| Tom and Jerry: The Movie | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Phil Roman |
| Screenplay by | Dennis Marks |
| Based on | Tom and Jerry byWilliam Hanna andJoseph Barbera |
| Produced by | Phil Roman |
| Starring | |
| Edited by | Tim J. Borquez Timothy Mertens |
| Music by | Henry Mancini |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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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 Americananimatedmusicalcomedy film based on the charactersTom and Jerry created byWilliam Hanna andJoseph Barbera. It was produced and directed byPhil Roman, with a screenplay written byDennis Marks, who also scripted some episodes of the then-airing TV seriesTom & Jerry Kids. It features original songs written byHenry Mancini andLeslie Bricusse and a score also composed by Mancini. The film stars the voices ofRichard Kind,Dana Hill,Anndi McAfee,Tony Jay,Rip Taylor,Henry Gibson,Michael Bell,Ed Gilbert,David L. Lander,Howard Morris, andCharlotte Rae.
It is the very first theatrical feature-length animated film featuring the titular characters,[2] as well as the first piece of theatrically released Tom and Jerry media in 25 years. Although largely mute in theoriginal cartoons, Tom and Jerry are given extensive spoken dialogue for the only time to date. Joseph Barbera, co-founder ofHanna-Barbera Productions and co-creator of the originalTom and Jerry short films, served as the film'screative consultant.[2] The film tells the story about an eight-year-old girl named Robyn Starling, who enlists Tom and Jerry's help to escape from her evil legal guardian and reunite with her lost and presumed-dead father.
Following itspremiere inGermany on October 1, 1992,Tom and Jerry: The Movie was released theatrically in the United States on July 30, 1993, byMiramax Films, which was a subsidiary ofThe Walt Disney Company at the time. The film grossed $3.6 million and received negative reviews.
A cat namedTom and his owners move to a new house, but he is distracted by his pursuit of a mouse namedJerry and is left behind by the moving van. Tom chases the van, but is attacked by abulldog and forced to hide in the empty house.
The next morning, the house is demolished by awrecking ball, leaving Tom and Jerry homeless and wandering the streets until they meet astray dog named Puggsy and his flea companion, Frankie. Upon introducing themselves, Tom and Jerry, discovering they can both speak, are persuaded to befriend each other to survive, but when Jerry accepts to be Tom's friend, Tom disagrees, leaving Jerry to do the same. While Tom and Jerry search for food, Puggsy and Frankie are captured by dogcatchers, and when Tom is confronted by a hostile group of singing alley cats, Jerry traps them in a sewer.
Tom and Jerry soon meet Robyn Starling, a young runaway girl whose widowed father was supposedly killed in anavalanche during an expedition inTibet, while her mother had died when she was just a baby. Robyn and her family's fortune were put in the custody of her wicked guardian "Aunt" Pristine Figg and her lawyer Lickboot, who see Robyn only as a means to keep their obtained wealth, but will lose it if Robyn's father have survived. A local police officer finds and brings Robyn, Tom, and Jerry back to her home.
Figg reluctantly allows Tom and Jerry to stay, but the pair's food fight with Figg's morbidlyobeseskateboard-ridingdachshund Ferdinand and their discovery of a telegram confirming the survival of Robyn's father convinces Figg to send them to her sadistic animal trafficker henchman Dr. Applecheek. His public persona as a kind animal lover allows Figg to falsely assure Robyn as she locks her in the attic to prevent her from learning of her father's survival.
Tom and Jerry reunite with Puggsy and Frankie, who suggest using a nearby control panel to release the cages, freeing all the captured animals. Tom and Jerry return to Robyn and inform her of her father's survival. The three set out on a raft to find Robyn's father, but the raft is suddenly struck and split by a ship and separating them. Meanwhile, in Tibet, Robyn's father is alerted of his daughter's situation and flies back to America to find her.
The next day, Figg and Lickboot place a bogus $1 million bounty on Robyn that they have no intent on paying. Robyn is found and hosted byamusement park manager Captain Kiddie and his parrot puppet Squawk. Kiddie and Squawk are initially accommodating to Robyn until they see Figg's bounty on a milk carton, whereupon they detain Robyn on a Ferris wheel and contact Figg, revealing themselves to be her minions. Applecheek and his dogcatchers also learn of the bounty and attempt to collect it before Figg's arrival. Tom and Jerry manage to find and rescue Robyn, trap the dogcatchers and escape in apaddle steamer with Figg, Lickboot, Ferdinand, Kiddie and Squawk, and Applecheek in hot pursuit. Applecheek falls from a bridge and sinks Kiddie and Squawk'sdinghy, while Figg, Lickboot and Ferdinand head to "Robyn's Nest" – a small cabin where Robyn and her father spent their summers – predicting that she will hide there.
At the cabin, Robyn is ambushed by Figg, Lickboot and Ferdinand; Lickboot locks Tom and Jerry outside. Robyn is angry that Aunt Figg has lied to her and, furthermore, refuses to listen and refuses to return to her, but during a brief clash, an oil lamp is knocked over and starts a fire. While Figg, Lickboot, and Ferdinand attempt to escape, Tom and Jerry save Robyn and then take refuge on the roof. Figg and Lickboot manage to vacate the cabin, but stumble on Ferdinand's skateboard and crash onto the paddle steamer, which sails out of control down the river.[b] Robyn's father arrives by helicopter to rescue her while Tom and Jerry barely manage to survive the cabin's collapse.
Sometime later, Robyn's father lets Tom and Jerry begin a new life in Robyn's luxurious villa and return to their old habits as rivals.
There were numerous attempts to make aTom and Jerry feature film, primarily 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 studioMGM Animation/Visual Arts, wanted to make aTom and Jerry film but later dropped the idea due to not finding a suitable script to work with.[citation needed]
Among the attempts (with Jones involved) was whenMGM wanted to make the feature in live-action withDavid Newman (one of the writers who wroteBonnie and Clyde) to write the screenplay and forDustin Hoffman andChevy Chase to star as the duo, but sometime later, the project was shelved.[3]
In the late 1980s,Phil Roman and his companyFilm Roman managed to revive the attempts of making an animated film featuring the duo after his experience in directing animated television specials based theGarfield comic strip, as well as his love for the originalTom and Jerry cartoons. The project would become Film Roman's first theatrically released animated film and Roman's second directorial role for a such a film afterRace for Your Life, Charlie Brown. One creative liberty with the source material made during production was to give Tom & Jerry fluent dialogue, believing that audiences would feel bored or uninterested if the pair were mute for the entire film.[citation needed]
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 it was partially replaced by the animated slapstick scenes during the credits for the sake of moving forward with the story.[4]
Animators onTom 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 toWang Film Productions inTaiwan, where James Miko and Aundre Knutson served as supervising directors. Additional animation was provided byThe Baer Animation Company andCreative Capers Cartoons. Thecomputer animation for the vehicles was provided byKroyer Films.[citation needed]
| Tom and Jerry: The Movie – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack | |
|---|---|
| Soundtrack album by Various Artists | |
| Released | July 20, 1993 December 11, 2005 (reissued) |
| Recorded | 1991 |
| Genre | |
| Label | MCAMCAC/MCAD-10721 EMI (France) Music Marketing ApS (Denmark) |
| Producer | Henry Mancini Leslie Bricusse |
During production, after witnessing the successful start of theDisney Renaissance, the crew decided to make the film a musical and hired Oscar-winning composersHenry Mancini andLeslie Bricusse to write the musical numbers after their work in another film,Victor/Victoria, with a touch of melodic structure reminiscent to the classic golden age of movie musicals, especially the ones from MGM likeThe Wizard of Oz andSingin' 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 byMCA Records in 1993 and included both the songs and score from the film, composed byHenry Mancini.[5] The end credits has a pop version of "I Miss You" (the song Robyn sings), this time sung byStephanie Mills, which does not appear on the film's soundtrack release, followed by "All in How Much We Give" also sung by Stephanie Mills.
Original songs performed in the film include:
| No. | Title | Performer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Friends to the End" | Richard Kind,Dana Hill,Ed Gilbert &David Lander | 3:23 |
| 2. | "What Do We Care? (The Alley Cats' Song)" | Raymond McLeod, Michael D. Moore & Scott Wojahn | 2:55 |
| 3. | "(Money is Such) A Beautiful Word" | Charlotte Rae &Tony Jay | 2:20 |
| 4. | "God's Little Creatures" | Henry Gibson | 2:48 |
| 5. | "I Miss You (Robyn's Song)" | Anndi McAfee | 2:18 |
| 6. | "I've Done It All" | Rip Taylor &Howard Morris | 2:13 |
| 7. | "I Miss You (End Title)" | Stephanie Mills | |
| 8. | "All in How Much We Give" | Stephanie Mills |
On thereview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes, 14% of 14 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.4/10.[6] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale.[7]
Joseph McBride ofVariety gave the film a negative review, saying that "Tom and Jerry Talk won't go down in film history as a slogan to rivalGarbo Talks."[8] Charles Solomon of theLos Angeles Times panned the film's songs and Phil Roman's direction.[9] Hal Hinson ofThe 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".[10]
Gene Siskel andRoger Ebert gave the film two thumbs down onSiskel & Ebert. Although they praised the animation style for its faithfulness to the theatrical shorts, neither thought that it was a good idea to give dialogue to the two characters with Ebert stating that by making the duo talk "the movie loses the pure comedy of the cartoon shorts where everything depended on situation and action." Additionally, they felt that the film suffered from a lack of slapstick action compared to the shorts, and criticized the story for giving the character of Robyn Starling more screen time than the titular characters.[11]Vincent Canby ofThe New York Times was more positive in his review; he praised Mancini's score and the musical numbers, and felt that "[the characters of] Tom and Jerry have charm."[12]
Tom and Jerry: The Movie released theatrically on July 30, 1993 in theUnited States andCanada alongsideRising Sun,Robin Hood: Men in Tights andSo I Married an Axe Murderer.[1] Ranking number fourteen at the North American box office, the film grossed $3,560,469 worldwide.[1][13]
Avideo game based on the movie was released for theMaster System on October 1, 1992 andGame Gear on July 14, 1993,[14][15] followed by a handheld version byTiger Electronics. A second gameTom and Jerry: Frantic Antics was released for Game Boy on October 2, 1993[16] and Sega Genesis on December 21, 1993[17][18] by Hi-Tech Expressions and Altron.
The film was released onVHS andLaserDisc on October 26, 1993 byFamily Home Entertainment.[19]Warner Bros. acquired the rights to the film from Live Entertainment after acquiring Turner Broadcasting System in 1996. Their home video unitWarner Home Video re-released it on VHS under theirWarner Bros. Family Entertainment label on March 2, 1999. The film was also released onDVD on March 26, 2002 in United States by Warner Home Video. Despite receiving a VHS release from First Independent Films, the film is yet to have an official region 2 DVD release in the United Kingdom. The film became available on HBO Max in a digitally-remastered widescreen format on July 1, 2020,[20] but was removed in the United States following the streaming service'sMax rebrand.
