Tom und Tim am Ball

By the late '40s, Tom and Jerry had hit their stride, with excellent sight gags and a general wackiness to the stories. Whoever wrote this - probably directors Joseph Barbera and William Hanna - did a super job with it, because about every imaginable cartoon-like tennis stunt you could think of was included in this cartoon.

It's the championship tennis match, pitting Tom against some cigar-chomping cat but it no time it's a three-animal match with Tom, his opponent and Jerry Mouse all clobbering each other with an assortment of wicked shots and, well, let's say, bending of the rules.

Funny, inventive stuff and highly-recommended.

I loved Tennis Chumps, there is so much to recommend it. The story may be a tad unexceptional, but everything else is top notch. The animation is very clean and crisp, and the music is delightful once again. What makes Tennis Chumps work though are the clever sight gags and the chemistry between Tom(shown as an inferior player), Butch(who smokes a cigar here) and sweet and funny little Jerry, as they do all these fantastic shots while bending the rules too. The pacing is thick and fast, and the whole cartoon is non-stop hilarity from start to finish. Overall, just a delight, very unusual but such a lot of fun as well. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Tom attends a Tennis championship, with Jerry in tow as a ball boy (or mouse) of sorts. Cigar-smoking Butch is his rival, and is a much better player. When he realizes that Tom is out of his depth, Jerry manipulates the players into using increasingly deadly tricks against each other, without any kind of reaction from the viewing crowds.

There's enough visual humor in this one to make it worthwhile and it's a welcome break from the usual chase through the generic house. I just wish that the extent of the jokes went beyond the characters batting stuff at each other and tripping over the net.

Above average.

Tom plays a game of tennis against cigar-chomping alley-cat Butch, with Jerry the mouse on hand to carry the equipment and cause a little mischief.

This animated short goes all out to cram as much crazy, tennis-themed humour as possible into its seven minutes running time, but few of the gags it serves are aces: there are far too many jokes that simply rely on the two cats hitting each other with tennis balls and rackets, which is funny for a while but eventually becomes very repetitive. It would have been nice to have seen a little more imagination and variety to the chaos.

It might seem like me being a little picky, but I also felt a little disappointed with the animation: the tennis court backgrounds lack detail and the cats' rackets seem desperately short of strings.