The Zoot Cat

Here's one fact that I had forgotten. The much lauded "talking" between Tom and Jerry in the feature film a few years back WAS NOT THE FIRST TIME THEY TALKED! They didn't say more than a couple of lines, but, BOTH Tom and Jerry spoke actual words in this cartoon! So much for Hollywood "Myths". I guess the screenwriters overlooked this episode.

It's a fun outing, like most of Tom and Jerry's adventures. Tom's trying to be hep to impress a local female cat, and Jerry's only making things harder on Tom than normal. Good fun, and wild to hear them speak.

This is not the best of the Tom and Jerry cartoons, but it is very funny. I thought the animation was very nice for its time, it is one of the better-looking early Tom and Jerry cartoons. I thought the music was outstanding, I know I keep mentioning the music in everything I review but the music is always something I like to talk about. Here it was fun and rousing. I thought the dialogue was hilarious, maybe some of the cool hip language used here is a tad dated but it was funny and worked reasonably well. The female cat's dialogue was enough to have me on the floor doubled up from laughing, it was just so witty and fresh. I thought the story was effective, simple yet effective. I thought the visual gags were a delight, there were enough to delight any Tom and Jerry fan. I thought the characters were well done, Tom sometimes talks a little too much, but he is fine, and Jerry is still his sweet and rascally self. Plus the female cat was a welcome addition. Overall, enjoyable. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Tom has his whiskers permed, and he's strutting his stuff going to impress his sweetie. He's got Jerry all packaged up as a special gift. At the door, he presents the gift, dances, sings, doing whatever he can to impress her. She isn't impressed (women are so moody). She tells him, using a half dozen expressions of the day, that "You don't send me." She throws Jerry in his face, saying, "Here's your rat, cat!"

Tom overhears a radio commercial urging guys to get a zoot suit to impress the gals. He makes one, goes back to see the girl and - wham! - she's impressed now.

The dialog in this short is fantastic. I wish they had English subtitles so I could catch all the hip phrases. The rest of the cartoon has Tom interrupted in his quest for admiration by Jerry, of course, and the two chase each other in the final few minutes.

The Zoot Cat might have seemed incredibly 'hip' at the time of its original release, with it's jazz slang and cutting-edge sub-culture fashion, but it now feels embarrassingly dated; yet this 'snapshot of a time gone by' also goes to make this a rather intriguing episode. It's hard for me, as an Englishman born in the late 60s, to imagine an era in the US in which such strange attire and language could have been seen as 'dangerously' cool, but here it is, perfectly captured in a Tom and Jerry cartoon— and seeing is believing, as they say!

Tom wishes to impress a young lady cat, but she perceives him to be 'square'. To remedy the situation, Tom cuts himself a sharp 'zoot suit' from a hammock, makes himself a wide brimmed hat, and dances swing-style to the latest beats. Of course, Jerry does his utmost to ruin Tom's chances of success.

Not only is this a historically interesting T&J caper, but it is also one in which the usually rather silent cat and mouse do a lot of talking—albeit in a manner that proves to be unintelligible a lot of the time, thanks to the often indecipherable 40s phrases spoken by the characters. Unfortunately, whilst this episode is noteworthy for it's peculiarities, it isn't that funny.

The Zoot Cat will be of most interest to those who have a passion for the music and style of the decade in which it was made; the rest of us will probably be rather unimpressed.

Tom uses material from hammock to made his zoot suit. He tries to be the hippest cat around with the suit, and try to attract a certain feline. Jerry the mouse always get in Tom's way of romancing a female. The Zoot Cat is one of the funniest in the Tom and Jerry cartoons.