Second, I'm not a fan of Tim story. He's never really had a big film hit and after hearing how he treated Jessica Alba in the Fantastic Four films, it made me dislike him even more.
Third, live action adaptation of previously cartoon shows don't have the best track record of doing well or being solid hits and also after all the controversy that I've heard about Warner bros, that was another reason to be sceptical.
Then I saw the first trailer of the film and it seemed a little odd to have Tom and Jerry as fully animated characters alongside real life human characters so as I said, I could not see any hope for this film. But admittedly, it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. In fact, I can say this is officially the best live action Tom and Jerry movie I've ever seen.
Starting off the positives, easily the best thing about this film is Tom and Jerry themselves. I will give Tim Story credit for how he managed to envision the title characters. They feel like the same characters we all watched on the old cartoons years ago. Whenever they're onscreen, it's just a lot of fun watching them chase each other all over the place and find creative ways to trap each other. The slapstick humour really works as well. It doesn't feel outdated or feels too dark for a kids film. It always feels suitable enough for the appropriate age group. This films number job had to be getting the title characters right and that is this films biggest achievement.
Surprisingly though the positives don't stop there. Now although there are human characters, it never feels like Tom and Jerry are an afterthought. They get an equal share of screen time just as well as Tom and Jerry and I think that will be appreciated especially from a filmmaking point of view.
I also really liked the hotel setting. It's fun to see Tom and Jerry causing mayhem in the hotel and there are a lot of fun ideas to explore in this hotel with these two characters. It's also fun to see several other character's from the Tom and Jerry shows especially Spike the Bulldog voiced fantastically by Bobby Cannavale.
Finally, I think this film does a good job with targeting their main demographic of audience. The films main is naturally children but I feel film can also be very nostalgic for grownups who grew up watching Tom and Jerry as children and for me, I had plenty of nostalgia.
Moving onto the mixed aspects of the film, the first thing that comes to mind is the choice to make this an animation/live action hybrid film. Now I think this is ultimately the right thing to do since I struggled to imagine the title characters as CGI real life characters but at the same time, at times it did seem odd to see animated characters alongside real life human characters.
Also it makes the worldbuilding feel unexplored. Yes we're watching a Tom and Jerry film but when you watch a film where every animal character is animated and human characters just act like it's normal, that makes intrigued by what kind of world do these people live in and you to see this world explored and developed and despite it being fun to watch, it doesn't feel fully developed.
Onto the negatives now and as you'd imagine, the human characters are the weakest part of the film. Now I'm wondering if it was the right idea to make Tom and Jerry into a film in the first place because when you watch a Tom and Jerry movie, you're only watching it for the title characters and the amount of plot you'd expect to see, anything over an hour would already feel too much and potentially repetitive and when it has human characters in it, it becomes less fun to watch and you just don't care for them at all.
Someone is trying to get a job, you don't care especially when her character is a weakly written characters, two people are trying to get married, you don't care about that. Someone is trying to capture Tom and Jerry, you just don't care because you know Tom and Jerry will succeed.
And because you don't care about the human characters, it makes the pacing of the film feel very slow at times and certain scenes seem to drag on for so long and you start wondering when Tom and Jerry are going to come back on.
The runtime is also an issue. Now I am usually defender of runtimes but for this film, an hour and 40 minutes just feels too long. I don't know how too long it seems to be but by the time it gets to the hour mark, you feel like it should be ending soon.
Finally, the animation for the characters felt very outdated. It didn't feel like 2020/21 era animation which is just incredible. It felt like I was watching animated characters from the early or mid 2000s.
So overall when this film is a Tom and Jerry movie, it's pretty decent and servicable. But when it moves to the human plotlines, it becomes a slog to get through. It's not a bad film but I can't say it's a good film.
⭐⭐
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