Cat-tastrophe ‘Tom and Jerry’ puts the meh in merriment
Cartoon superstars Tom and Jerry made their screen debut in the 1945 technicolor musical “Anchors Away” with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra. Now, they’re back in a film combining live-action and 2D cartoon-like animation with Chloe Grace Moretz and Colin Jost in “Tom and Jerry,” and let’s just say it’s a big step down. Of course, the mostly non-speaking, everlastingly-chasing-one-another cat and mouse have appeared in hundreds of films in between, and they will be around for a long time whatever becomes of this mediocre entry.
In the film, directed by Dick Story (“Shaft”), Moretz is Kayla, a New York City millennial con artist, who talks her way into a job as an events planner at the Royal Gate Hotel just before the wedding of celebrity couple Ben (Jost) and Preeta (Pallavi Sharda), who are supposed to remind us of a certain famous duo. Kayla’s coworker Terence (Michael Pena) is welcoming at first. But after Tom and Jerry move into the hotel, things get troublesome.
The hotel’s high-strung chef (Ken Jeong) is unhappy to know a mouse is about. Tom chases after Jerry in his usual manner, wielding all sorts of weapons. Jerry mostly evades the cat. Ben, who sports Jost’s annoying haircut, arrives at the hotel with Spike (voice of Bobby Cannavale), an enormous bulldog. “He’s a bit animated,” Jost jokes. The joke is a dog, too. Spike is a Tom and Jerry regular and, yes, he is animated. Ben has given Preeta an enormous engagement ring, which is a big celebrity thing. She loses it at the hotel’s spa. She asks Kayla to find it. Ben wants elephants at the big wedding. They can’t be a problem, right?
These plot points are not exactly genius. The screenplay by Kevin Costello (“Brigsby Bear”), based on characters created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, provides us with dog poop and fart jokes, rapping pigeons and urban street cats that give Tom a hard time. Another part of the story involves a budding romance between Kayla and the hotel’s handsome bartender Cameron (Jordan Bolger).
In one sequence, Tom tries to get to Jerry’s hotel room window from across the street by walking on wires. He is struck by lightning and electrocuted and falls from a height to the street level multiple times without fatal injuries. This is what we love about these two warring, enemies-by-their-nature characters. Their fighting is eternal and not life-threatening. The 2D animation looks very 3D-ish, that is to say computer-generated, and it was. The liveaction and animation are well integrated. The film features several trademark “animal tornadoes” that occur when the animal fighting gets so extreme that all we see is a swirling cloud.
The acting is not so much incompetent as it is unnecessary for a plot so rudimentary. We know where this film is headed every step of the way. The kids might like “Tom and Jerry.” But I was bored stiff.
(“Tom and Jerry” contains cartoon violence and rude humor.)