Review: 'Tom & Jerry' is far from perfect, but the cat-and-mouse act still generates some laughs

The great thing about having zero expectations is that you can be pleasantly surprised — which is what happens watching “Tom & Jerry,” an exercise in dusting off a creaky cartoon franchise and finding that there’s still some charm and humor in it 80 years after it began.

Tom & Jerry, the archetype of the cartoon cat-chases-mouse scenario, have been around since William Hanna and Joseph Barbera created them for MGM in 1940. Usually, Jerry was the plucky David to Tom’s buffoonish Goliath, with Jerry’s wits beating out Tom’s brute force. But there were variations on the theme, or inconsistencies where Tom was the innocent and Jerry was the annoying aggressor. (I’ll admit here that I grew up on Bugs Bunny cartoons, which were more sophisticated than “Tom & Jerry” or Hanna-Barbera’s later creations; my favorite “Tom & Jerry” shorts are invariably the ones Chuck Jones directed in the mid-‘60s, after he left Warner Bros.) 

This new live-action/animated hybrid starts out with Tom minding his own business and Jerry being a bit devilish. Tom is happily busking in Central Park — he plays piano, it turns out — and the scheming Jerry tries to horn in on the act, ruining prospects for both of them. During the inevitable chase, Jerry lands in a five-star hotel, where he pilfers enough items to build a comfortable home behind the wainscoting on the 10th floor. Tom ends up in the alley, picked on by the meaner, tougher cats.

Like Jerry, Kayla — played by Chloë Grace Moretz — is street-smart and a bit of a schemer. She finagles a temp job at the same hotel, assisting the events manager Terence (Michael Peña) as the hotel is set to host a lavish celebrity wedding between Preeta (Pallavi Sharda) and Ben (Colin Jost). To impress Terence’s boss (Rob Delaney), Kayla takes on the assignment of ridding the hotel of a pesky mouse, and her solution is to hire a particular cat to exterminate the mouse.

Director Tim Story (whose last movie was the 2019 “Shaft” reboot) and screenwriter Kevin Costello (who co-wrote the 2017 Kyle Mooney vehicle “Brigsby Bear”) lean into the slapstick comedy of the original cartoons, even if the heavy objects falling on Tom look real. The humans don’t look too cartoonish — Ken Jeong as a high-strung chef is the exception — and Moretz, Peña and Delaney especially try to make the most out of their somewhat two-dimensional characters.

It’s clear Story and crew had fun trying to figure out the funniest way to let their cartoon stars destroy the impressive sets. Mostly, he sticks to the cheapskate animation traditions that Hanna and Barbera championed throughout their careers, though with some winking references to the characters’ history sprinkled in. “Tom & Jerry” isn’t a masterpiece, but it generates more laughs than you’d expect.

——

‘Tom & Jerry’

★★1/2

Opening Friday, February 26, in theaters where open, and streaming on HBO Max. Rated PG for cartoon violence, rude humor and brief language. Running time: 101 minutes.