TOM AND JERRY DVD/VHS

Tom and Jerry: Blast off to Mars

Available on: DVD
Availabity: In Stores
Release Date: 2005
Release Location: US

Contents:

75 minute Cartoon

Special Features:

• Tom and Jerry's Martian Mission: Fun facts about Mars.
• Step-by-step with Tom and Jerry: Shows the animation process
• Blasting off to Mars: a making of featurette.
• Trailers (6)

English, French, Spanish language tracks.

My Opinion:

I will try my best to review this as casually unbiased as possible, but I will note where the Purist/Nitpicker in me will show up.

The Premise:
Basically it's, Tom chases Jerry, destroying everything in their path. While chasing each other, they both end up at "Space Place" (ie. NASA) where they manage to get on the 1st manned rocket to Mars. Hilarity ensues when they encounter real Martians. That's the short, short version of the plot, but that is pretty much it.

The Good:
The animation was pretty good and the colors were fantastic, it was quite vibrant.Very solid animation. I enjoyed watching it and there were moments were I laughed out loud. Some of the chases were really unique as well as the damage that was done in the house where they first started out. They way Tom and Jerry interacted with each was really well done. It wasn't like the previous release, The Magic Ring, where the interaction didn't quite seem right. This time around, Tom and Jerry almost had that old Hanna-Barbera vibe to it...almost. They touched upon it. The rivalry and comradery between Tom and Jerry was pretty good and it felt real.It was really neat to see. The special features on the disc were excellent with a few exceptions. It was really cool to see the process the animation team went through to make the cartoon.

The Bad:
This is were the Purist/Nitpicker shows up.

The movie was slow. Don't get me wrong here, the chases were pretty fast paced. But, the chases were really drown out and it just really dragged. It felt like a six minute cartoon was stretched to fit an hour and fifteen minutes. That is problem for me. Like The Magic Ring, the chases seemed forced. Right off the bat they are chasing each other and destroying everything in their path. Nothing is safe, nothing is left standing. After a while it just got tiresome. The chases seemed to be chasing for the sake of chasing and parts of it where rather clichéd. It was rather mindless at times...cat chases mouse, mouse hits cat gets away, cat chases mouse again. What seemed to lack was, not only reasons for the chases, but the cunning. Look at the old cartoons and you'll see what I mean. However, they touched upon that old magic in the scene with the training simulator. I also noticed that some of the chases resembled chases from the old cartoons, nice homage; well done.

I don't have much to say about the supporting characters, to me they just didn't seem well developed as characters and should have been relegated to the background and not given as much focus as they were. The sound was pretty good, but not the best. It's hard not to compare this with the old cartoons, but Jerry's laughter was really electronic and it started to grate at my nerves.

The Ugly:
Presented in Standard format...BLAH!

All in all, this was a very good 'toon. It had its problems...mostly due to the bar that was set by the early Hanna-Barbera MGM Cartoons. I know that The Bad section is a fairly large, but don't let that deter you from picking this DVD up. I think kids would get a kick out of it and I do recommend picking it up. It was enjoyable and fun to watch.

TomAndJerryOnline.com Rating: