Tom and Jerry new 2021
b'You know you\\u2019re in for trouble right at the start, when the pigeons begin rapping. Tim Story\\u2019s Tom and Jerry opens to the strains of A Tribe Called Quest\\u2019s classic \\u201cCan I Kick It?\\u201d as the camera swoops over the New York City skyline and finds Tom relaxing between subway cars and Jerry looking at rental properties with a shady rat real-estate agent. (\\u201cWait till you see the next place. It just screams \\u2018Mouse House.\\u2019 Wait, can I say that?\\u201d) Ignore the anachronism of lyrics like \\u201cMr. Dinkins, will you please be my mayor?\\u201d \\u2014 the idea here is presumably to situate Tom and Jerry in a modern-day version of the city. Maybe the filmmakers were just trying to cash in on the Secret Life of Pets gravy train, but it also makes some narrative sense: After all, the city is full of cats tasked with catching mice, in bodegas and apartments and even some movie theaters.\\n\\nBut look, this is already way too much work to do for a Tom and Jerry movie.\\n\\nA cluttered, awkward, pandering mess, Tom and Jerry (which debuts on HBO Max today) is a good example of what happens when the filmmakers don\\u2019t understand (or maybe just forget) what made their subject exciting in the first place. The classic Tom and Jerry cartoons were engines of wordless slapstick joy: fast, clever, and fun. While they have certainly gone through many iterations over the decades and are maybe not as well-regarded today \\u2014 with little of the surreal inventiveness of Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, or the wiseass narrative intricacy of Bugs Bunny & Co. \\u2014 their thundering bluntness retains a primal cinematic appeal. (Besides, for all the show\\u2019s simplicity, you could spend hours arguing over who was the good guy and who was the bad guy: the craven Tom, with his Sisyphean drive, or that ever-triumphant teacher\\u2019s pet Jerry.)\\n\\nA nightly newsletter for the best of New York SIGN UP FOR ONE GREAT STORY\\nAnyway, you\\u2019d think that a new Tom and Jerry feature film would prioritize the part where, you know, the cat chases the mouse. You would be wrong. Story\\u2019s film sidelines its title characters to focus on the efforts of Kayla (Chlo\\xeb Grace Moretz), a young woman who loses her bicycle delivery job and then lies her way into a gig at a fancy hotel as it prepares for \\u201cthe wedding of the century\\u201d between two celebrity influencer types, Preeta (Pallavi Sharda) and Ben (Colin Jost). Kayla immediately draws the suspicions of the hotel\\u2019s ambitious, snooty event manager Terence Mendoza (Michael Pe\\xf1a), even as she becomes friendly with the soon-to-be-weds. When Jerry wreaks havoc in the hotel\\u2019s fancy kitchen and strikes fear in the hearts of management on the eve of the big day (\\u201cIf a picture of this mouse is tweeted to the InstaBookFace, or the Ticky Tock, we will be ruined!\\u201d), the resourceful but out-of-her-element Kayla hires Tom to catch Jerry.\\n\\nFor about ten minutes, at least. Tom and Jerry the film seems interested in just about everything but Tom and Jerry, with its elaborate (but somehow still totally half-assed) plot and its scenes of nonstop talk that pile unfunny jokes atop one another. These aren\\u2019t bad actors: Moretz was once one of our most promising young performers, and Pe\\xf1a is among our most versatile. But they\\u2019ve clearly been directed to exaggerate wildly, perhaps in an effort to match the cartoons they\\u2019re acting against. The result is a kind of gathering desperation, as if by making bigger facial expressions or talking faster the actors might be able to will laughs out of lines like \\u201cI\\u2019ll catch it, sir. Him. Or her. It could be a female. I\\u2019m not gender-biased.\\u201d (Still, it could be worse. Even as everyone else hams it up, the stone-faced Colin Jost drifts through the film, seemingly asking himself the very question that is also on the audience\\u2019s minds: Why is Colin Jost even in this movie?)'