Tom and Jerry parents guide

Tom and Jerry Parent Guide

The expected violent mayhem is delivered with gusto in this tedious film.

Overall B-

HBO Max and Theaters: Tom and Jerry have been literally locked in a game of cat and mouse their whole lives, but they've called a truce, and Jerry has moved into a posh New York hotel...where the owners hire Tom to deal with their new mouse problem.

Release date February 26, 2021

Violence C-
Sexual Content A
Profanity A
Substance Use B-

Why is Tom and Jerry rated PG? The MPAA rated Tom and Jerry PG for cartoon violence, rude humor and brief language.

Run Time: 100 minutes

Parent Movie Review

Unsurprisingly to those of us who grew up watching their original cartoons, Tom and Jerry (voiced variously by William Hanna, Mel Blanc, June Foray, and Frank Welker) are still up to their usual violent stunts. But they’ve gone upscale: they’re both living in the exclusive Royal Gate Hotel in Manhattan. This poses a problem for the hotel management, since Ben (Colin Jost) and Preeta (Pallavi Sharda), New York’s most celebrated couple, have chosen the hotel as the location for their upcoming wedding. Clearly, the Royal Gate can’t afford to have a mouse seen on the premises during one of the biggest events of the year, so they’ve hired Kayla (Chloe Grace Moretz), a driven young woman with a suspiciously perfect resume, to make the potential public relations disaster go away. To prevent a nuptial nightmare, Kayla will need to manage Tom and Jerry as well as her supervisor Terrance (Michael Peña) who believes that Kayla isn’t who she claims to be…

I expected this movie to be roughly as entertaining as eating paste, and I was right. Following other classic cartoon reboots like Scoob!, or heaven forbid, Yogi Bear, this didn’t exactly have stiff competition, and it’s about as good as these precursors. The most irritating issue in the movie is with the animated characters. The animators have tried to emulate classic 2D cartoon animation in a 3D CGI format, and it looks remarkably bad. Space Jam came out in 1997 and it did a considerably better job of integrating animation with live action.

The content concerns in this film all revolve around the ludicrous amount of slapstick violence, which shouldn’t come as any surprise to viewers familiar with the franchise. Since the movie’s animated, the consequences are quite literally shrugged off, but most of these acts would otherwise be fatal. Severe beatings, frequent electrocutions, and a number of car accidents are to be expected…and are delivered with gusto. On the plus side, the violence balances out with an almost complete absence of other issues – apart from the fact that the protagonist is functionally engaged in identity theft, which isn’t perhaps the kind of moral lesson you want to give your kids.

The older I get, the less sympathy I have for characters like Jerry. As a kid, you cheer for them because they are an unholy, unstoppable force of nature. They act on their whims and never face consequences for their bad behavior – a child’s fantasy. As an adult, I’m on the Tom side of this equation. I think as we age, we all turn into Wile E. Coyote to some degree, and we stop sympathizing with the instigator of the chaos. For adults, Tom and Jerry will likely prove a frustrating way to spend 90 minutes. For kids… well, just make sure they understand that if they clobber any friends or siblings with an iron, the results are more likely to be fatal than funny.

Directed by Tim Story. Starring Chloë Grace Moretz, Michael Peña, and Rob Delaney.. Running time: 100 minutes. Theatrical release February 26, 2021. Updated

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Tom and Jerry
Rating & Content Info

Why is Tom and Jerry rated PG? Tom and Jerry is rated PG by the MPAA for cartoon violence, rude humor and brief language.

Violence: There are frequent instances of cartoon violence, which include (but are by no means limited to) electrocution, consumption, immolation, beating, and being pooped on.
Sexual Content: None.
Profanity: None.
Alcohol / Drug Use: Characters are briefly seen with champagne in a celebratory context.

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Tom and Jerry Parents' Guide

Why does Kayla lie about her credentials? What are the risks in the short term? Could she be charged with a crime?

Tom and Jerry struggle to put aside their differences. Why is that? What do you think they could do to get along better? Is there someone in your life who you can’t seem to stop fighting with? What do you think you could do to fix that situation?

Loved this movie? Try these books…

If your young reader enjoys the mayhem created by this famous cat and mouse, they can dive right into books featuring the duo. There’s a Mouse Hiding in This Book! by Benjamin Bird and Carmen Perez will keep kids busy trying to find Jerry’s hiding place on each page. They will also enjoy A Cat Is Chasing Me Through This Book!, thanks to the interactive book’s rapid pacing.

Home Video

Related home video titles:

This isn’t the duo’s first cinematic outing. Tom and Jerry: The Moviereleased in 1992 with plenty of mayhem.

If you love seeing your favorite Saturday morning animated cartoon characters interacting with live actors, you’ll get a kick out of Space Jam. Starring Michael Jordan, the movie brings Bugs Bunny, Tweety, and Sylvester into the real world (or something like it). Not to be outdone, Daffy Duck has his own starring turn in Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

Other films developed from television cartoon series include The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Flintstones, and Yogi Bear.

Perhaps the best alternative is Toy Story, which similarly features an unlikely group of toys putting aside their differences to work together for someone else.