DVD Review: Tom & Jerry Tales – The Complete First Season
May 8, 2010Steve Fritz
In the summer of 1940, two young MGM animators, William Hanna and Joe Barbera, directed an animated short called “Puss Gets The Boot.” No one else was particularly thrilled about this cat’n mouse tale. They all thought it had been done before, over and over and over again. Minds were changed PDQ when “Puss” ended up with an Oscar nominee that year (although it lost to another MGM short, “The Milky Way”).
That made MGM feel there was something there. So they gave Hanna & Barbera the go ahead to do a sequel. The first thing the new team did was switch the names of their budding stars. The cat went from Jasper to Tom; the mouse from Jinx to Jerry. Seven Oscars later–a record only matched by Disney’s Silly Symphony series–animation immortality was undeniable.
20 Years of Greatness Then 50 Years of Mediocrity
There was only one major glitch to this entire formula. MGM laid off Hanna-Barbera in the late 1950s. They went on to form their own studio and earn the deserved designation of one of animation’s greatest creative teams of all time.
At the same time Tom & Jerry floundered under the directorial purview of other animation masters. This included the likes of Oscar winners such as Gene Deitch (Mr. Magoo) and Chuck Jones (Looney Tunes) as well as crafty old vets as Lou Scheimer (Filmation). Even when Hanna-Barbera got the rights back, the slapstick and vintage violence that was the hallmark of the cat and mouse wasn’t the same. It seemed the only person who got it near right was Matt Groening with the Itchy & Scratch parodies he threw on The Simpsons.
Still, the classic H-B shorts of the 40s and 50s would become a staple of Cartoon Network. Even when CN would drop the likes of Popeye, Bugs Bunny and others, Tom & Jerry shorts would continue to get an hour every weekday without fail. This fact did not go unnoticed by Warner Bros., who acquired them when they acquired Ted Turner’s incredible library of films.
Tom & Jerry’s Triumphant Return
Thus, the WB created Tom & Jerry Tales in 2006. It initially aired in Europe but when it started topping the ratings over there, it was brought back to the U.S. via the late Kids WB. Again, they went and hired two established vets to run the series, Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone (both having earned their chops on Tiny Toons and Animaniacs). It took nearly 50 years, but Brandt and Cervone got it right.
The secret of Tom & Jerry was simple. It was one of the most violent cartoons ever created. Every short found one doing some undeniably cruel thing to the other, from blowing each other up, to slicing and dicing each other like easter hams. When things got stale, H-B figured out a way to throw something into the mix to freshen up the place, whether it was Spike the Bulldog, Nibbles the younger mouse, or Jerry trying to ruin Tom’s relationship with the gorgeous Oodles Galore.
Yet at the core was always the chase, with Jerry bucking the odds and usually ending up triumphant… even if he was the one clearly in the wrong (which he was most of the time, anyway).
The Secret of Their Success
What really set the series apart was Hanna-Barbera’s ability to unleash chaos in the most creative manner possible. The only person at the MGM stable who was better at it was the legendary Tex Avery, but the big Texan never created characters that at their core were just so likeable in spite of all the brutal things they did to each other.
One other thing Brandt and Cervone did was up the creative budget considerably. T&J haven’t looked so good since the days Chuck Jones had his hands on them in the mid-60s. The Brandt-Cervone team lavished also understood that at its core, T&J were a true squash-and-stretch animator’s dream team, and knew just how to pump the duo like a pair of animated accordions.
They also knew how to modernize the team without wrecking the basic formula. One particularly favorite episode, “Egg Beats,” poses Jerry as a hip-hop DJ waxing his craft on Tom’s chicken farm. The cat doesn’t appreciate the latest beats, and by the time the mouse is done with him he’s buried in a mountain of eggs. It’s even more impressive that this collection contains 13 half-hours with three episodes each; all with the same level of firepower.
While it would have been nice if there was some extra content in this collection, having the first half of T&J’s two-season run in one place is worth a lot in its own right. Get this collection and let a real wild rumpus happen before your eyes.