spot, but Events Manager Terence (Michael Pe\u00f1a) smells a rat \u2013 and he hasn\u2019t even encountered Jerry yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            High-strung chef Jackie (Ken Jeong) is the first to spot Jerry trying to make a home for himself in the walls of the hotel. Kayla is soon tasked with trying to remove the mouse as discreetly as possible, and she has the idea to outsource the job to Tom, who wants a new keyboard as a reward for thwarting his mortal enemy. Of course, Kayla has greatly overestimated Tom\u2019s competence (he tries to send Jerry away in a box without understanding how boxes work), and he and Jerry wreak far more havoc than if Jerry had just been allowed to keep to himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The climactic set piece of the film is the lavish wedding, where Kayla tries to keep things together despite the presence of Tom, Jerry, Ben\u2019s dog (who wants to beat up Tom), Preeta\u2019s cat (who wants to eat up Jerry), a tiger (who wants to beat up Ben\u2019s dog), peacocks (who are skittish around all the cats), and elephants (who are skittish around Jerry the mouse). Basically what I\u2019m saying is that the wedding cake doesn\u2019t stand a chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Creatively, I don\u2019t have much good to say about \u201cTom and Jerry.\u201d The physical humor is predictable and played-out, and the emphasis on the live-action characters is ill-advised. I laughed at maybe one out of ten gags, which puts the movie somewhere above \u201cpainful,\u201d but not worthy of a recommendation. As for the kids in the film\u2019s target audience, I don\u2019t think they\u2019ll go for the movie either, since it can\u2019t match the frantic pace of the cartoon. Commercially, I\u2019m begrudgingly proud of the film. It made a bit over $13 million at the domestic box office over the weekend, making it the biggest movie of 2021 so far in its opening weekend alone. I\u2019m glad something can open to $13 million in this era, even if it\u2019s \u201cTom and Jerry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTom and Jerry\u201d is playing in theaters and streaming on HBO Max. The film is rated PG for cartoon violence, rude humor and brief language. Its running time is 101 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             I didn\u2019t really grow up with the \u201cTom and Jerry\u201d cartoon. I was more into Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, but I understand the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":47592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47591"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}