Review of Tom & Jerry (2021) by Player2-Water — 13 Mar 2021

E-Value: 6.

Acting: 7.

Plot: 4.

After the infamous 1992 theatrical animated movie, Tom and Jerry return to the big screen as a live-action/animated hybrid movie much like 1996’s Space Jam and 2003’s Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Originally slated to release in December 2020, the movie was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tom and Jerry is currently available to watch in theatres that are open and in HBO Max at the same time.

After many years of never-ending battle, Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse moved to New York separately to start a new life. They come across each other again when Jerry ruin Tom’s street performance as a pianist. During the chase, Tom accidentally bump into Kayla Forester (Moretz), who does odd jobs as a delivery girl. This end up costing Kayla to lose her job while Jerry escape to Royal Gate Hotel and take up residence there.

Desperate to look for a new job, Kayla steal a job seeker’s resume and manage to get hire immediately by Henry DuBros (Delaney), the owner of the hotel and Terrance Mendoza (Peña), the event manager and her new superior. Kayla’s position is a temporary staff which she has to work in a high profile wedding event. At the same time, Jerry has been stealing foods and items from hotel guests to ramp up his new lifestyle and Kayla is unable to catch him.

When Tom finally found Jerry in one of the hotel rooms, they wreck up the whole room and his presence is made known to Kayla due to noise complaints from the hotel guests. Fearing that Jerry may ruin the wedding, she befriend and hire Tom to catch Jerry with the approval from DuBros despite Terrance’s objection.

Just like the cartoon shorts from the old days, this movie stays faithful to the source materials and charms from Tom and Jerry. The movie also used many of Tom and Jerry’s slapstick cartoon violence from the shorts and it worked really well. The humours also contained many running gags from the shorts that you have recognise. As for the animation, I think it is really great that the filmmakers went with the cel-shaded look for the cartoon characters instead of using CGI because using the latter would be terrible and may not have work well with live-action scenes.

For the human characters, they have decent performance but I really like Chloë Grace Moretz and Michael Peña’s acting in this movie. They really did their best in their comedic roles to make the movie watchable. Speaking of human characters, the movie did its best to have both human and cartoon characters enough screentime and not giving too much focus on human characters which is something what the 1992 animated movie did.

Unfortunately, the plot of the movie is not exactly great. It is really predictable and have been overused in other movies. Not going to spoil but you will know when you watch it. To be honest, I am not really surprised considering that Tom and Jerry is known for its slapsticks comedy and cartoon violence while plots are hardly matter. Overall, the movie at best is mediocre. If you ignore the plot and watch for its slapstick comedy, you will have a good time watching this movie.

Credits goes to Tim Story for his direction and making this movie better than the 1992 animated movie. He really did the franchise justice with this movie. Minor spoiler: Tom and Jerry really does not talk in this movie. Not even once. The trailer already proved that. If you are looking for something to distract from the current pandemic, this is the movie you would want to watch especially if you are fan of Tom and Jerry. There is a post-credits scene but it was really nothing at all. You can just skip it as it does not really add anything or set up for a sequel.