Tom & Jerry The Movie (PG)

Jerry moves into the Royal Gate Hotel in Manhattan, where he steals food from the kitchen of chef Jackie and becomes a thorn in the side of despairing owner Mr Dubros and event manager Terence. They run out of ideas to rid the premises of the pernicious vermin until new employee Kayla makes a bold suggestion: hire Tom to hunt and kill the mouse. A battle royale between the four-legged rivals threatens to destroy the hotel in the middle of lavish preparations for the wedding of Ben and Preeta.

LondonNet Film Review
Tom & Jerry The Movie (PG)

It has taken 80 years for Hanna-Barbera’s feuding critters Thomas D Cat and Jerome A Mouse to gate-crash our live-action world as title stars of a big screen escapade a la Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Almost as many minutes pass before the first decent joke lands in Kevin Costello’s script, which trades heavily on the frenetic spirit of the animated shorts by replaying familiar vignettes like the hapless feline succumbing to gravity after a fateful misstep or heavy objects being slammed in his face. The devil and angel on Tom’s furry shoulders (both voiced by Lil Rey Howery) offer conflicting but ultimately redundant guidance because the mad moggie will always surrender to what one character blithely summarises as “millions of years of predator-prey evolution”…

Rough and tumble interludes provide passing distraction from the linear plot of Tom & Jerry The Movie, which uses the wedding of “New York society’s favourite couple” as the springboard for a streetwise hustler without any formal qualifications to prove she has what it takes to flourish in the fast-paced whirl of Manhattan hospitality. The eponymous duo are side-lined for brief stretches to engineer lacklustre human conflict before the obligatory grandstand rush to the altar. Stretched out to a (cat’s) whisker over 100 minutes, Tim Story’s film takes its time stumbling up the aisle.

Enterprising chancer Kayla (Chloe Grace Moretz) successfully passes off someone else’s CV to land a job working with event manager Terence Mendoza (Michael Pena) at the Royal Gate Hotel, which is vaunted as “a beacon of service excellence”. She arrives in the middle of lavish preparations for the nuptials of social media darlings Ben (Colin Jost) and Preeta (Pallavi Sharda), who have incorporated elephants and prancing peacocks into their ceremony. Tensions run high when Jerry moves into the hotel and steals food from the kitchen of Michelin star-tipped chef Jackie (Ken Jeong).

Despairing hotel owner Mr Dubros (Rob Delaney) turns to Kayla to save the day. “I will catch that little mouse and I will be discreet about it,” she promises. Kayla foolishly hires Tom to hunt the pernicious rodent. The ensuing battle royale between four-legged rivals treads on the paws of the groom and bride’s beloved pets, Spike (voiced by Bobby Cannavale) and Toots. “I have a feeling this small Indian wedding will be a great big disaster!” laments Preeta.

Tom & Jerry The Movie presents every animal as a cartoon creation including a trio of singing pigeons, who open proceedings with a cooing rendition of Can I Kick It? Story’s film repeatedly kicks itself by failing to flesh out characters and the destruction wrought by the eponymous double-act becomes repetitive well before Ben and Preeta’s outlandish wedding march. They do, we don’t.

– Jo Planter