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Tom & Jerry the Movie review
September 2, 2008 12:05 am
I find myself agreeing with that guy with the glasses: |
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EVENTS
RECENT BREW TV EPISODES By Sitji Chou. A man tries to understand the futility of creating human connections when they’ve been impeded by the microcosmic void between material particles.  By Nikolas Ilic. A story of a Scottish sheep farmer who shears his sheep and tosses them cliff side…  By Dylan Hayes. Lesson 1: Everyone gambles, not everyone loses. Lesson 2: The world is full of traps. Lesson 3: You cannot win if you don’t take risks.  By Jean Yi. A personal and humorous exploration of being the ‘Nice Girl’ and coming to terms with the label and all its different meanings.  By Ferg Brennan. A lonely fisherman catches an unusual fish, which he decides to keep as a pet. |
Hahaha, that was fun! I also noticed that the boat at the end looked a lot like the boat of Mickey in Steamboat Willy.
Good job!
Love this guy. I couldn’t agree with him more. I love that he used the terms “douchebaggery” and “sucks assballs” as those are phrases that frequently come out of my own mouth. Anyway while I agree with him 100% in spirit and am now glad I never saw this movie in theaters (or at all) he is factually mistaken on one point: Jerry actually did speak, and sing and dance for that matter, at least once during the golden years. It was in ‘Anchors Aweigh” when he played the “mouse king” who sung and danced with Gene Kelly. Other than that, Bravo Glasses guy. I look forward to more of your work.
Holy CRAP! Glad I never saw this as a kid!
Saw the first ten minutes once – this was much better than sitting through the rest of it would have been!
And that was obviously the Tom Selleck version of Indiana Jones.
Tom talked a couple of times in the cartoons. If memory serves, the lines were: “Help! a mouse! Eeeeeee!” (faking an hysterical woman while phoning mouse exterminators) and “One custard pie?? Lemme have it!!”
I agree 100%. And yes, Jerry did speak in the Gene Kelly film ANCHOR’S AWEIGH (1945). But, that was a feature, not a self contained cartoon. So, the Glasses Guy is correct.
Btw, did anyone else notice how well the Glasses Guy channeled Mike Jitlov! Right down to the facial expressions. WEIRD.
I unfortunately saw this in the cinema, what a waste of my time! I remember then thinking “This is not Tom and Jerry!”
That was right and pretty funny, though I actually did enjoy the first two musical numbers to a certain extent. They got one thing right: having Henry Mancini for the soundtrack. The movie got unwatchable when the human characters appeared. At least it had Droopy’s cameo.
About the voices I wouldn’t mind some talking but at least when they talk in the old cartoons the voices were funnier.
Also the animation looked incredibly cheap and weak, Glasses Guy is completely right about Tom’s yelling, it is a lot funnier in the classics.
There was an uncharacteristically large amount of gab in “Zoot Cat”.
Not that it matters, but Tom sang a jazz song in “Solid Serenade.” …but that was actually a GOOD cartoon.
ACH! Curse you Jerry, you’ve forced me to watch clips of this dreadful film in the guise of an excellent review!
BTW does anybody else think Aunt Figg is a blatant ripoff of both Ursula and Gerald Scarfe’s design of Pink’s mother (on whom Ursula was based anyway)?
So how come Henry Mancini got a free pass in this review?
And they talked and sang all the time in the original shorts. “What’s jumpin’, chick?”
I don’t know how this could be broken down any further. How did the creators of this loose sight of what Tom and Jerry was all about. Then again, if you think about it, it’s exactly what was killing the industry where they added “realistic” violence, and tried to follow the old disney aesthetic. Usually that’s really good, but not for Tom and Jerry..I’m kinda glad I didnt see this movie.
Mike Jitlov…perhaps. I thought he was channeling Weird Al. In any case very funny and very true.
I think this guy is related to Weird Al.
Wow, that was brilliantly done. The review I mean – not the movie. Though I did really like the animation still.
There was a TOM AND JERRY theatrical movie?
Wow, that movie is worse than I ever imagined.
well, and he forgot to tell how the characters slowly got into decadence after their MGM years. It didn’t happen from one moment to another. I just saw yesterday the Popeye’s DVD containing the character’s history, and looks pretty similar. They’ve destroyed EVERYTHING.
Best review of Tom & Jerry the Movie EVER !
The review actually made it worth having suffered through watching that movie , which as he says “is about an hour-and-a-half too long !”
Oh, geez, lighten up. As bad as the clips were, they were funnier than Guy with the glasses. Freaking out over an admittedly sad attempt to bring an antique back to life. The sensibilities have changed since Tom and Jerry’s heyday, and the filmmakers tried to adapt. Yep, they failed, but has the new Saturday morning toon which adheres to the no-talking, hit-each-other-a-lot formula any better? Of course not. The slapstick in the original series was occasionally funny (when it wasn’t appalling) because of comic timing. A concept apparently unheard-of today, even in dialogue-driven toons. Anyway, this guy’s a pain. He almost makes the dreadful cartoon look good by comparison.
I wonder if Puggsy, the fifth wheel skateboarding dog, was any direct influence on Itchy’s & Scratchy’s pal “Poochy” ?
Apparently the best thing about that movie is that it made such a funny review possible.
Shame… looked like some semi-attractive animation and backgrounds. Sigh, if only real film makers got to use the resources of a studio to make such things.
Of course, that Tom and Jerry Saturday morning cartoon had a budget about 1/10000th of “Tom and Jerry the Movie”, which was animated entirely in the USA.
As much as I hate the movie, I love this number:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNbw1kUDp5M
Hahahahaha! Great review. Oh my.
Joseph R. Barbera was more than a consultant on this film. He turned up at Film Roman nearly every day during its production, then accompanied director Phil Roman on a worldwide publicity tour upon its release. Despite everything, “Tom and Jerry the Movie” was the number one film in Sweden! And Henry Mancini should not get a free pass. The songs, both music and lyrics, were his. This was not the first time Barbera married an Oscar winning composer with what would turn out to be questionable material. He hired another musical legend to write the score of “Heidi’s Song”, which the Guy with Glasses thankfully hasn’t yet reviewed.
The Lonesome Mouse has them talking like Dead End Kids too.
I’d like to point out that this isn’t the first time Tom and Jerry have been defiled. In Anchors Aweigh, Jerry talked, sang, and danced with Gene Kelly.
Found this in the trivia section on Imdb’s site:
“Chuck Jones was set to make a Tom and Jerry movie in the 1970s, but eventually pulled out after being unable to find a suitable script.”
Looks like 20 years later they still hadn’t found one.
This movie looks terrible, though not badly animated. I haven’t seen it, but the creators had an unenviable task. Is there a successful animated film based on characters from shorts (Roger Rabbit doesn’t count)? Walt Disney was right; when he decided to make a feature, many thought it would star Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, and he said that they were best for shorts.
“9″ was an award winning short that was supposed to be made into a feature, but looks like it’s in development hell, even with Tim Buton’s involvement. And what ever became of the feature based on the Oscar wining “The Chubb Chubbs”?
Ha! I thought this review was going to be super-lame, but it actually gave me a laugh.
This movie is particularily strange. Why do adults with money think that kids like singing so much? Is it because Disney first came out with really-well-done musicals and nobody thought the format of an animated film could change?
I remember being insulted when I was a kid watching this, because of all the nonsense they managed to pack the film with.
Wonder what would happen if somebody put this “guy with glasses” in charge of making an animated flick.
Both inside and outside the review, the movie comes across as a parody of a contemporary Don Bluth film. Glad I’m not the only one who noticed the similarity between Puggsy and Itchy and Scratchy’s Poochie. The only thing worse than a cast of Mary Sues is a cast of self-consciously hip Mary Sues.
Thad pointed out THE LONESOME MOUSE, which at first glance seems to have inspired the voices here. But I suspect the similarity is just a coincidence; everything else about the film suggests that its makers couldn’t have watched more than a scant few classic shorts for inspiration.
Had they watched more than a couple, we might at least have had Spike, Butch, Toots, and Tuffy to save us from the dire new supporting animals. Then again, I wouldn’t like to see Spike, Butch, Toots, and Tuffy singing and dancing…
Well, not having a decent script didn’t stop Chuck Jones from making a ton of Tom and Jerry shorts in the ’60s.
What’s the fun of making a feature of the Chubb Chubbs once the red herring that the pay-off was based on is well known?
And that wasn’t a really tough red herring to figure out either.
This guy is the greatest! :-)
Too much of them “sentence enhancers”!
Even if I swear someday, it was just plain teenage cool internet slang anger.
Sure there was swearing in classic cartoons with “Jack*you-know-what*”, misuse of “the bad place”, and the oppisite of “Darn” , but I think there’s way too much swearing in this society.
If he really wanted to rant about the T&J movie, then he’d better dress up like a stereotypical old man and say silly non-insulting words that are used in wacky preschool shows.
“The Simpsons”, “Family Guy”, and “South Park”, among others, are giving kids a message that “Adults are stupid and immature”, but really, they’re good people in general.
The movie review’s final words sound like a Youtube user insulting Viacom just because the Viacom people are capitialists.
I never saw this movie when it came out… when I saw the trailer for it I had a feeling it was going to be crappy, so I avoided it like the Plague.
I’ve seen the Saturday morning T&J cartoons on KidsWB and I’ve not been impressed. I give an “A” for effort for trying to recapture the look and spirit of the originals; but the series nevertheless falls short of the mark. The music underscoring for this series could double as a pitch for Kraft Foods… it’s the “cheesiest” sounding garbage I’ve ever heard!
Regarding dialogue in the original shorts: it was sparse, at best… just a few throw-away lines here and there, with no consistency in voice characterization. Bill Hanna, of course did all of Tom’s anguished screams and horrified gasps in those shorts. Other times Tom’s voice, when applicable, would have been provided by either Paul Frees or Daws Butler. In “Zoot Cat” and the “Anchors Aweigh” segment, Jerry is voiced by Sara Berner.
ParamountCartoons, please. put the Kool-aid down. rub your eyes and take a 14-year long shower. the movie sucked.
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Three Caballeros ,with Donald Duck, was brilliant and A Goofy Movie was pretty good IMO.
I remember seeing the storyboards at Film Roman years ago. It looked bad on the boards — so it wasn’t going to get any better in production.
I’m still amazed how many people with bad ideas can still find financing. I suppose that’s the real achievement, after all.
I was answering to the question: Is there a successful animated film based on characters from shorts (Roger Rabbit doesn’t count)?
For some reason it seems the quote is not watchable in my previous comment?
The film in general feels like Phil Roman all over, stock movement, expressions, side characters, and bland colors. What was the point of adding more villians to the plot, Captain Kiddy and Dr. Applecheeks ? Just for it to make the 90 minute mark ?
This has to be the most hilarious movie review I’ve ever seen.
Everything about this film is ALL WRONG! The horrible backgrounds with primary and secondary colors, the terribly bland character designs. They even bastarized DROOPY! The worst parts are the story and voice actors. They are so bloody annoying. DAMN YOU PHIL ROMAN!
Roberto, I’d say Mickey Mouse’s THREE MUSKETEERS is pretty close to successful. At any rate, lots of the comedy is good, the timing is first-rate, and Mickey in particular is deliberately keyed close to his Floyd Gottfredson comics persona, enabling him to engage in both dramatic and slapsticky scenes. It’s quite awhile since an animated Mickey was in wild swordfights or wrestling matches with Pegleg Pete, as we see him here.
For better or worse, there are songs, most delivered by singing narrator Toby Tortoise in an Allan-a-Dale-like troubador role. They’re based on classical and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and are genuinely funny. Still, even when they’re done right, one senses that they were rammed in by request from on high. It’s easy for me to imagine a long-form Mickey film based on Gottfredson’s “Mickey Mouse Sails for Treasure Island,” “The Phantom Blot” or “Island in the Sky,” needing no songs whatsoever.
He’s like the Penn & Teller for geeks.
This Guy with No Glasses should interpret all media for the blind.
Symptomatic of the Hanna Barbera malaise that struck cartoons in the seventies and continues to this day. This was hilarious, spot on, but NSFW, if anyone needed to know that.
Ha I beat you guys to it!
But, yes this is an excellent reveiw.
That guy’s fantastic.
I have to disagree with him about the ‘what do we care about nice’ and the ‘money’ songs though, those were redeeming points for me.
The review was pretty funny!
I have no trouble with Tom & Jerry talking, as they talked before (though Spike and Nibbles/Tuffy spoke commonly, go figure!), and think they needed better, funnier voices like Bill Hanna, who did their original vocal effects. But overall, Tom & Jerry still deserved much better than this derivative mess of a film.
I saw this movie on video, and I regret it to this day. This guy is awesome, though. Well, him and the AVGN.
Most short cartoon characters (slight exceptions) don’t translate when they last ninety minutes or so.
That’s why I’m amazed Warner Bros. is going through with that Marvin Martian movie. Didn’t they learn from THIS piece of *bleep*?
When I saw the preview on TV years ago all I could say was: “Must be great to have a couple million dollars to flush down the toilet…” Glasses Guy is dead on. I have friends who had to sit through this film with their kids and they came back to me saying they were in hell for 90 minutes. And even some of the kids were asking about going and doing something else half-way through the cartoon!
ParamountCartoons, cartoons like “The Simpsons”, “Family Guy”, and “South Park” are not kid shows in the first place. Your whole comment screams “I’m old! Get off my lawn!”
I was VERY mad in 1992 when I heard that this was coming out, ESPECIALLY with:
Henry Mancini
Joe Barbera
Henry Gibson
and the other individuals, and leave us not forgot
MIRAMAX
MIRAMAX
MIRAMAX
MIRAMAX
UgH! How could these entities do to this us cartoon fans. What is next, an all singing Herman and Katnip or Tweety and Sylvester who are, BTW, NOT friends in their revivals.
GAWD!
This movie wasn’t made by Warners. It was a Miramax release. Miramax was then a division of Disney.
Most short cartoon characters (slight exceptions) don’t translate when they last ninety minutes or so”
It’s because they stick them in some half-assed situation with boring leads. Warners is an even worse cluprit because they play stooges to live action leads ala Space Jam and Looney Tunes Back in Action, neither film belonged to the Looney Tunes.
The only way to feature classic cartoons in a feature film is to cast them like actors in a film. Tom and Jerry could have worked as a full length Mousketeer film. Or look at The Scarlet Pumpernickel, that could easily be a feature.
wow…. thanx internet, you made “Gene Deitch era” of T&J seem so much better by comparison
tho I’m still nerd-raging on the edited DVDs *rage rage rage*
speaking of blood in teh cut-up Tom there – wasn’t one of the original MGM rules for the series “no blood! They aren’t to be “seriously” hurt ever” ????
I’ve been a fan of That Guy ever since his videos were on YouTube. He’s one of the few negative commentators that manages to be genuinely funny.
Tom and Jerry gave him lots of material to work with. That said, I thought his take-down of Space Jam was even better.
Good thing the worst of those million dollar failed Warner Looney Tunes shorts meant to accompany “Back in Action” never saw release. Larry Doyle’s karma.
I’m surprised that neither he nor anyone commenting mentioned the uncanny similarity (ripoff) the Aunt in the film bore to the Little Mermaid’s villianess Ursula.
Jerry speaks in one of the shorts, Blue Cat Blues, narrating the story with the voice of Orson Welles (Paul Frees). Marv: Leslie Bricusse wrote the song lyrics of Tom & Jerry the Movie. Henry Mancini never wrote lyrics.
This movie was made during the general time period when movies based from classic characters were being made (Felix the Cat, The Jetsons, and the aborted Betty Boop movie). One thing NONE of them figured out is that some of these characters don’t belong in a Disney-like universe. That was already proven with Felix back in the 1930’s.
And despite Film Roman’s history with Garfield and Friends and The Simpsons, they obviously were not trained to take on theatrical features.
Funny how That Guy with the Glasses doesn’t know Hanna and Barbera did an even worse revival of Tom and Jerry in 1975. And they were friends in every short there, too.
Racheal:
I see not only Ursula but Madame Medusa from The Rescuers in Aunt Figg.
“It’s Robyn’s father Indiana Jones!”
I always laugh at that.
As bad as this movie is, it’s a proven fact that so-called angry critics, who criticize things everyone knows are terrible and add several thousand screamed obscenities to them are about as funny as a coronary, and that includes That Guy with the Glasses.
Why do actual creative writing like LoadingReadyRun or I-Mockery when you can simply scream obscenities for 10 minutes?
God, those people piss me off so badly.
‘Funny how That Guy with the Glasses doesn’t know Hanna and Barbera did an even worse revival of Tom and Jerry in 1975. And they were friends in every short there, too.’
True, true. Overall, i like his reviews. In addition to this, ‘Space Jam’, and the ‘Super Mario Bros’ movie, he also trashed ‘Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue’
Well, I’d say he’s the last person who should be criticizing others’ work for going on too long, but it’s funny nonetheless.
Should be of note this was back when most animated movies outside Disney often felt they had to be Disney in order to rake in the cash, and yes, we also went through that period when taking classic characters like Felix and putting him in a movie was done out of sheer indulgence and no care given to those that may have a different opinion about their usage in recent years.
I’m not to big into Nostalgia Critic/Guy With The Glasses’ reviews personally, often seeing it as an off-shoot to what was being done with video games spear-headed by Angry Video Game Nerd. True Henry Mancini shouldn’t be let go of being mentioned here, but at times I wonder how much research was needed in order to do these in the first place. In his “Cartoon All Stars To The Rescue”, he mentions this was aired on ABC when in fact, all the Big Three had it on the same time that Saturday morning around April ‘90 when I first saw it from. He’s not too into the little details as it is much to look at these films from a perspective of someone who just re-awaken his nightmare after so many years of lying dormant in an attic. I’d probably be the same too if I subjected myself to some ugly piece of celluloid I wanted to deny it ever existed on the face of the earth.
Wonder if he did see Heidi’s Song? Love to see how he’d react to that one (and me having actually enjoyed it at an impressionable age).
I don’t care what anyone says the Tom and Jerry movie was very enjoyable! It was cool having them meet a dog & flea who were friends, even though they were a dog & a flea & having them teach T & J a cat and mouse can be friends too. Besides I liked the fact that they talked. That made it different from the cartoon & besides I enjoyed the way they surprised each other when they 1st talked.
Phil Roman, Joe Barbera, Roger Mayer, Justin Ackerman, Henry Mancini and rest of the film’s crew did alot of running around during production of the picture even it did not made that much cash at the box office a decade ago.
I’ve seen the other Tom and Jerry Movies & I think this one’s the best; it’s especially better than the Nutcracker one. That one wasn’t all that good.
I can’t believe people think Tom and Jerry the movie wasn’t even as good as the Gene Deitch episodes, which I think are the least good of all Tom and Jerry cartoons, though the Tom and Jerry Comedy Show isn’t much better!
I also can’t believe people hate Tom and Jerry:The Movie but they like Road Runner & Tweety & Sylvester cartoons. This movie was much better than any Road Runner or Tweety & Sylvester episode!
The guy w/ the glasses may hate this movie but the guy who’s had laser eye surgery, which am I, certainly doesn’t!
Tom and Jerry the Movie was cute, for crying out loud!
Tom & Jerry’s definitely better than Road Runner or Tweety & Sylvester. For one thing it’s not repetitive & predictable.
Tom and Jerry the movie was a very nice movie just like a whale is a very nice animal!
That guy w/ the glasses better not look for me in a dark alley! Just kidding! He’s entitled to his own opinion but it’s a shame he can’t see the fun of T&J the movie & neither can most people. It’s a bigger shame that they don’t see the fun of those T&J cartoons where they’re friends; for instance I believe they have the best theme song of any cartoon ever made.
The Tom and Jerry movie was similar, but better, than All Dogs go to Heaven or An American Tail.
The 1975 version of T&J is so good it makes it hard for me to understand the popularity of Bugs Bunny, not that I don’t have trouble understanding that anyway. Unlike Bugs Bunny those T&J cartoons are very cute & they have much better music than Bugs Bunny cartoons or any other WB cartoon. Call me crazy but I think those T&J cartoons are, by far, the best cartoons ever made!
Those T&J cartoons where they’re friends are definitely the most fascinating of all T&J cartoons.
Yes, indeed, Tom & Jerry the Movie was great! Yes, indeed, the main thing that made it great was them becoming friends!
Tom and Jerry the Movie is also similar but better than the Rescuers.