Tops with Pops

Bulldogs Spike and Tyke are asleep in the yard until Tom and Jerry enter the scene, causing a ruckus. Tom disturbs Tyke trying to get at Jerry, who has hidden in the pup's kennel. Spike warns Tom to stay away from his son, which leads to Jerry exploiting the situation to repeatedly get Tom in trouble.

A remake of the 1949 T&J short Love That Pup (not Quiet Please, as some others reviewers have written), using the same animation cells but different backgrounds to suit the CinamaScope format, this is a totally pointless Tom and Jerry episode, especially considering the fact that the new backgrounds are much cruder than the old ones. More colourful, perhaps, but cruder.

4/10. Watch the original instead.

This cartoon was a rip-off of an earlier Tom and Jerry cartoon. In the late 50s, the studio simply remade older cartoons instead of coming up with new ones. Plus, the animation quality was significantly poorer than the originals. In this case, I STRONGLY recommend you look for the earlier toons. While this isn't a bad cartoon, it certainly pales in comparison to the older ones.

The original cartoon was QUIET PLEASE (1945) and was, for the most part, exactly what you see in this movie. In both, Tom is making a racket when he is chasing Jerry--so much so that Spike threatens to do bad things to Tom should they wake his little son. And, given that Tom is stupid, he again and again tests the dog's patience until he ultimately gets what he has coming to him.

Maybe they skinned the wrong people (animal).

Hanna And Barbera should be skinned alive as poor Tom was here in this cartoon, which is - as another reviewer has already pointed out - almost an exact duplicate of one made over a decade earlier: 1945's "Quiet Please".

For T&J cartoon fans who hadn't seen the earlier cartoon, this will do nicely, but for animated aficionados like me and maybe you, this is an insult and a total rip-off. It's especially annoying when you have doled out your cash for a cartoon set and you get several of these rehashed cartoons.

In a nutshell, the bulldog "Spike" just wants to make sure his little pup gets some sleep and Tom, inadvertently keeps preventing that, getting the ire of the dad. Tom's stupidity is shown to the hilt here, too.

If you're already familiar with "Quiet Please!" you might as well just skip this cartoon.

Tops With Pops is not one of Tom and Jerry's- of whom I have always been a great fan of- best. It is not one of their most original, with a story that is basically a retread of Love That Pup(a stronger cartoon generally), so naturally some are going to question the point of it. The animation is not quite as detailed-looking, though still has a lot of colour and vibrancy. The music though is full of sumptuous orchestration and character, enhancing every bit of humour there is in Tops With Pops. The gags are not as clever as Love That Pup, but are still very funny. All the characters are spot on in characterisation and work so well together, very rarely in Tom and Jerry has it been any other way.

All in all, for all that it lacks in originality Tops With Pops more than makes up for it in entertainment value. 7/10 Bethany Cox