Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1992) - A Weird Way to Make a Movie Featuring an Iconic Duo

 

When it comes to iconic cartoons of the golden age, according to Wikipedia being from 1928 until 1972, which seems way to broad because that covers the rise of theatrical animation, television animation, Computer animation and just barely reaches the release of Pong, but regardless, in the era of theatrical shorts, there were many iconic names, Walt Disney, Termite Terrace, Fleischer Studios, and probably one of the most iconic, Hanna-Barbera. Though Tom and Jerry was an MGM property, they will forever be linked to the two men who brought television animation into the mainstream. Their form of comedy was not as well written as Looney Tunes, but more cartoony than a standard Disney cartoon, making Tom and Jerry icons in animation for years to come. Like most icons in animation, it was only a matter of time before they got their own movie, but these two work best with slapstick comedy and little to no dialogue, how can a movie around these two work?

I'm actually not the biggest Tom and Jerry fan, I do enjoy the shorts but I don't really go out of my way to watch them. I think to my favourite shorts from the Looney Tunes and remember just how brilliant the writing was and how well the characters worked off each other, or Goofy cartoons and remember some of the satire on American culture, and all I can really think about Tom and Jerry is how good the slapstick is, and it is very good slapstick, but I do tend to gravitate towards the better written comedy. Then again, a movie may be what this series needed, cinematic writing could make the slapstick even funnier, so does the iconic duo work in a theatrical setting?

The plot follows Tom and Jerry as they wander the streets after being left behind as their owners move house, or is it just owner? Doesn't matter, this part of the movie is almost completely silent, has a decent background track and works alright, it's not a particularly funny segment, but once the movie gets going it should get better right? Well, then they come across a little orphaned girl who is running away from her awful Aunt, this is in a Tom and Jerry movie. Okay, giving the benefit of the doubt that this was all necessary for a Tom and Jerry movie to function, that a human character with a problem for Tom and Jerry to assist with was the only way this movie could work, a little girl trying to avoid her awful guardian and look for her lost father is probably the last thing I would think of for a Tom and Jerry movie plot, it flows alright, but the plot is just flawed from the ground level.

The biggest thing a lot of people will bring up is the fact that Tom and Jerry actually speak in this movie. This is a problem because Tom and Jerry were mostly silent characters, though Tom did have some dialogue on occasion, but when that happened it was predominately to emphasize a joke. It's not like a movie with silent characters can't be done, or even characters that speak incomprehensibly, but there is a lot of effort that needs to be put into a movie like that. On top of that I really don't think Richard Kind works as the voice of Tom, he doesn't get the screams right, and it just doesn't sound right coming out of Tom's mouth, which you think would be a problem with the fact that the characters are speaking, but Jerry's voice is a bit closer to how I would imagine Jerry would sound. This was the final film role for the late Dana Hill, and while her voice does make Jerry sound very young, it does work better than Richard King as Tom. To be fair, the rest of the voice acting is okay, my only other problem is with Tony Jay who sounds like he's doing a Vincent Price impression.

On the topic of vocal performances, this movie is also a musical. I'll be honest, the songs are not great, but they aren't the worst I've heard. A big part of that is because of the music by Henry Mancini, who also did the music for The Great Mouse Detective. While I don't really like the songs, they are memorable, and the music is well-done, it's just a shame that they aren't all sung the best, or the best written. Which is similar to what can be said about the animation, it's not the worst and does bring the classic characters into the modern age visually, it's just a shame that some of the shots look weird and the editing is not the best. On top of that, the actual slapstick in the movie just does not hit as well as it should, we never see any of the characters morph to show the impact of the hit, or the slapstick itself is just very light and basic.  This movie doesn't work as a slapstick comedy, and it doesn't really work as an exciting adventure.

On some level, I can kind of respect the choices they made for this movie. I can imagine that the idea of making a movie starring Tom and Jerry was difficult from the get-go and a lot of tough choices had to be made, but on the other hand not a lot of those choices really work. It fails as a slapstick because the actual slapstick is not very good, it fails as an exciting adventure because it's Tom and Jerry these two things just should not go together. On the one hand you have Peanut Butter, the other hand has jalapeños, I mean with the right amount of each you probably could get something good, but when you throw them together without much thought as to how it would all work, you're going to get something bad, and yeah, this movie is bad, but I would not go as far as to say it's awful, it kind of harkens back to my thoughts on the Felix the Cat movie, where if you're a big fan of Tom and Jerry, you're probably going to despise this movie a lot more, but even if you aren't it still is not a good movie, stick with the classic shorts.

The Thief and the Cobbler (AKA: Arabian Knight) (1993) - A poor attempt at Disney-fication while tearing apart an artist's vision

If I were to bring up the name Richard Williams to any of you, what would you know that name for? Richard Williams was a British-Canadian animator whose work is highly regarded by film critics and animation fans. He is most known for being the animation director of the 1988 classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but he has also done a 1971 adaptation of A Christmas Carol alongside Chuck Jones, directed and animated the 1977 Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, and did title animation for films like 1967's Casino Royale and 1975's The Return of the Pink Panther. In 1964, Richard Williams began production on what was to be his crowning achievement, the film would be released just shy of three decades later. Remember when I talked about Animal Crackers and its troubled history? The Thief and the Cobbler is a history lesson in and of itself, I do not have the time to go through the entire production of this movie, but in the end, the film was taken from Richard Williams and was re-edited and turned into something different. This is the version many people know of today, and it was released by Miramax Films. Was this movie worth the troubled production-no it wasn't... kinda sorta... let's take a look!

The plot follows a lowly cobbler named Tack in the city of Baghdad, who falls in love with the beautiful princess Yum-Yum, however, a thief steals three magical golden balls from the top of a tower, and thus plunges Baghdad into peril. The great wizard Zigzag offers to trade the balls for the princess' hand in marriage, but after the king refuses point blank, he offers them to the powerful villain King One-Eye, who lays siege upon the golden city. Tack and the princess must find a way to defeat One-Eye and save the city. Plotwise, the movie is mostly solid, it has some filler moments, some moments that drag on too long, but no real major plotholes. That being said you can see where the plot is going and which character is which and yeah, the large character dressed in black and voiced by Vincent Price is the bad guy? You don't say </sarcasm>. That being said, I can give this movie a solid B for plot, maybe an A- on a good day.

Characters are not the films strongest point, though these aren't the worst characters I've ever seen, Tack is your standard protagonist, humble, do what is right, brave, not very interesting, except that he has the worst narration I've seen in any movie yet, it never goes away and feels the need to explain everything going on in the film. To give some comparison, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, kept the narration silent during big emotional scenes, and The Muppet Christmas Carol got rid of the narrators during the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come segment, this movie does not do anything of the sort. The thief has an inner monologue that is Jonathan Winters trying to be the Robin Williams' Genie character, with the modern references and that stuff. It was charming with the Genie because it was Robin Williams and his energy is just the right level of enjoying to watch. Jonathan Winters is not as energetic, and his references come off less like Robin Williams ad libbing for comedy and more like Gex. Remember Gex? Really, none of the characters are that interesting, I'm struggling to think of one nice thing to say, the princess is bland, the villain gets no screen time, the wizard suffers from the Unicron problem of only being interesting because of the voice actor. The only character I find has anything really interesting to say is the King, who does have some moments that make him better than other father characters. Yeah, the characters were not very memorable in this movie.

The biggest problem with this film though is just how hard it tries to be a Disney movie. I know that Miramax was a subsidiary of Disney at this time, but they did distribute some other films like... Freddie as F.R.O.7... um... Bionicle: The Movie - Mask of Light?... Pokémon: Destiny Deoxys? Oh forget it. My point is that this movie fails the hardest when it does try to be a traditional Disney film. Especially in the songs category, oh goodness the songs in this movie were dreadful. They had bad lyrics and forgettable melodies, give Playmobil: The Movie some credit, that movie had one song I remembered. Not that the rest of the audio is anything special, the background music was mostly ignorable, and they at one point played a snippet of "Night on Bald Mountain", all I can say is... Rocko did the parody better.

The one thing I can praise this film for though is the animation. I mean, it is smooth, surreal and one of the trippiest visual rides I've seen since Yellow Submarine. Again, this is a case where simply explaining how good it is would do the film a disservice. In fact, the animation is so good, that I would almost recommend the film just for the animation alone. It is a very surreal and very visually pleasing style, lots of the camera work is smooth and flows with the scenes. In fact, I think the only problem I have with the animation is sometimes the editing does not work in the animations favor. There is one scene where the Thief is bouncing off of awnings, but instead of following him on every bounce the camera cuts to a new awning and only follows him on small occasions. It's kind of distracting how different the editing makes the scenes feel, and that isn't the only problem with the editing. They also removed a lot of scenes, including the end battle climax, and the villain One-Eye's demise, in fact the film does have quite a few editing issues, scenes that don't gel together, reused animation. Individually, it isn't frequent, but you do notice it when it happens.

I... don't know how to really rank this movie. On the one hand, no, it is not a very good movie. In fact it's rather bad, but the incredibly good animation really does make this film worth watching. I guess it is a good compromise since we'll never get to see Richard William's true vision for the film, since he passed away in 2019, so... wait... there is a way we can see a film closer to his true vision. Yeah, I remember now, some fans have pulled together some cut scenes, scraps of test animation and more to make a version that is closer to the version that Richard Williams was hoping for... so yeah, I guess because of this films uninteresting characters, bad attempts to ape Disney and some really poor editing choices, I guess this film really isn't worth watching in the first place. In fact, this film probably isn't worth the curiosity of checking out for the animation... Yeah, if you want to see the animation, check out the Recobbled Cut of the film, or even just watch some scenes on YouTube, you can probably find the Thief and Cobbler chase pretty easily, so... yeah, I'd recommend avoiding this film, check out the Recobbled Cut instead.