Tom and Jerry: The Movie

***Tom and Jerry: The Movie*** is a 1992 American animated musical buddy comedy film produced and directed by Phil Roman and released in Germany by Turner Pictures and in United States by Miramax Films and LIVE Entertainment. It is a feature-length film starring the characters from the *Tom and Jerry* series and their first and (so far) only one to receive a wide theatrical release.

## Good Qualities

1. Well-done animation.
2. Robin's song is good.
3. A clever in-joke referencing Tom and Jerry's creators.
4. While nowhere near as good or funny as the original series, there are some funny moments here and there.
5. There are some touching and heartwarming moments.
6. It spawned the "We've got to have... money!" meme.
7. As brief as Droopy's cameo appearance is, it's arguably the funniest moment in the film.
8. The discovered Icelandic version makes the songs catchier.
9. Despite most of the story's lack of focus on the titular protagonists, it does have a great message about friendship that does associate with Tom and Jerry themselves. Being a mix of friends, friendly rivals, bitter rivals, and frenemies since birth, it gives the audience that a sign of friendship that no matter your differences and times you continuously fight, you could still accept each other bonding over a mutual sentiment towards an unpleasant experience with one another and not be able to enjoy life without one another, especially when Tom and Jerry themselves need each other in reality and not just for the sake of being able to survive. Which is what made Tom and Jerry's friendship/rivalry extremely iconic to begin with. On an additional note, Tom and Jerry's relationship still remains faithful, yet it adapts them to one of America's most heroic duos.
10. "*HEROES! Cat and mouse save billionaire heiress!*"
11. It was one of animation's cult classics, three years before Toy Story was released.

## Bad Qualities

1. **Misleading Title:** While Tom and Jerry are the main characters of this film and they do get a fair amount of screen time, the film mainly focuses more on Robyn Starling, an orphan girl who is looking for her father while trying to escape from her guardian (Aunt Figg) and lawyer (Mr. Lickboot), who are looking for her because she is worth a lot of money. For this reason, it seems like Tom and Jerry are portrayed more as supporters than titular characters.
2. Despite what the movie poster shows, Tom and Jerry don't really chase each other that much, as after the first musical number, they become "friends". Mostly during the opening and ending is when we do see them chasing each other.
3. Some of the characters are bland and/or don't contribute much of value to the movie.
	* Pugsy the dog and Frankie the flea, apart from helping Tom and Jerry talk, setting up the first musical number and helping them become friends, are both pointless as they don't do much other than being filler.
	* The villains' pet dog, Ferdinand is a very unfunny and pointless comic relief character who is only there just to get a cheap laugh from the audience for his slapstick, instead of Tom and Jerry doing the slapstick.
	* After the scene where Tom and Jerry meet Pugsy and Frankie, there's a gang of alley cats that yell at Tom for being friends with Jerry, who is a mouse. They think that cat and mouse should be enemies. Other than being there for **another** musical number (which keep in mind, the scene with Pugsy and Frankie earlier *already* has a musical number), they too don't serve any real purpose other than being filler. After Jerry saves Tom by opening a sewer pip that causes the alley cat gang to fall in, they are never seen or heard from again.
4. Numerous bad musical numbers, which are heavily derivative of those from Disney movies, (there are a total of ***6 musical numbers***) most of which come out of nowhere with no real purpose and just drag on and on (though Robyn's song is pretty well done).
5. The villains have some pretty strange names. For example, Aunt Figg, Mr. Lickboot and Doctor Applecheeks.
6. Laughable dialogue from most of the characters (Most notably Mr. Lickboot's line: *"We've got to have... money!"*, which is *definitely* what was going through the film maker's heads when they green-lit this movie).
7. Most of the human characters have flat characterization, as literally ***EVERYONE*** tries to kidnap Robyn to get money off of her. This is mainly by Aunt Figg and Mr. Lickboot, but there's also a captain with a parrot sailor puppet who saves Robyn from a boat accident, cares for her and even helps her find her father, only for for him to trap her ***in a freaking Ferris Wheel*** because he sees the reward Aunt Figg offers for Robyn's return (Lickboot himself pointed out that people will do anything for money). Poor Robyn. She just wants to find her father for crying out loud!
8. Despite this being a Tom and Jerry movie, none of the other characters from the original Tom and Jerry show (like Spike, Tyke, Butch, Nibbles, Quacker, Toodles Galore, etc.) appear in this film at all. While Droopy does appear in the film (you can clearly see him on the VHS and DVD box art), he only has one line of dialogue, is only shown once in Dr. Applecheek's lab and is never seen or heard from again, possibly due to budget cuts or something like that.
9. Somewhat poor grasp on the original source material. With Robyn getting somewhat more screen time than Tom and Jerry and no characters from the original series (except for Droopy) appearing, nothing in this movie really feels like Tom and Jerry. It instead feels more like a generic animated movie about a cat and a mouse trying to help Robyn find her father. Heck! You could replace Tom and Jerry with characters like Sylvester and Tweety/Speedy Gonzales, and Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner (although they are predator and prey relationships unlike Tom and Jerry) and nothing would change.
10. **Minor plothole:** When Tom walks out the front door to his old house only to find his owners have left without him, he takes off after them but is chased back home by a bulldog moments later. Yet he can't back in the front door because it's locked despite the fact that he didn't even bother to close it in the first place and everyone else had already vacated the premises.
11. Awful writing, which doesn't stay true to the original cartoons it is based on, and feels more like rip-offs of Disney's *The Rescuers* and Don Bluth's *All Dogs Go To Heaven*.
12. The 2021 version is WAY better.

## Reception

The movie received very poor reactions and negative reviews from fans, critics and audiences alike, with criticisms mostly revolving around it feeling like a generic animated movie with barely anything in common with the original cartoons. The movie was quickly pulled from cinemas in less than a month, earning only $3.5M at the box office, likely because it was released directly opposite the massively successful *Jurassic Park*.

## Trivia

* The director, Phil Roman, had previously worked as an animator on the Chuck Jones-directed *Tom and Jerry* cartoons from the 1960s. Jones had actually looked into producing a *Tom and Jerry* movie of his own after his shorts ended, but decided to instead make the film *The Phantom Tollbooth* after not being able to work out how to make the format work in a feature-length movie; something that should probably have indicated this project was a bad idea from the get-go.