Film / Tom & Jerry (2021)

aka: Tom And Jerry

Best of friends, worst of enemies indeed.

"I will not let this hotel be ruined by a cat and a mouse!"

— Jackie^note Dialogue from a Missing Trailer Scene

Tom & Jerry is a 2021 live-action/animated comedy film based on the famous animated cat-and-mouse team, and directed by Tim Story. It is the duo's second theatrical film, after the infamous Tom and Jerry: The Movie from 1992.

The film revolves around Jerry taking up residence in a fancy New York City hotel and causing all sorts of trouble while the staff is preparing for an important wedding to be held there. Kayla (Chloë Grace Moretz), a young hotel employee, is tasked with getting rid of the mouse, and she hires Tom to deal with Jerry. And as fur-flying hijinks ensue, the three may soon have to put their animosities aside.

The film also features Michael Peña, Colin Jost, Rob Delaney and Ken Jeong in supporting roles, and was released on February 26, 2021, both in theaters and on HBO Max; a teaser trailer was released on November 17, 2020. A TV series inspired by the film, Tom and Jerry in New York, debuted on HBO Max in July 2021.

Previews: Trailer #1.

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Tom & Jerry provides examples of:

• Adaptational Badass: Toots is a little bit more of an Action Girl than any of her classic counterparts that don't even bother hunting Jerry. She is more than capable of chasing Jerry in the two brief scenes with him. She actually comes close to catching him the first time they meet.
• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • While not the first time he starts things off from some of the classic shorts, Jerry is much more selfish and mischievous in this movie. He was the one who reignited the longtime rivalry with Tom and he spends half the movie stealing everything that isn't nailed down. And quite a lot of stuff that is nailed down.
  • While Butch in the cartoon flip-flopped between being The Rival and best friend to Tom (Depending on the Writer), the film portrays him as a tough-talking gang leader who nearly beats Tom up for being on his "turf".
  • Meathead was originally "a meathead" who was just as incompetent and selfish as Tom that became a Dumb Is Good character in The Tom and Jerry Show (2014) series and Clyde was originally a incredibly clumsy yet Kindhearted Simpleton from Tom & Jerry Kids. They showcased them as bullies from a gang that Tom encounters with Butch being the leader of course.
• Advertised Extra: Downplayed. While Tom and Jerry are not very important to the plot and are mostly just there to provide the film's comedy, they get more screentime than in the '92 film.
  • Ken Jeong's character shows up prominently in the trailers, but he only actually appears in a few scenes.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: The Japanese version provides a new theme song for the movie titled "Piece of Cake" by Eito.
• Angry Chef: Jackie, the hotel's head chef, repeatedly berates his staff and at one point starts whacking his own cake trying to kill Jerry who's hiding inside.
• Artistic License – Sports: While attending a New York Yankees game, Tom sticks his glove over the outfield fence and catches what would have been the final out the Yankees needed to win and instead gives the Kansas City Royals a tying home run. In real life, the umpires would have ruled Tom's actions as fan interference and an automatic out, giving the Yankees the win.
• As Himself: Both Tom and Jerry are listed in the credits as such. In actuality, the filmmakers used archive recordings of William Hanna, along with additional noises from Kaiji Tang and André Sogliuzzo (respectively, credited as simply "Additional Voices"), to provide the vocals of the titular duo.
• Auto-Tune: When Tom sings to Toots during his piano number, his voice is given this effect, even when he's screaming in pain.
• Bait-and-Switch: The first trailer opens in a way that is very reminiscent of the infamous Tom and Jerry: The Movie, making it seem like the characters are gonna bury the hatchet and the movie will be about their adventure in the big city... Then it turns out the entire thing was a ruse by Jerry to trick Tom into walking in front of a bus.
• Balloonacy: One of Tom's attempts to get into the hotel is to tie many helium balloons to himself and float up to one of the windows. The balloons pop and he ends up hurling away from the building.
• Big Ball of Violence: The movie shows Spike the bulldog attacking Tom and beating him up, resulting in a big ball of dust. Unusually for this trope, we actually get a few shots of the inside of the ball, where Spike is thrashing Tom in various ways while random objects fly around. Another one happens during the wedding, this time dragging in two elephants and a tiger with them.
• Blowing a Raspberry: While escaping Tom using a chariot, Jerry mocks him via blowing a strawberry.
• Book Ends: The film opens and ends with Jerry messing with Tom while he plays the piano.
• Brick Joke: During the opening, Jerry passes an ad for "Acme Chainsaws". Just before the end credits, Tom flees from a chainsaw-wielding Jerry.
• Bully Bulldog: Spike antagonizes Tom during the whole movie, attacking him on sight after the cat hits him with a bat due to being tricked by Jerry.
• Burning with Anger: After Kayla introduces Tom as her enforcer to Jerry, Jerry laughs, causing Tom to turn red with anger and for steam to come out of his ears.
• By the Lights of Their Eyes: When Jerry and another rat are inside the glove compartment of a car while looking for a potential home for Jerry, it's so dark that only their eyes are visible. Later, when Tom swallows Jerry, only his eyes are seen in the dark.
• The Cameo: Being a Tom & Jerry production, Droopy makes his requisite cameo. Twice, in fact; once on a Joker spoof billboard at the beginning and in-person at the pound, wearing a Hannibal Lecter-like muzzle.
• Cardboard Box Home: Tom is briefly seen laying in a cardboard box prior to being hired onto the hotel staff.
• The Cat Came Back: Or rather the mouse came back. At one point, Tom traps Jerry, wraps him up in a blanket and throws him out a window. He lays on the bed and pours himself a glass of champagne to celebrate, only for Jerry to be standing right next to him, holding his own glass for Tom to pour champagne into. Later, Tom traps Jerry in a Rube Goldberg device and crates him up and puts him in the mail. Jerry shows up back in the hotel only a few scenes later.
• Catch-22 Dilemma: Spoofed. Mr. Dubros doesn't want anyone to know that he's considering hiring a cat because that could leak out that the hotel has a mouse problem. But he also doesn't want anyone to find out that he's refusing to hire a cat, because he could get in trouble with PETA.
• Cel Shading: The animal characters, while animated in Maya, are designed and rendered with a hand-drawn, "cartoony" aesthetic loyal to the original Tom and Jerry shorts, resulting in a style similar to The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle.
• Cheek Copy: Jerry climbs into the bed of a photocopier at one point and gets copied in various poses, one of which is this gag.
• Chekhov's Gun: Ben's drone and electric skateboard. During the climax, Tom and Jerry use both to chase down Preeta's car and lead her to the second wedding.
• Composite Character: The film's version of Toots bears her design from the episode Puss 'n Toots, but has the white fur and purple collar of Toodles Galore.
• Cranial Eruption: Tom clobbers Spike with a baseball bat, believing it to be Jerry, causing Spike to form a bump coming out of his head. Tom tries to push it down with his finger, and then taps it down with the baseball bat, only for a new one to appear.
• Crash-Into Hello: How Tom and Kayla meet.
• Darkest Hour: After the second major hotel fight, the hotel is nearly destroyed again, Tom and Jerry are kicked out into the streets, Preeta calls the wedding off, and Kayla loses her (ill-gotten) job after she admits to lying about her resume.
• Demoted to Extra: As mentioned above and below, the eponymous cat and mouse basically become secondary characters in their own movie.
• Disaster Dominoes: The second major hotel fight starts off hectic enough, with Tom and Jerry duking it out. Jerry is spotted by Jackie while hiding in the wedding cake, causing Jackie to Freak Out and destroy the cake while trying to kill Jerry and causing the mouse to come in sight of the elephants, who react as you would expect. Then Tom and Spike end up provoking a tiger, who in turn inadvertently makes the elephants cause even more destruction, followed by everyone sans Toots to get caught up in a Big Ball of Violence. Finally, the elephants burst out of the hotel and onto the streets.
• The Dog Bites Back: After the entire hotel has had to run through hoops for Ben and Preeta's wedding — twice — Terrence and Mr. Dubros then have the last laugh in The Stinger.
• Dog Walks You: Terrence takes Spike for a walk, but due to Spike's size and strength, Terrence ends up getting pulled wherever Spike happens to want to go.
• The Door Slams You: Jerry slams a door in Tom's face, which breaks through it.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Kayla's attempts to tell Ben to relax about the reading gets misread by Ben, who takes her talk to mean that he should go all out on the wedding planning, which contributes to the wedding disaster.
• Easily Forgiven:
  • Despite instigating a brawl between Tom and Jerry that ended up nearly ruining Ben and Preeta's wedding, and costing Kayla her job, everyone considers Terrence's actions as water under the bridge.
  • Similarly, Kayla is quickly forgiven by the hotel staff even with all the calamity she caused and even gets her job back after the second attempt at the wedding goes successfully.
• Elephants Are Scared of Mice: The elephants at the wedding, predictably, freak out once they see Jerry, leading to the catastrophe at the wedding.
• Enormous Engagement Ring: The ring Ben gets for Preeta is said to be this. Kayla even says it could probably be seen from space.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: Downplayed. One of Tom and Jerry's chases leads them on top of a chandelier in a hotel room. It falls, with Tom on top, but there was nobody underneath.
• Fish Eyes: Tom briefly has these when crashing the hotel room. It's a nod to Marty Feldman, who stars in the movie Jerry is watching, Young Frankenstein.
• Follow Your Nose: Jerry does this twice in the film, following a visible scent of cheese, floating in the air, leading him to a trap.
• Friend to All Living Things: Kayla, though it's downplayed. Toots, Preeta's cat, instantly takes a liking to Kayla, despite being said to be "shy" around strangers, which actually means clawing at their faces. Goldie the goldfish also seems to instantly like her. She doesn't have this effect on Tom and Jerry, but they eventually start to respect her.
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Tom has these throughout the movie, as a means of debating over his choices. He mostly listens to his devil side, because of his rivalry with Jerry, who even cheats the arguments by finding ways to get rid of the angel, such as attacking him with a train.
• Green-Eyed Monster: It’s implied that Terrence is jealous of Kayla for doing so well despite being new.
• Harmless Electrocution: Tom is struck by lightning several times trying to break into the hotel. Of course, Tom being Tom, he brushes it off in just moments.
• Heart Beats out of Chest: Jerry's heart beat is visible bulging from his chest after narrowly avoiding getting grabbed by a cat while in the pound.
• Hollywood Glass Cutter: Tom cuts a hole in a window using his claws to get to Jerry.
• Human-Focused Adaptation: The movie is mainly about a young woman named Kayla who lies about her resume to get a job in a hotel as a wedding planner for a celebrity couple - Tom and Jerry are side characters who only factor into the plot when Jerry arrives at the hotel and Kayla hires Tom to get rid of him.
• Human Mail: Tom traps Jerry and seals him into a crate and mails it away someplace. Jerry returns covered in shipping labels and styrofoam popcorn.
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: The cats at the pound force Tom to eat Jerry to prove that they're not friends.
• Immune to Slapstick: Kayla, played by Chloë Grace Moretz, unexpectedly makes it through the entire film without any errant bops to the head, mallets intended for others, or pratfalls.
• Impact Silhouette: Tom and Spike leave one of themselves and their Big Ball of Violence on the skylight in the hotel's lobby.
• Jaw Drop: Both Tom and Jerry drop their jaws after Kayla tells them that they must spend the day together without fighting in order to be allowed to stay at the hotel.
• Let's You and Him Fight: After Tom and Jerry briefly reconcile at Kayla's request, Terrence manipulates them into fighting again by arranging them to both be at the wedding and telling them that they've said awful things about the other.
• Liar Revealed: Kayla's stolen resume is revealed to the hotel staff after the ruined wedding, leading to the film's Darkest Hour moment.
• Look Both Ways: Tom gets run over by a truck while getting yelled at by Kayla during their first meeting.
• Lost Wedding Ring: Or rather, lost engagement ring. Preeta believes that she had misplaced her engagement ring somewhere in the hotel and asks Kayls to search for it. It turns out that Jerry stole it.
• Men Like Dogs, Women Like Cats: Spike and Toots are Ben and Preeta´s pets respectively in this adaptation.
• "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: Kayle claims that "Massive Endeavor" is her middle name. Then she admits that it's actually Judith.
• Mic Drop: Tom imitates a mic drop after revealing that he successfully got rid of Jerry by dropping his hammer, which creates the sound of microphone feedback.
• Mouse Hole: Jerry makes himself at home inside the hotel walls, down to the hole mimicking the full-sized doors of the hotel rooms.
• Mouse Trap: Kayla sets one for Jerry. While she's distracted talking to Cameron, Jerry takes the cheese without setting off the trap, and replaces it with some cash and a note telling her that she needs a better trap.
• My Card: Jerry presents Kayla with his card, which reads "Jerry Mouse: A Mouse."
• Mythology Gag:
  • To The Cat Concerto: As Tom is performing his music, he finds Jerry lounging on his keyboard and playing at being the conductor, to which Tom finger-flicks Jerry away.
  • To Mouse Trouble and Safety Second: After Jerry ruins Tom's act, Tom catches him in his paws and open them up to find Jerry holding something, followed by duping him into seeing said something and punching him in the eye.
  • To Cat Fishin': When Tom follows a line that seemed to follow Jerry to a room, Jerry, which Tom doesn't notice, gives Tom a club to hit him with. Entering that room, Tom is actually hitting Spike, who gets a lump after being hit on the head; which Tom lowers with his finger, then again with his club after it pops back up.
  • To The Zoot Cat: A brief moment, but there's a scene where Tom develops a crush on Toots and plays piano and sings to her in the hotel's lobby.
  • The scene where Spike swaps out smaller teeth for bigger, sharper dentures is a nod to a gag in Solid Serenade... as is Tom's earlier passionate, auto-tuned song to Toots.
  • Droopy is spotted in the pound, just like in the 1992 film.
  • Tom playing the piano has been demonstrated in many of the cartoons, most notably The Cat Concerto and Johann Mouse.
  • To The Millionaire Cat: After Tom exits the hotel doors, Jerry exits from a set of miniature doors.
  • Tom shifts his face to resemble a mouse when telling Kayla he's chasing after Jerry. Tom did the same mouse-face shift in Nit-Witty Kitty.
• Narrative Shapeshifting: Tom and Jerry do this to communicate to Kayla several times. Tom transforms his face into a mouse to tell Kayla that he's chasing Jerry. Later, Jerry turns his nose into an elephant trunk and Tom makes his face resemble a peacock to tell Kayla about their idea to save the wedding.
• Never My Fault: When it looks like Ben and Preeta's wedding has been ruined, Terrence is quick to pin the blame on Kayla despite the fact that he was the one who manipulated Tom and Jerry into fighting each other again.
• Ninja Prop: The pigeons at the start of the film are aware of and interact with the opening credits.
• No Antagonist: The film's conflicts mainly concerns about how the wedding will turn out. Terrence, the closest thing this movie has concerning a main villain, isn't even that antagonistic, he just happens to be the one that instigated the wedding fight between Tom and Jerry, which resulted in the film's Darkest Hour. Even then, he's Easily Forgiven after he's been found out.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • Preeta invokes the image of Isha Ambani, daughter of India’s richest industrialist.
  • Ben and Preeta's celebrity wedding also invokes that of Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra.
• No Sense of Humor: Kayla attempts a joke during her job interview by asking if the pet goldfish on the desk is the aquatics manager of the hotel. Terrence, the events manager, just plainly points out that she's a fish and holds no position at the hotel due to being a fish. He even tries to deny her a job on the basis that she believed a fish could be a manager at a hotel.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Kayla doesn't hold Terrence secretly sabotaging the wedding in order to get rehired against him since she's aware she herself got hired because of underhanded tactics.
• Obfuscating Disability: Tom fakes being blind while playing the piano in order to gain sympathy and more tips from the spectators.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: While Ben is the one who keeps making the wedding bigger and bigger, it's clear he's feeling pressured into doing so in an attempt to impress his father in law, who is clearly not impressed.
  Ben: And look, your dad loves it! At least I think he loves it. It's kind of hard to tell.
• "Pan from the Sky" Beginning: The film begins with the Warner Brothers logo in front of a blue sky, then tracks down to New York City.
• Pounds Are Animal Prisons: Tom and Jerry end up taken to the pound, which definitely has a prison vibe. It even has Droopy in Hannibal Lecter getup.
• Priceless Ming Vase: While showing Kayla around, Terrence makes note of the lobby's beautiful skylight, calling it the jewel of the hotel. It gets demolished during the first big fight between Tom and Jerry.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Tom and Jerry both give sad looks to Kayla when she tells them that they can't stay at the hotel, convincing her to have a change of heart and arrange a new deal with them.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Henry Dubros, the hotel manager, may have a few screws loose, but he is in general rather open-minded to Kayla's ideas in dealing with their mouse problem and is impressed with her more outside the box thinking. He's later impressed when she repeats his views of the importance of a wedding, and her managing to salvage it convinced him to give her a second chance, even though she was originally hired through illegitimate means.
• Rebus Bubble: Both Tom and Jerry have one of these at different points in the movie. Jerry has a thought bubble with a couple of bags of money equaling a house, as he's currently looking for a good home to live in despite not being able to afford one. Tom has one where he sees Jerry in a cage equalling a grand piano when Kayla tells Tom that he'd get a reward if he catches the mouse.
• Right Behind Me: Near the end of the film, Kayla reuses Dubros' line that a wedding is a couple's first test and some rise to it to Ben. Terrence immediately declares it stupid and questions what idiot said that. Dubros answers it was him, causing Terrence to backpedal and claims to his boss it was sarcasm.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: Every animal in the film — characters, extras, and background — are animated in a Cel Shaded style, in contrast to their environment and the human characters, all of which are live-action. This is even made fun of when Ben and Preeta arrive at the hotel with their respective pets, Spike and Toots, and the bulldog reacts aggressively to Jerry upon seeing him.
  Ben: I'm sorry, he's a little animated.
• Roofless Renovation: A fight between Tom, Jerry, and Spike creates a Big Ball of Violence that eventually breaks through the skylight of the hotel's lobby.
• Rube Goldberg Device: Tom uses one of these to get rid of Jerry so he can prove his worth to the staff, though Jerry still manages to find his way back to the hotel.
• Secret Test of Character: Kayla lies to a prospective job applicant to a hotel position by telling her she failed one of these. She tells the applicant that her job interview had already started and that she was pretending to be a random patron to see how she would treat her.
• Signs of Disrepair: After the disaster at the wedding, the O and T in the HOTEL sign on the building go out, spelling out "HEL" before the entire sign goes out.
• The Singing Mute: Tom never talks, but he does sing when playing the piano in the hotel.
• Shout-Out:
  • Jerry reads a Secret Squirrel comic at one point.
  • When Tom dons a pair of wings to break into Jerry's room, he flies up to the sky and forms a bat-like silhouette in front of the moon.
  • While relaxing in his hotel room, Jerry flips on the TV and watches Young Frankenstein. Looking from out the window, Tom briefly has Igor's Fish Eyes.
  • Butch shouts “come out and play” in a very menacing way.
  • The end credits begin with the Tom, Jerry, and other main animated characters smiling in red circles like Looney Tunes.
• Spit Take: Tom spits out his champagne when he sees Jerry in the room next to him after just throwing him out.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Kayla gets significantly more attention than either Tom or Jerry, with second place going to Preeta and Ben. The title characters are, essentially, recurring sight gags more than they are characters.
• The Stinger: After the credits, we get an extra scene where Ben receives the bill.. for both of the weddings.
  Terrance: Thank you for choosing the Royal Gate!
• Stock Sound Effects: Like most recent outings with the duo, William Hanna's yells as Tom are reused for this movie, intercut with newly recorded ones provided by Kaiji Tang.
• Street Musician: Tom plays the piano in Central Park to get tips.
• Talking Animal: All over the place with Butch, his gang, the Elephants, Spike, and even Droopy. They don't seem to be understood by humans.
• Tightrope Walking: Tom does this to try to get into the hotel. He ends up falling multiple times.
• Toilet Humor:
  • When Terrence takes Spike on his walk, Spike ends up pooping just offscreen right onto the crosswalk. It was even said that he had several burritos beforehand.
  • One of the pigeons at the very start of the movie poops on another pigeon mid-flight.
• Two Scenes, One Dialogue: This is done when Terrance is trying to manipulate Tom and Jerry into fighting at the wedding. He speaks to each individually, but the two scenes are spliced together as he tells each of them the same thing.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Most of the animated characters' antics are treated this way by the human characters. At the start of the film, a child tells his dad that there's a blind cat playing the piano. The dad just tells the child that "There's a lot of weird stuff in the city" and that they just have to keep walking.
• The Voiceless: Like most entries, the title duo doesn't speak outside of their usual vocal effects. While Spike talks to people, nobody can understand him. Kayla gets annoyed by this trait of theirs during the climax when Tom and Jerry have to chase down Preeta.
  • However, Tom does sing a song that other animals, particularly his supposed love interest, heard.
• Walkie-Talkie Gag, Over: Used when Kayla is sent to investigate some noise complaints.
• Wall Crawl: Tom uses plungers as suction cups to climb up the outside walls of the hotel. They don't stick for long.
• "Wanted!" Poster: Tom creates a very crude one very Jerry with a stick figure of a mouse and his E's written backwards. Kayla doesn't believe it'll help, but it does cause Joy to give them a solid lead.
• Verbal Backspace: Terrance does this when he finds Henry's advice about a wedding stupid.
• Wedding Smashers: Tom and Jerry become this when they start to fight during the wedding ceremony. Jackie ends up smashing the cake when he tries to kill Jerry who's hiding in it. And the elephants do a lot of smashing when they see Jerry at the wedding.
• Worst Wedding Ever: Ben and Preeta's wedding, after much prepartion, ends up being a major disaster. Partly because the groom kept trying to make the wedding bigger despite the bride wanting to keep it small. Partly because of Terrence manipulating Tom and Jerry into fighting at the ceremony. And partly due to Kayla's inexperience at running major events and lying about it. But once the elephants carrying the bride and groom freak out at seeing Jerry the mouse, everything goes haywire, leading to a big ball of violence that just destroys everything and leading to everyone getting evacuated.
• Worthy Opponent: Kayla says Jerry is this when her first attempt to catch him fails.
• You Wanna Get Sued?: The rat showing Jerry places to leave calls one of his prospective homes a "Mouse House", then wonders if he's allowed to say it without getting sued.

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