Ratón de Laboratorio

OK, I'm really trying to like Chuck Jones' Tom and Jerry shorts, especially after the dismal cartoons directed by Gene Deitch, but I have to admit I'm not feeling it. Jones' rendition of Tom and Jerry just doesn't look right, no matter how hard I try to convince myself, and the action is already seeming very predictable.

Is There A Doctor In The Mouse? sees Jerry cook up a potion that makes him super fast. So fast, in fact, that he can eat food right out of Tom's paws without the cat seeing who is responsible. Tom, ever resourceful, films some food being taken and slows the action down to reveal the culprit. When Jerry's potion eventually wears off, Tom tries to grab the mouse from his hole, unaware that the clever rodent has cooked up another potion, this time making him extra large. When Tom sees the giant mouse, he loses his marbles.

All of Jerry's zipping about the house eating Tom's food is extremely repetitive and soon becomes tiresome, but worst of all, it simply isn't very funny. C'mon Chuck, we know you can do better than this.

This was the first of the several latter-day (mid 1960s) Tom And Jerry animated shorts I watched in the past month, having seen about 20-30 overall. Well, all I can say is: I am not impressed. I'll take the earlier stuff ('40s and '50s) any day.

These caricatures almost didn't even look like Tom and Jerry in spots. The artwork looked terrible. I would have guessed the opposite: that this was a primitive early edition, not something done late in the career of these animated favorites.

Story-wise, Jerry takes some strange green potion that makes him into a super-fast character, that goes around devouring all the food that Tom is ready to eat. It's done so fast, Tom doesn't have a clue what is happening. After he videotapes Jerry and puts it in slow- motion, he sees who the culprit is. When he goes to attack the mouse, Jerry has taken another potion which makes him a giant.

That's it - that's the story. Not funny at all and poorly drawn.

Well, the one good thing I can say about this cartoon is that it provided some very talented people (i.e., Chuck Jones and his recently-laid-off Warner animation crew) with some badly needed, full time jobs. This aside, they put the two characters in their mouths, chew 'em, then spit 'em out again so they're beyond recognition. I suppose I could give some credit for Jones' team giving this one some semblance of a story (albeit a very elementary one....and the gags were all done twenty times better in this or that Roadrunner cartoon--it reminds me most of that second-rate one where Wile E. chases the bird thru all those pipes & ends up with a giant Roadrunner). And Jones makes Tom grimace just like the Grinch, and later on he has Tom bawling just like Marc Antony (I think I'm gonna plotz). But with all those influences, I don't feel I'm getting much of a Tom & Jerry cartoon here.

First of all, I liked the premise of this episode. Tom and Jerry are still likable in a sense, and there are one or two fun moments thanks to some good pacing. Also the music is very good as pretty much always. However, a lot of things make this episode disappointing. One was the animation, while the backgrounds were pretty, the characters particularly Tom were drawn poorly. Secondly, it isn't as funny or as original as the early cartoons from Tom and Jerry, some of the gags are predictable and poorly timed. Thirdly, personally I thought the title of this short was on the lousy side, seemingly irrelevant.

Overall, okay but I don't recommend it. 6/10 Bethany Cox