Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tom and Jerry’ on HBO Max, a Borderline-Blasphemous Reboot of a Classically Violent Cartoon

I’d like to preface this discussion of new HBO Max/Warner Bros. movie Tom and Jerry with an anecdote: The early days of cable TV were a treasure trove of reruns. Every day, I’d come home from school and ravenously consume a half hour’s worth of Tom and Jerry shorts. They became deeply assimilated into my subconsciousness. (What’d I watch before school? The Great Space Coaster, of course.) I’m surely not alone when I assert that no reiteration of the iconic cat-and-mouse duo will ever live up to those wonderfully chaotic displays of brutal cartoon violence, the appreciation for which I’m passing down to my offspring, because one of the few timeless and universal truths of pop culture is that chaotic displays of brutal cartoon violence are uproariously funny. Here’s hoping this new reboot, reimagining or re-whatever of the franchise at least pays tribute to the assaultive, bone-crunching ruckus we all love so much.

TOM AND JERRY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Before we get into the whos and whats and wherefores of the plot, we need to establish certain truths about the reality depicted on screen. Herein is a world where humans are live action and animals are animated — even the animal products, like the ham hocks we see hanging in a hotel kitchen. One assumes the massive dookie a cartoon dog leaves on the street is also animated, but it thankfully doesn’t make it into the shot. Some items are also photo-realistic animation, e.g., a baseball bat one animal might use to smash another animal’s face in. Most of the animals speak English, although I don’t believe the humans can hear them. A few select animals are mute, most likely because they have 80-year legacies to uphold, specifically Tom the cat and Jerry the mouse, eternal rivals within the evolutionary predator-prey dynamic — although they do emit laughter, usually when the other shrieks in agonizing pain after getting their skull smashed with a hot iron or plummeting several stories to the pavement.

Curiously, Tom also can sing now, sometimes with a frightful vocoder effect, and humans can hear him. Keyboard under his arm, he dreams of one day opening for John Legend. He busks on the street in New York City, pretending to be blind for sympathy cash. One day, a homeless Jerry scurries into the scene and, hoping to earn some nickels as a dancing mouse, upends Tom’s grift. They’ll be enemies for life now, right? Maybe! Wait — did we just witness an origin story? The Day Tom Met Jerry? It seems so. This must be a reboot then. Glad that’s cleared up. Now we can transition to the numbingly dull human drama that eats up way too much of this story.

Tom chases Jerry through the street, knocking over Kayla (Chloe Grace Moretz) as she delivers a precariously stacked pile of freshly laundered underwear on her bicycle. (The gig economy really sucks, eh?) It’s quite a mess, and her boss sends her packing. Desperate for work, Kayla fibs her way into a temporary position at a swanky Manhattan hotel, where she’ll coordinate the wedding of two high-society peabrains (Colin Jost and Pallavi Sharda), who arrive with their cartoon pets, a bulldog and missy-prissy cat who should look familiar, unless you’re a Tom and Jerry noob.

It won’t be an easy job for Kayla, of course. Jerry moves into the hotel, and the manager (Rob Delaney), his highly competitive lickspittle (Michael Pena) and the lunatic chef (Ken Jeong) don’t take kindly to the infestation. Kayla’s first order of business is to eradicate the rodent intruder, so she subcontracts Tom to assist. Is this a good idea? I dunno. But with a week to go until the wedding, one thing is certain: CHAOS REIGNS.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Tom and Jerry’s integration of classic characters into modern contexts is as charming (read: charmless) as relatively recent Smurfs, Garfield and Alvin and the Chipmunks endeavors. Visually, though, it has more in common with the 2D animation/live action blend dating back to stuff like The Three Caballeros, Song of the South (cough) and The Incredible Mr. Limpet, all the way through Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. (It’s also likely to be less critically reviled than 1992 floparoo Tom and Jerry: The Movie, a blasphemous outing in which the characters could actually speak.)

Performance Worth Watching: Plenty of thankless, but no doubt well-paid work here. I’d say Pena makes the best use of his comedy skills, considering the colossal mediocrity of the material.

Memorable Dialogue: Jerry’s rodent real estate agent: “It screams ‘mouse house.’ Can I say that? Is it copyrighted?”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: One mistake Tom and Jerry makes is assuming its audience — and especially the younger members — will give a quarter of a half of a tenth of a crap about the state of the society couple’s relationship. Although an iota of effort is put into making them sympathetic characters, there’s no question we’d rather see their zillion-dollar gauchestravaganza of a wedding permanently obliterated by a whirling two-story cartoon-animal clobber-tornado. The mindlessly destructive animated cat and mouse are the heroes here, not the rich people. THEIR HAPPINESS MUST BE ANNIHILATED.

Another major faux pas occurs when Kayla kneels down and tells Tom and Jerry, “You guys gotta stop fighting. It’s like you’ve been doing it for years.” No. No no no no no. No. They EXIST to jam sharp objects into each other’s eyeballs and electrocute each other with small kitchen appliances. To force them into an alliance — which inevitably happens here — is an aberration flying in the face of not just decades of cartoon precedent, but nature itself. As a child, I always saw Tom as the antagonist on the basis of his size, and the culture’s purveying, and often troubling, anti-cat sentiment. But the truth is, Tom and Jerry are equals in their sadistic impulses, and the mouse compensates for the size difference with slightly superior intelligence. There have been occasions when Tom and Jerry showed true concern for each other, and understandably so. They are yin and yang; with the death of one brings the purposelessness of the other. But to see them unite in the spirit of saving the nuptials of billionaires is beyond the pale.

As you may expect, there are more superficial observations to be made here. There’s an odd sequence in which Tom and Jerry sup alcoholic beverages (!) in order to bash each other with the bottles; maybe that sets a bad example for children. Moretz is a decent placeholder representative for the human characters, establishing an acceptably upbeat presence and putting forth a decent effort while reciting dialogue to a space in the air where a cartoon animal will be placed. Kids with limited exposure to the Tom and Jerry franchise might find it reasonably amusing, and there’s enough egregious slapstick mayhem here to give their elders a springboard to introduce them to the real stuff. But we adults with Crambone in our bones should leave the youngsters to it.

Our Call: Philosophical objections aside, Tom and Jerry is fine. OK, make it fine-minus. Maybe actually less than fine. OK, just SKIP IT. It’s an adequate don’t-pay-extra-to-see-it kind of medium-bad timewaster that’s FKO — For Kids Only.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Tom and Jerry on HBO Max