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Film Review: Tom & Jerry

Live action joins animation in this re-imagining of the classic cartoon.

Can a reboot of Tom and Jerry be as much fun as the good old cartoons?

As a diehard Looney Tunes and old-school cartoon fan, I was not convinced this was going to be my cup of tea but thought it would be a great way to spend some time with my nieces and nephew, Ms5, Mr9 & Ms11.  They were bouncing around in anticipation, discussing which characters my cats and dog could be in a movie.  (FYI, my greyhound is terrified of one of my cats so we couldn’t really see a role for him!)

The film starts with a pigeon’s eye view of New York and some great old-school RnB music to get you smiling.  In fact, the whole movie has some fabulous music – Jagged Edge’s “Let’s Get Married”, Flo Rida’s “Bouncy House” and “Can I Kick It” by A Tribe Called Quest, to name a few.

Chloe Moretz stars as Kayla, a young woman who is having trouble trying to find the right job and someone to give her a go, as she doesn’t really have any qualifications.  Through a slight bit of trickery, she manages to land a job as assistant event manager working at the 5 star Royal Gate Hotel.  Michael Pena plays Terrence, the event manager, who doesn’t really believe her fake resume and is determined to keep an eye on her, while Rob Delany plays Mr Dubros, the hotel manager that believes Kayla is more than capable.

Kayla has arrived at just the right time as the hotel is hosting the wedding of 2 celebrities, Ben and Preeta.  Unfortunately, this has also coincided with Jerry the mouse deciding he will move in to the hotel, too.  Jerry causes chaos, stealing items from all over the hotel to furnish his own little mouse pad.  Eventually, Kayla convinces her managers to hire Tom the cat as a staff member to deal with Jerry before the wedding, and what could go wrong from there, in a 5 star hotel with chandeliers, glass everywhere, celebrities and a mad chef played by Ken Jeong?

The live-action plus cartoon animals actually really does work and leads to much hilarity – especially with the amount of animals in the wedding scene.

The only slight issue is that there are multiple plotlines, with Tom and Jerry fighting, a lost ring, disharmony between the bride and groom, issues between staff members and Kayla trying to make the job work, and this did lead to some confusion for the kids as to what was happening and why, though in the end they just appreciated the story and the cartoon animals in a real life movie.  This was the only reason we decided that we couldn’t give it 5 out of 5 stars, but it wasn’t a huge problem so that’s why we only docked half a star.  Note that at 1h41min, it is also quite long time to keep a 5 year old sitting still.

While this won’t be one for the cartoon purists, I was pleasantly surprised that it was just fun and the kids and I had a great morning out, cementing my award nomination for Auntie of the Year.

FUN 4.5 stars

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