"Tom & Jerry" only amusing when title duo gets to play alone

Tom & Jerry (2021)

Bringing back William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s iconic cat and mouse foes, Thomas D. Cat and Jerome A. Mouse (aka Tom and Jerry ), is not a bad idea on its face. A feature film mixing live-action and hand-drawn animation might be motivated by nostalgia, but it could certainly act as a gateway for a newer generation to check out the vintage shorts from 1940 through the 1960s. Unfortunately, director Tim Story (2019’s “Shaft”) and writer Kevin Costello (2017’s “Brigsby Bear”) don’t really come up with much inspiration to pluck the rivalrous cat and mouse into a modernized Homosapien world. The appealingly animated cartoon mayhem with Tom and Jerry is amusing enough in short bursts, but everything else on the live-action side, including a talented cast, is hopelessly lame. When everything integrates, the results are a real mixed bag.

In Central Park, Tom tries earning tips as a piano-playing cat, pretending to be blind, while mouse Jerry, who’s looking for a new home, stumbles upon Tom’s act and ruins it. Their antics get so out of control that they cause a Gen-Z New Yorker named Kayla (Chloë Grace Moretz) to fall off her delivery bike. Not long after being suspended from her job, Kayla fakes her hospitality qualifications and cons her way into being hired as an event coordinator at the fancy Royal Gate Hotel. It happens to be the weekend of the lavish, high-profile wedding for Instagram-famous couple Preeta (Pallavi Sharda) and Ben (Colin Jost). As Jerry makes himself at home inside the walls of that very same hotel, Tom will stop at nothing to get his revenge on the little mouse. At the behest of the hotel’s general manager (Rob Delaney) and event manager (Michael Peña), Kayla must also catch that same cheese-loving rodent before the celebrity nuptials commence. Is Tom and Jerry’s ongoing feud getting in the way of Kayla coordinating a smooth wedding? Or, is the wedding getting in the way of these two troublemakers? 

In a few isolated moments, “Tom & Jerry” does allow Tom and Jerry to recapture that manic magic out of their classically cartoon-violent shenanigans. “You guys need to stop fighting. It’s like you’ve been doing it for years,” Kayla scolds her new furry friends at one point. That line might be the only knowing and mildly clever reference to how these characters have had such a long run of outwitting and hurting each other. 101 minutes, though, is a lot when the comic duo is used to doing this sort of thing in 6 minutes flat. It’s also too bad that much of the plot focuses on two things all kids love most of all: the hospitality industry and wedding jitters. 

In this version of New York City, every animal is a cartoon, just like Tom and Jerry. Some of the animals can even talk, including a kit of rapping pigeons, but not Tom and Jerry (except for one auto-tuned musical interlude with Tom at the piano). With Tom and Jerry back to having non-speaking roles (unlike their theatrical feature debut, 1992’s “Tom and Jerry: The Movie”), “Tom & Jerry” becomes that rare kind of live-action/animated hybrid where all of the animals should talk and the humans should not. Game and adorably expressive, Chloë Grace Moretz makes the best of playing opposite the two animated troublemakers added in post-production. Despite the character of Kayla being a liar and a thief who will eventually make good, Moretz grins and bears it, working the hardest out of anyone to keep the energy up. Meanwhile, an over-the-top Michael Peña, an awkwardly oddball Patsy Ferran, an even-more-over-the-top Ken Jeong, and a deadpan Rob Delaney (with his beautiful mustache that should make Tom Selleck green with envy) all receive comedic bits as the cartoonish hotel staff to compete with their battling co-stars. 

Far from the quality of 1988’s groundbreaking “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” or even 2003’s zippy, cheerfully zany “Looney Tunes: Back in Action,” “Tom & Jerry” surely could have worked within a similar model. It's just more hyperactive than it is funny or clever. Having these two pre-Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner rivals wreak havoc in a hotel and crash a lavish wedding practically sells itself, but as this treatment of that idea proves, they are better off on their own. For Tom and Jerry alone, it is hard to outright hate their latest, but it’s safe to say that only very small children will be truly captivated by all of the lively commotion and less so when the humans are around. It all begs the question: who is "Tom & Jerry" actually for?

Grade: C

Warner Bros. released “Tom & Jerry” (101 min.) in theaters and on HBO Max February 26, 2021.