Trivia / Tom and Jerry: The Movie

• Acting for Two:
  • The late Ed Gilbert voices both Puggsy and Mr. Starling.
  • Michael Bell voices Ferdinand and one of the stray catchers.
  • Raymond McLeod voices the bulldog and one of the alley cats.
• Box Office Bomb: From a budget of 3.5 million, it only grossed 3.6 million worldwide.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: In the Japanese dub, Robin was voiced by actress/singer Ryoko Shinohara and Aunt Figg was voiced by enka singer Sachiko Kobayashi.
• Channel Hop: The film was originally supposed to be distributed in the US by Carolco Pictures through its joint venture with New Line Cinema, known as Seven Arts Pictures, but said joint venture collapsed in 1992, and co-distributor Live Entertainment opted to shop the film to Miramax instead.
• Children Voicing Children: Anndi McAfee was 13 when she voiced Robyn.
• Completely Different Title: The film was titled Tom & Jerry's Big Adventure in Japan.
• Creator Killer: The film's failure caused director/producer Phil Roman's cinematic career getting silenced for two decades; he strictly remained in television animation with The Simpsons and Garfield adaptations.
• Creator Backlash: For Warner Bros.; it was very hard to find and most of the characters that were introduced in the film were phased out of the franchise entirely. The idea of Tom and Jerry talking was also phased out as the Made-for-TV short "The Mansion Cat" made them mute again and reduced them to minor speaking roles.
• Cross-Dressing Voices:
  • Dana Hill as Jerry.
  • Maria da Penha as Jerry in the Brazilian Portuguese dub done by Herbert Richers. The Álamo dub subverts this by having Marcelo Campos as his voice.
• Dueling Dubs: There's two Brazilian Portuguese dubs: one done by Álamo with Tatá Guarnieri as Tom and Marcelo Campos as Jerry, and another done by Herbert Richers with the late Júlio Chaves as Tom and Maria da Penha as Jerry.
• Follow the Leader: The pathos filled orphan plot? The musical numbers? The hammy bad guys (one of whom is voiced by Tony Jay)? Its very obvious that the film was a shameless attempt at cashing in on Disney's renaissance during the early 90's, with Tom and Jerry thrown in merely for marquee value.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Because of poor box office (and the critical thrashing), the film is rarely (if ever) seen in TV and the last DVD release was in 2002. If you have a DVD of it, don’t throw it out! If you have a DVR recording, don’t delete it.
  • You can legally buy or rent a digital copy off Prime Video, iTunes, YouTube or the Microsoft store.
  • Also, some brave soul uploaded the soundtrack on YouTube.
  • The movie did stream for a period on HBO Max, remastered in HD no less, though it is not present as of March 2021.
• Licensed Game: This film had several. There was a game for the Sega Genesis and Game Boy developed by Hi Tech Expressions called Tom and Jerry: Frantic Antics that had levels based on scenes from the movie. There was also a game for the Game Gear developed by Sega that had an In Name Only plot of Tom finding a treasure map and chasing after Jerry, who stole it from him despite featuring Ferdinand on the North American cover art.
• No Budget: 3.5 million dollars was a miniscule budget for an animated film, even by 1993 standards. To put this in perspective, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm had a six million dollar budget, and that film began life as a direct-to-video film.
• The Other Darrin: Technically the title characters, who previously had a slew of other voice actors the few times they'd been voiced. This was the first (and only) time Richard Kind and Dana Hill voiced Tom and Jerry respectively.
• The Other Marty: In the Brazilian Portuguese dub of the teaser trailer, Tom was voiced by Jonas Mello. For the film proper, he was voiced by Tatá Guarnieri (Álamo dub)/Júlio Chaves (Herbert Richers dub).
• Real-Life Relative: In the German dub, Robyn and her father are voiced by real life daughter and father Susanne and Joachim Kaps.
• Star-Derailing Role: This was Dana Hill's (voice of Jerry) final film role prior to her death. Richard Kind (voice of Tom) had better luck on the small screen, though you might still know him as Molt and Bing Bong.
• Stillborn Franchise: As far as a theatrical run goes, any and all Tom & Jerry movies past this one are made-for-TV or Direct-to-Video; this came not too long after Jetsons: The Movie also bombed out at the box office, and although The Flintstones fared well (and used Henry Mancini's opening theme from Tom & Jerry in its trailer, amusingly), Hanna-Barbera never really got on the cinema map. 2020 brought SCOOB!, and 2021, a new live-action/animated venture, Tom & Jerry, is unconnected to this film's continuity.
• Swan Song: Dana Hill's final acting role before she passed away on July 15, 1996.
• What Could Have Been: Aside from Robyn's original name being Cricket, Puggsy and Frankie were to have much larger roles, actually accompanying Robyn, Tom and Jerry on their quest to find Robyn's father.
  • At some point Joe Barbara was planning on featuring Michael Jackson to star or getting involved in the film in some way, This would have possibly involved him singing a song or writing one.

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