Tom and Jerry: The Movie

Tom and Jerry: The Movie
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Phil Roman
Written by	Dennis Marks
Based on	Tom and Jerry by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera
Produced by	Phil Roman
Starring	Richard Kind Dana Hill Anndi McAfee Tony Jay Rip Taylor Henry Gibson Michael Bell Ed Gilbert David L. Lander Howard Morris and Charlotte Rae
Edited by	Tim J. Borquez Timothy Mertens
Music by	Henry Mancini
Animation by	Eric Thomas Art Roman Doug Frankel Tony Fucile Steven E. Gordon Leslie Gorin Dan Haskett Brian Robert Hogan Gabi Payn Irven Spence Arnie Wong
Color process	CFI
Production companies	Live Entertainment Turner Entertainment Co. WMG Film Film Roman[a]
Distributed by	Miramax Films (United States) Turner Pictures Worldwide Distribution (International)
Release date	October 1, 1992 (1992-10-01) (Germany) July 30, 1993 (1993-07-30) (United States)
Running time	84 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$3.5 million
Box office	$3.6 million[1]

Tom and Jerry: The Movie is a 1992 American animated musical adventure comedy film based on the characters Tom and Jerry created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Produced and directed by Phil Roman from a screenplay by Dennis Marks (who also scripted some episodes of Tom & Jerry Kids at the time), the film stars the voices of Richard Kind, Dana Hill (in her final film role), Anndi McAfee, Tony Jay, Rip Taylor, Henry Gibson, Michael Bell, Ed Gilbert, David L. Lander, Howard Morris and Charlotte Rae.

It is the first theatrical feature-length animated film featuring the cat-and-mouse pair^[2] as well as their return to the big screen after 25 years. Although largely mute in the original cartoons, the duo speaks throughout this film. Joseph Barbera, co-founder of Hanna-Barbera and co-creator of Tom and Jerry, served as creative consultant for the film.^[2] The film tells the story about a little girl named Robyn Starling, who enlists Tom and Jerry's help (to which they put their differences aside after their home is wrecked) to escape from her evil abusive aunt and reunite with her lost and presumed-dead father.

After having its world premiere in Germany on October 1, 1992, Tom and Jerry: The Movie was released theatrically in the United States on July 30, 1993, by Miramax Films. The film received negative reviews from critics, and earned $3.6 million on a $3.5 million budget.

Plot[]

Tom's owners are moving to a new house, but he is distracted by his pursuit of Jerry and is left behind by the moving van as a result. Tom chases the van, but is scared away by a bulldog (Spike I) and is forced to stay in the house. The next morning, the house is demolished, leaving both Tom and Jerry homeless with his friend, Spike (II) the bulldog companion. The pair wander the streets for shelter until they meet a stray dog named Puggsy, the stray cat, Butch and his flea companion, Frankie. Upon introducing themselves, Tom and Jerry are persuaded to befriend each other to survive. While Tom , Spike and Jerry are sidetracked with searching for food, Puggsy, Butch and Frankie are captured by three dogcatchers while Tom is apprehended by a group of hostile singing alley cats, until Jerry traps them in the sewer with him.

Afterwards, Tom, Spike and Jerry meet Cody Miller, a 9-year-old boy was going to the hotel with by them and Robyn Starling, a runaway 9-year-old girl whose lived in the circus with the elephants, the tigers, the hippopotamuses and the zebras, performing with them and her mother died and killed by the circus tent pole was crash by Susan Jumbo the circus elephant. She was locked up in the prison wagon with her son, Dumbo by the circus employees. Susan and her son were protect her and spanking one of the boys with his trunk and throw the bale of straw and scare them away. The circus employees were captured her and her son. Circus Employee Henry took her from them. She was run away from the city of with the Medici Bros. Circus and hold the locket from the trunk pf the circus tent. The audience laughed at her with her yellow hair. Her father, her sisters and her brothers supposedly died in an avalanche during an expedition in Tibet. She was going back to the Los Angeles city. A local police officer brings Robyn home along with Tom, Spike, Jerry and Cody. Her abusive two gaurdians Quasimonlat and Pristine Figg reluctantly allows Tom, Spike, Jerry and Cody to stay. However, after a food fight between Tom, Spike, Jerry, Cody and Figg's three house dogs, Carface Currothers, Rosco and Ferdinand, Figg suggests taking them to a two kind men named Dr. Applecheek and his friend, Dr. Doofenshmirtz who loves animals, which Robyn thinks about. Jerry overhears Quasimo, Figg, her evil father, Klaus Figg and her father's evil lawyer, Lickboot discussing a telegram that reveals that Robyn's father and her sisters were alive and running his company in Tibet. Jerry tells Tom, Spike and Cody about this and they attempt to tell Robyn about it, but Figg locks Robyn in her room and he takes four of them to Dr. Applecheek and Dr. Doofenshmirtz, who is revealed to be a cruel animal kidnapper and the employer of the three dogcatchers who captured Puggsy, Butch and Frankie and to the Hansen house. Applecheek and Doofenshmirtz reveals that Quasimoblat paid him to kill Tom, Spike and Jerry.

Tom, Spike and Jerry reunite with Puggsy, Butch and Frankie, who suggest using a nearby control panel to open the cages. Tom, Spike and Jerry free the captured animals including Droopy and Butch the dog return to Robyn's home with him to inform her of her father and her sisters' three survivals. Tom, Spike, Jerry, Cody and Robyn set out to find Robyn's father and Robyn's sisters on a raft, but the raft is suddenly struck by a ship and they end up separated. Meanwhile, in Tibet, Robyn's father becomes alarmed by his daughter's predicament and flies back to America to rescue her with her sisters.

The next day, Figg and Lickboot decide to put a $1,000,000 bounty on Robyn to anyone who can find her, with no promise on paying. Robyn is found and hosted by amusement park manager Captain Kiddie, the two sailors, Gaspar and Bosco and his first mate Squawk, a parrot puppet; Kiddie is initially friendly with Robyn until he sees Figg's bounty on a milk carton, whereupon he traps Robyn on a Ferris wheel and contacts Quasimoblat, Figg, who leaves with Lickboot, Klaus and Ferdinand while Applecheek, Doofensmirtz and the three dogcatchers try to beat them there in order to collect the bounty. Tom, Spike, Jerry and Cody find and free Robyn, and trap the dogcatchers on the Ferris wheel right when four of them arrive. They escape in a paddle steamer while Quasimonlat, Figg, Klaus, Lickboot, Kiddie, Gaspar, Bosco, Applecheek and Doofenshmirtz give chase. In the ensuing chase, Applecheek falls from a bridge and sinks Kiddie's dinghy with him and the sailors, while Quasimonlat, Figg, Klaus and Lickboot head to "Robyn's Nest" – a small cabin where Robyn, her father and her sisters spent their summers – predicting she will be there.

Tom, Jerry and Robyn arrive at the cabin where Robyn is accosted by Quasimoblat, Figg, Klaus and Lickboot, who locks Tom, Spike, Jerry and Cody outside with Carface, Rosco and Ferdinand. During a tussle, an oil lamp is knocked over and starts a fire that engulfs the cabin. While Quasimoblat, Figg, Klaus and Lickboot attempt to escape, Tom, Spike and Jerry manage to get Robyn safely on the roof with her boyfriend. Quasimoblat, Figg, Klaus and Lickboot manage to vacate the cabin, but stumble on Ferdinand's skateboard and crash onto the paddle steamer, which sails out of control and sends them away with the other two dogs. Robyn's father and Robyn's sisters then arrives in his helicopter and rescues her, but fails to rescue Tom, Spike, Jerry and Cody in time before the cabin collapses, though they barely survive.

After the rescue, Robyn's father promises to never leave her and her sisters again, and Tom, Spike, Jerry and Cody's heroics make the newspaper, which is read by Puggsy, Butch and Frankie, who are proud of Tom and Jerry for learning how to be friends with the bulldog and her boyfriend. Sometime later, the pair begin a new life in Robyn's luxurious villa and revert to their old habits before they were going to the hotel from her, her sisters and her father are lived in her luxurious villa with him.

Voice cast[]

• Richard Kind as Tom
• Dana Hill as Jerry
• Anndi McAfee as Robyn Starling
• Charlotte Rae as Aunt Pristine Figg
• Tony Jay as Lickboot
• Michael Bell as Ferdinand and Straycatcher 1
• Henry Gibson as Dr. Applecheek
• Ed Gilbert as Puggsy, Mr. Starling
• David Lander as Frankie da Flea
• Rip Taylor as Captain Kiddie
• Howard Morris as Squawk
• Sydney Lassick as Straycatcher 2

Additional Voices[]

• Don Messick as Droopy
• Tino Insana as Police Officer
• B. J. Ward as Tom's Owner
• Greg Burson as Moving Man
• Raymond McLeod as Bulldog
• Raymond McLeod, Mitchell D. Moore, Scott Wojahn as Alleycats

Production[]

Development[]

There were numerous attempts to make a Tom and Jerry feature film, mainly in the 1970s after the successful reruns of the original cartoons and the airings of the new TV animated versions (although there have been debatable possibilities of making attempts in the golden age of cartoons). Chuck Jones, who previously worked on his take on the characters in his studio MGM Animation/Visual Arts, wanted to make a Tom and Jerry film but later pulled the plug on the idea due to not finding a suitable script to work with.

Among of the attempts (with Jones involved) was when MGM wanted to make the feature in live-action with David Newman (one of the writers who wrote Bonnie and Clyde) to write the screenplay and for Dustin Hoffman and Chevy Chase to star as the duo, but sometime later, the idea was shelved.^[3]

In the late 1980s, Phil Roman and his company Film Roman managed to revive the attempts of making an animated film featuring the duo after his experience in directing the animated specials featuring another popular cartoon cat Garfield, as well as his love for the original Tom and Jerry cartoons. This gave the opportunity of making it the first theatrical animated film for Film Roman and his second directorial role for a theatrical animated film since Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown, though in this case as an individual director after directing the TV movie Garfield: His 9 Lives, with Joseph Barbera aboard as a consultant. One of the rare options the crew decided to take is going in a different direction and something new on the portrayal of the duo by giving them fluent dialogue, because they considered that most of the audience would feel bored or uninterested in the repetitively mute aspect.

In the early development of the script by Dennis Marks, some of its dialogue and actions in other scenes, including the main characters talking throughout at the beginning before encountering Puggsy and Frankie, had to be taken out. Originally, a comedic sequence before the further events of the duo talking was drafted as a prologue and homage to the original cartoons before the credits, but it was later decided to drop the idea and partially replaced by the animated slapstick scenes during the credits for the sake moving forward on the situations for the story.^[4]

Animation[]

Animators on Tom and Jerry: The Movie include Eric Thomas, Art Roman, Doug Frankel, Tony Fucile, Steven E. Gordon, Leslie Gorin, Dan Haskett, Brian Robert Hogan, Gabi Payn, Irven Spence and Arnie Wong. Some animation was outsourced to Wang Film Productions in Taiwan, where James Miko and Aundre Knutson served as supervising directors. Additional animation was provided by The Baer Animation Company and Creative Capers Cartoons. The computer animation for the vehicles was provided by Kroyer Films.

Music[]

During production, after witnessing the successful start of Disney's musical Renaissance, the crew decided to make the film a musical and hired Oscar-winning composers Henry Mancini and Leslie Bricusse to write the musical numbers after working in another musical film together titled Victor/Victoria, with a touch of melodic structure reminiscent to the classic golden age of movie musicals, especially the ones from MGM like The Wizard of Oz and Singin' in the Rain, and with help from music students at Roger Williams University. Original songs performed in the film include "Friends to the End", "What Do We Care? (The Alley Cats' Song)", "(Money is Such) A Beautiful Word", "God's Little Creatures", "I Miss You (Robyn's Song)", "I've Done It All", and "All in How Much We Give".

A soundtrack album was released by MCA Records in 1993 and included both the songs and score from the film, composed by Henry Mancini.^[5] The end credits song "All in How Much We Give" was written by Jody Davidson.

Songs[]

Original songs performed in the film include:

Reception[]

Critical response[]

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 14% approval rating based on 14 reviews, with an average score of 3.4/10.^[6]

Joseph McBride of Variety gave the film a negative review, saying that "Tom and Jerry Talk won't go down in film history as a slogan to rival Garbo Talks."^[7] Charles Solomon of the Los Angeles Times panned the film's songs and Phil Roman's direction.^[8] Hal Hinson of The Washington Post criticized the dialogue between the cat and mouse and said that the voices "don't fit the characters". Hinson also complained that the musical numbers are "as forgettable as they are intolerably bouncy and upbeat".^[9]

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert awarded the film thumbs down ratings on their show Siskel & Ebert. Although they praised the animation, look and the truthful art design of the animated shorts, neither thought that it was a good idea to give dialogue to the two characters. Additionally, they felt that the film suffered from a lack of further slapstick action from past cartoons and that the story was silly, particularly because the character of Robyn Starling occupied more screen time than the titular characters.^[10] Conversely, Vincent Canby of The New York Times was more positive in his review, He praised Mancini's score and the musical numbers, and later went on to say that "[the characters of] Tom and Jerry have charm."^[11]

Box office[]

Tom and Jerry: The Movie opened theatrically on July 30, 1993 in the United States and Canada alongside Rising Sun, Robin Hood: Men in Tights and So I Married an Axe Murderer.^[1] Ranking number fourteen at the North American box office, the film grossed $3,560,469 worldwide.^[1][12]

Video games[]

• A video game based on the film was released for the Sega Master System on October 1, 1992 and Sega Game Gear on July 14, 1993,^[13][14] followed by a handheld game by Tiger Electronics released the same year.
• A video game based on the film of same name titled Tom and Jerry: Frantic Antics was released for Game Boy on October 2, 1993^[15] and Sega Genesis on December 21, 1993^[16][17] by Hi-Tech Expressions and Altron.

Home media[]

The film was released on VHS and LaserDisc on October 26, 1993 by Family Home Entertainment.^[18] The VHS release of the film was reissued on March 2, 1999 and was released on DVD on March 26, 2002 in United States and on September 26, 2008 in Germany^[19] by Warner Home Video. Despite receiving a UK VHS release from First Independent Films, no UK Region 2 DVD release is as of yet currently available. However, UK buyers can import the French, German, Dutch, or South African copies, as they are Region 2, and play in English.^[20] The film became available on HBO Max in a digitally-remastered widescreen format on July 1, 2020.^[21] It is unknown that whenever the film will have a Blu-ray release.

References[]

Sources[]

• Beck, Jerry (2005). The Animated Movie Guide. Chicago: Chicago Review Press. ISBN 1-55652-591-5. pp. 284–285.

External links[]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Tom and Jerry: The Movie

• Official website
• Tom and Jerry: The Movie at the TCM Movie Database
• Tom and Jerry: The Movie at IMDb
• Tom and Jerry: The Movie at Rotten Tomatoes