By Jake Wilson
TOM AND JERRY ★★½
(G) 101 minutes
Even for cartoon characters, there’s not a lot of depth to Tom and Jerry. The cat chases the mouse, but never quite catches him: that’s about it, except for the abundant slapstick violence, which has always made some adults uneasy. Both characters, but Tom especially, get burnt, squashed, banged around and twisted into grotesque shapes, emerging none the worse for the next battle in their eternal war.
Chloe Grace Moretz as Kayla with the film’s eponymous misfits Tom the cat and Jerry the mouse. Credit: © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
In returning the duo to the big screen, nothing would be more fatal than an over-supply of sophistication. By and large, this is an error avoided by director Tim Story (Ride Along) and screenwriter Kevin Costello (Brigsby Bear), in their new Tom and Jerry movie, which sets the animated leads down in a live-action New York City and has them do their thing.
Visually the pair are a little more three-dimensional than previously, and the brutality has regrettably been toned down: there’s little sense of them genuinely wanting to kill each other. But the simplicity of their relationship is intact – and, crucially, they don’t talk, as they did in the widely reviled Tom and Jerry: The Movie from 1993.
Weaving a feature-length narrative around their antics remains a challenge. Here, the solution involves Chloe Grace Moretz as Kayla, a good-natured young conwoman who has hustled her way into a job at a fancy hotel that is hosting the wedding of the season.
At worst, this plot threatens to turn Tom and Jerry themselves into a sideshow. But Moretz seems very comfortable standing up straight and doing big, stunned reactions, with occasionally a little snorting laugh: clearly she’d far rather be playing to an audience of six-year-olds than get stuck doing glamour parts.
Animated leads Tom and Jerry explore New York in this live-action reboot. Credit: © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
The boldest choice is to have the film take place in a world where no one blinks at seeing Tom playing the piano in the hotel lobby, and where all animals from goldfish to elephants are cartoons by default.
There came a moment when Spike the bulldog (voiced by Bobby Cannavale, naturally) paused and squatted while crossing the road, and I wondered if his unseen droppings would be animated or the real thing; then I wondered what I was doing with my life.
In the field of pest-control-themed slapstick, Tom and Jerry is no Mouse Hunt. As an exercise in teaming classic cartoon characters with human stars, it’s no Looney Tunes: Back In Action. And when it comes to animals wreaking havoc in a hotel, it is definitely no Dunstan Checks In.
But these are very high standards to judge by. Taken on its merits, this is perfectly harmless entertainment, from which your children should return at least somewhat amused, and not too cast down by improving messages.