Jerry and Jumbo

A little circus elephant ends up in the home of Tom and Jerry. When some strange things happen Tom thinks it is Jerry who causes them, but in fact it is the elephant. When Tom gets mad at Jerry the elephant helps the little mouse and they start working together.

The short starts a little boring but once the elephant dresses up as a mouse to give Tom a hard time it gets hilarious and I had a very good time.

A baby elephant falls from a moving circus train and rolls into a house, landing in Tom's basket. Jerry befriends the new arrival, disguising it to look like a giant mouse in order to terrorise Tom.

In the world of Tom and Jerry, a painted pachyderm (its trunk rolled up and coloured black) looks just like a giant mouse; if you can swallow such a silly concept, then Jerry and Jumbo should deliver lots of laughs, the highlight for me being the classic 'mirror' routine whereby Tom runs to and fro past a gap in the wall, the mouse and the elephant taking it in turns to mimic the cat's movements.

There are lots of laughs to be had as Tom tries to figure out what is happening, before the baby elephant's mother arrives and joins in on the fun, becoming an even larger 'mouse', all of which sends the poor cat completely off his rocker.

Boy, they really stretch credibility here, right from the start....but it's a cartoon and, as we all know, "anything goes" in animated shorts. Here, a baby elephant on a circus train falls out of a compartment, rolls down a hill, tumbles through the front door, over furniture and lands in Tom's sleeping basket! Yeah, right!

The story centers around the elephant being painted to look a big version of Jerry and you know who is going to get the short end of the stick regarding violence and pain.

There are good sight gags in here, different things, mainly with the little mouse/big mouse theme. Another major element is the incredible sucking power of the elephant's trunk. It's a solid entry in the Tom & Jerry collection with a good mix of comedy and cuteness. One wonders, though, during all the commotion, where were the people who own the house?

This Tom & Jerry cartoon I just found and watched on the DVD of Billy Rose's Jumbo. It has a baby elephant stumble from a moving train to the house where the cat and mouse live. That elephant first goes in Tom's bed under his blanket before that cat goes there for his rest. I'll stop here and just say what happens after that is quite hilarious especially the way it all ends, that's for sure! So on that note, I highly recommend Jerry and Jumbo.

Not a bad cartoon, and it does pick up after the setup. I'm surprised though that no one has commented on the unoriginality of using exactly the same plot device as the several Sylvester the cat and Hippety Hopper cartoons, where Sylvester mistakes a baby kangaroo for a giant mouse, gets beat up, goes crazy, etcetra, etcetera. I guess there's only so many ideas to be had for cat-mouse battles, so you gotta get 'em where you can? Then there's also that Tom and Jerry cartoon that copies another Looney Tunes even more precisely - Bugs Bunny as concert pianist fighting a mouse sleeping inside the piano, leading to chaos vs a proper formal recital. Tom and Jerry did the same thing a little later - even used the same piece of classical music! Makes me wonder what other ideas were "borrowed" from Looney Tunes. No matter. If it's done well, still a worthy short.