Tom And Jerry Shorts Review

Cartoon fans i've made it very freaking clear that I love Tom And Jerry and what's not to love these two are one of the best silent double acts ever and while i've reviewed plenty of the movies heck one might even say that there's another review coming but i've never reviewed the original. Well that's going to change as i've just downloaded twelve of the original shorts so here we go with the review of Tom And Jerry.

Like alot of theatrical cartoons from back in the day there's no real plot heck the plot of each cartoon changes from from to cartoon. So in one episode Tom could be someone's pet trying to keep Jerry out the house and in the next episode they both could be at the beach. Point is it doesn't matter what the set up of each cartoon is because the characters weren't known for there stories they were known for the violence and I think it's wise that the makers chose not to have a very detailed story since each short is around nine minuets long so they just give you the set up and nothing else.

Unlike alot of cartoon even of the time Tom And Jerry actually doesn't have a voice cast well at least for the main two characters. They do have voice actors for Mammy Two Shoes and Spike but Tom And Jerry are one hundred percent silent with only Tom's screams being provided by co-creator and animation legend William Hanna. Honestly in my opinion it was a rather bold move even back then to not have your main characters say a word they would say the odd word of dialog in the odd episode but for a lot of time they don't say a word.

It's at this point I have to mention THAT movie and no I don't mean the Willy Wonka one you all know the one I mean. It's the one where Tom And Jerry spoke all the time whoever thought that was a great idea has clearly never seen a Tom And Jerry cartoon. Since if they did they would no that Tom And Jerry never talk it's one of the unwritten laws of cartoons with i'm sure the the other one being if it's good turn it into a terrible live action movie.

In order to full prepare myself for this review i've watched alot of episodes from all three era's of the original shorts so that means i've watched cartoons from the William Hanna and Joseph Barbera as well as the infamously bad Gene Deitch and the Chuck Jones era. So I can say that in terms of animation quality I agree with alot of people when they say that the Hanna-Barbera era is perhaps the best era for the shorts and characters however I have a certain fondness for the Chuck Jones era since I grew up with alot of those shorts on VHS.

I think it's safe to say that alot of us cartoon fave have at some point grown up watching Tom and Jerry be it the original shorts or the various TV shows and movies. These are characters that we have all grown up watching since there's just something about them that makes them timeless and I think alot of that is due to the fact that they don't talk and I know I shouldn't keep going on about that but it's something that really sets them apart and because they don't talk that means there's not held back by what was ever popular back in those days.

If you guys want to watch all of the shorts in one sitting you actually might be able to since there's one hundred and sixty one shorts so you could watch all of the shorts in a good few hours very easily. However that is something that i;m not going to be doing anytime soon because I remember how it was watching just thirty Looney Tunes cartoons so there's no way in hell i'm subjecting myself to alot more episodes.

I would however be willing to watch alot of the movies provided I had a break inbetween each one tho. Since there are a lot of Tom And Jerry movies but what is odd is that last year was for a long time the only year that didn't have a new Tom And Jerry movie so I have to wonder did the people in charge realise that the Willy Wonka Tom and Jerry film was that bad that they just gave up on the franchise or are they planning something for this year that's more in line with these original shorts.

You guys just knew I had to include this short when I was picking the shorts to watch since it's perhaps one of the most famous Tom And Jerry shorts ever made. It's also the cartoon where Tom And Jerry straight up commit suicide so to say it's depressing as hell is an understatement. There was also a rumour that this was meant to be the series finale and it thus would have been a fitting end for the duo but as well know that turned out to be false since many more cartoons were made over the years.

 Something that I quickly realised was that in alot of the shorts Jerry just straight up picks on Tom for no reason. I'm not even kidding Tom would just be chilling out alot of the time and Jerry would walk on over there and cause all sorts of trouble and for no freaking reason I know that that's a small detail to mention but it's one that i thought was worth bringing up because alot of people say that it's Tom that starts alot of the violence when alot of the time that's anything but the truth.

There's no way I can do a review of the original Tom And Jerry and not mention a few things the first thing is the apparent racism in Tom And Jerry. Yeah I don't get this but apparently the character of Mammy Two Shoes is seen as raciest and to be honest she's not a racist character at all and so how did people in charge of making this show in 60's choose to handle this character why they chose to replace her with a thin white woman because apparently making a character white really fixes things.

The other thing that I have ti mention is the fact that Tom And Jerry all throughout these shorts are ever so rarely friends yes there is the odd cartoon where they do team up but it's mostly to take on Spike so it would make sense. However it doesn't make sense for them to not only become friends in that THAT movie but to then remain friends that is just out of character if that was say Tom and Spike you could buy it but it's not Spike in fact he's not even referenced once in the whole thing which considering he's quite a big characters is a huge flaw.

It wouldn't be a review of Tom And Jerry if I didn't talk about the slapstick and im going to try and not be that hard on them because what might have been funny back then might be now. I will say however that a vast majority of the humour in these shorts is still really funny yes you are going to get the odd unfunny joke but those are mostly in the Gene Deitch directed shorts and lets be honest those cartoons are pretty freaking bad anyway. 

What helped set Tom And Jerry apart from all the other shorts that were out at the time is that they used slapstick as there main source of humour. So like I said at the start of the review you got a minuet maybe a minuet and a half of just set up and then you got nothing but pure violence even in the very first cartoons where Tom looks more catlike and even has a cat yell (thank god they changed the designs) there's still plenty of slapstick heck even in the movies they know to have the humour from Tom And Jerry be them hitting each other because nobody does that better then those two.

Overall these characters are legendary for a reason so there's really no point in me even giving these shorts a rating because you all ready know if there good or not. So instead i'll end the review by saying that I hope these characters stay around for a long , long , long , long , long time.