Tom und die Penthouse Maus

As a kid, I never used to enjoy the Chuck Jones T&J cartoons all that much, despite being a big fan of Bugs Bunny and the rest of the Looney Tunes gang; however, having just sat through all thirteen of director Gene Deitch's contributions to the long running cat and mouse series, I have a new-found admiration for Jones' work.

Tom and Jerry are inescapably Jones in style, reminding me at times of Sylvester and Speedy Gonzales, and they definitely take a bit of getting used to, but the gags are on point and the animation is slick, with the action accompanied by perfectly acceptable music and suitable sound effects (none of the reverberating electronic bleepy nonsense that helped to make Deitch's cartoons such a challenge).

As far as the story goes, Jones plays it safe for Pent-House Mouse, with a simple set-up that allows for plenty of gags: Tom is lounging in a swanky high-rise apartment while Jerry is on the street starving. When Jerry sneaks into a builder's lunchbox, he is hoisted up into the air by a crane, falls from a great height, and is caught by Tom, who turns the mouse into a sandwich. Cue lots of cat and mouse action, most of which is pretty funny (the 'flag pole unscrewing' gag is priceless!).

6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

Chuck Jones was one of the best animators of all time, maybe he wasn't the craziest like Bob Clampett or Tex Avery, or the most awarded like Walt Disney, but he really was a tremendous genius at directing!.

After the Cat and Mouse Madness in Czechoslovakia, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer hired former Looney Tunes Animator Chuck Jones to produce a new series of short films by the cat and mouse duo! The problem is that both Hanna and Barbera had left MGM in the late 50s to found their own animation company, Tex Avery had done the same in 58 after the closure of the MGM Animation studio, but Chuck Jones with his always faithful team at Sib Tower Productions managed to somewhat recover the Charm of the original era.

I like the Humor and the Artistic Style, it reminds me a lot of how Great the Looney Tunes were when Jones was at Warner Brothers, The Design of Tom and Jerry is fabulously cute, Tom now has bigger eyebrows and Jerry now has the Forehead Bigger, there are some distortions in the Characters but I guess they are a Method to give Grace, honestly Chuck Jones was good at Preserving his style and at the same time, Placing his Style in totally different things.

The Animation is an Incredible Improvement from the Gene Deitch era, the drawing style is not so Simplistic anymore and the Horrible Surreal Sound Effects are gone forever, as I said the art style is great and very pleasing to the eye. View, The Animation is Flawless, Juicy in Detail and is one of the main reasons why I love this Tom and Jerry Era.

Stepan Konicek in Czechoslovakia offered Horrendous Music, poorly composed and Horrendously Synchronized, after the End of the Gene Deitch Era as I said, many of the Problems were fixed, and the music is now Fun and has the aura of a Cartoon Mid 60s Eugene Poddany isn't the best songwriter I've ever heard, he's Easily beaten by Dean Elliot but Poddany had a pretty friendly and ear pleasing Musical Style, honestly not his best effort for a cartoon but really pretty decent to listen.

Mel Blanc replaces Allen Swift as voice actor, Blanc is a legend in the world of Announcement, but he is not really his best effort here, although this is Justifiable because the characters barely make sounds in this cartoon.

In terms of Plot, this Cartoon is not the best, the Plot takes many turns, but none of them are impressive and the plot and script are easily absurd, but that is the Magic of Jones!, there are quite a few nice and funny moments In the cartoon, although honestly it was not the best start to this era, but what does it matter! Seeing the cat and mouse duo again is great.

A Bad quality is the Frequent Animation errors and the Slight deformations in the characters, the scene with Jerry running in the air I thought it would end with him falling, but in reality he was walking on an invisible stick, that scene is great and nice, but at least they would have solved the error in the scene.

Jones somewhat regained the charm of the series in this short and then perfected it in The Cat Above and the Mouse Below, which is easily the best short of this era, but that's for another review, the artistic and musical style is Great, the Animation is Good for the Standards of the mid-60s, and even continues to be preserved, Humor, although it is different from the original Tom and Jerry, does not resort to violence as the main means of comedy, there are some blows here, the rest is filled with one or another moderately funny and original joke.

In itself, it is not the best effort of Jones in Tom and Jerry and at the same time of his Career, but it turns out to be a nice and easy to watch short unlike the Shorts Produced in Czechoslovakia at the hands of Gene Deitch, Here the Animation has increased enormously in quality as well as humor, Jones although not offering the best effort, manages to create a funny cartoon that started this Era with a Decent Short.

For everything I said above, Pent-House Mouse gets an 8.

Tom and Jerry always has been one of my favourites. A vast majority of the cartoons of the 40s up to about 1956 are classics or very, very good. The ones made when Fred Quimby was no longer in charge were not quite as good but more than watchable with some foibles. The Gene Deitch cartoons however are, with two exceptions(and they're mediocre at best), abominations. The Chuck Jones output generally is mixed in quality and none are what I consider classic Tom and Jerry, but what's for certain is that it is a huge improvement over what was seen before with Deitch. The music is upbeat and catchy, there are some amusing moments, Tom and Jerry are likable characters, some of the colours in the animation look quite nice and the pent-house proves to be a good setting. Some of the animation though is rather scratchy, especially in the character designs(Tom in particular looks odd) and the story is rather routine and not very surprising. But what was disappointing about Pent-House Mouse was that while it was Tom and Jerry in name and there were the characters it didn't feel like the classic Tom and Jerry I loved and still love to this day. I can understand though as this was the first Tom and Jerry cartoon with Chuck Jones at the helm, but there are one too many pieces of evidence that give away that Jones was still trying to find his feet, as seen with the rather plodding pacing, the lack of the classic cartoony violence, sound effects that seemed too restrained and the rather too-generally-organised gags(some are amusing though). Overall, not among the classics but a long way from being a disgrace. 5/10 Bethany Cox