Blue Cat Blues

Shortly after Hanna-Barbera had taken over as producers for Fred Quimpy, they were allowed to experiment more with Tom & Jerry. One of the results is "Blue Cat Blues." In this short Jerry narrates Tom's struggles to win over the love of the cat next door. Who also has a thing for Butch! Even though this is the darkest and less humorous of the Tom & Jerry cartoons, I praise it for it's lovely style of direction.

4(****)out of 4(****)stars

I love Tom and Jerry and everything that has to do with it, Blue Cat Blues is no exception, but the short is too different from the others...

The beginning is Horrible, Tom on the train tracks waiting to be run over by it while Jerry tells us an incredibly well done but sad story.

The Short is Infamous for the Scene where both Tom and Jerry sit on the Train Tracks to be Crushed by the Same just because "Their wives found someone richer" and I don't think that's the World's Friendliest Moral.

The Animation is Pretty Cheap and Simple at this point, the Title Card is Simple with a Lamppost and the title of the short, but the simplicity sometimes helps as the card with that blue background looks very unsettling due to how empty it is, Both Tom and Jerry look pretty as always, their Cinemascope design is possibly one of the most memorable of the entire franchise, Butch looks Great as Always and is one of his Few Appearances at this time, the cat's design in my opinion is unattractive and a little ugly and straight up looks like a shoddy copy of Toddles Galore, the movements are decent but not too fluid, the backgrounds are empty like a desert but what little there is is nice and very well colored.

The Music in this Short is Far Superior to Most Tom and Jerry Shorts, I like how well done it is, The Sad Scenes have music too good and it's possibly one of the best Tom and Jerry shorts in terms of the Music we're talking about and that's all thanks to Scott Bradley!.

You must know by now that I always give short and boring messages about Sound Effects and Voice Acting so I'll sum it up in 1 word "Great".

Something that should be clarified is why Butch is Rich overnight?, but I think that is not important if not how unpleasant the Characters in the Short are, the cat, Butch and even Tom himself for having Ignored Jerry but he is forgiven because he is still a great character here.

As such, Blue Cat Blues is by far the creepiest Tom and Jerry short film (beating Down and Outing, High Steaks and Sorry Safari), its infamous scene where both leads commit suicide is Disgusting and too Sad for a Cartoon but it's a good short, It has Phenomenal Music and great Voice acting and makes us see a more serious version of the Characters and we get to see in depth the friendship of both, for everything I said earlier this short takes an 8!.

Not your everyday Tom and Jerry short for many reasons. One, there's a voiceover narration by Jerry, which is odd, because Tom and Jerry rarely speak. Two, the two are friends, which was also rare and seldom works as well as the more adversarial shorts do. Third, and most importantly, the cartoon is rarely humorous (by design) and the jokes here are dry chuckles with a little cough and a bubble of blood at the end. Think a Tom and Jerry cartoon directed by Tim Burton. Not wholly successful, but it largely does work. The creepiest ending for an MGM short that I can recall. Not for everyone and proof that these shorts were never intended solely with children as the target audience. Well worth watching. Recommended with the caveats above.

This is very different from the normal Tom and Jerry cartoon and, for most people, a flop. I see that's the consensus here, and I understand it. This effort at humor just didn't cut it for most people including me BUT it got better and better as it went on and I'm not so sure it was a failure in what it tried to say. Where it failed was the fact that the public didn't like it. Not being liked by the audience is the worst sin possible in the entertainment business.

Early on, there were a few gags that made me laugh, such as Tom (literally) "flipping his lid" and the excesses his rival, "Mr. Butch" went to, to impress the hot feline both he and Tom were after.

The narration tells us the sad tale of how Tom ruined himself over this woman. It's told through Jerry's voice which sounds more like a soft Keifer Sutherland than some little mouse that we'd expect. At first, it was annoying but then I got used to it, and almost laughed at the obvious attempt of the writers to make this overly melodramatic with lines like, "He willingly sold himself into slavery....for love." If you know a lot of 1950s movies, this sort of soapy story fits fit in. In fact, the more I watched this, the better it got as I laughed over this soap opera parody.

The purpose of a Tom and Jerry cartoon is to make the viewer laugh, albeit with a heavy dose of sadistic violence, but this one is downright depressing. Tom is sat on some railway tracks, waiting for an express train to come and end his life. As Jerry recounts, the cat has a broken heart, having lost the love of his life to rival Butch, who has outclassed Tom at every turn. After turning to drink, the cat has finally decided that suicide is his only salvation.

Jerry thinks how lucky he is to have his girlfriend Toots, when he spots her in a car with another mouse, the vehicle displaying a 'Just Married' sign. Emotionally distraught, the mouse climbs onto the tracks to join poor Tom as a train whistles in the distance. Not exactly a barrel of laughs and consequently not one of my favourites.