Horst in Translation ([email protected])
If you know Tom & Jerry a bit, world's most famous cat and mouse duo, then you certainly also know the general idea behind these many many cartoons starring the two. Cast hunts mouse and mouse fights back most of the time. But this one here is different. It is basically Tom and another cat arguing who gets Jerry for dinner. Jerry plays along until almost the very end, but then the phrase "When two fight, the third one laughs last." becomes reality and Jerry shows us what he is capable of. Sadly, I would say that this approach and plot idea are not really working and I found most of the comedy fairly forgettable and the slapstick also wasn't too great to be honest. It is probably among Hanna/Barbera's more known T&J works, even if it did not get the Oscar nomination, but it's certainly not among their best. Basically every time Jerry is on screen, it gets better, but it's just not (frequent) enough. At 8 minutes, it is slightly longer than they usually are. The year of production is 1943 (75th anniversary in 2018), the days of WWII still, and this time is probably also when Tom and Jerry may have been at their peak in terms of popularity. The good thing as always is that you can enjoy it pretty much without subtitles, even if you don't speak English at all. Even the scene towards the end with little devil Tom speaks for itself. All in all, this is one of the weaker recent episodes from the series. I give it a thumbs-down and don't recommend checking it out.