Guided Mouse-Ille

I've mentioned in some of my comments that a few of the Tom and Jerry cartoons produced by Chuck Jones have come dangerously close to matching Gene Deitch's dreadful output in terms of overall quality. With Guided Mouse-Ille, director Abe Levitow has finally equalled Deitch for sheer horribleness, his cartoon a thoroughly joyless mess from start to godawful finish.

Following on from the space theme of the pretty crappy O-Solar-Meow, Guided Mouse-Ille is set in outer space in the year 2565 AD, where Tom and Jerry carry out their chases with the use of remote controlled robots. When the robots are destroyed, the pair get to work on powerful bombs, eventually blowing themselves back to the stone age, where Levitow utilises some of the ugliest animation imaginable (even Deitch would have thought twice about using drawings this bad!).

Everyone associated with this film deserves to burn in cartoon Hades for making this abominable cartoon and calling it "Tom and Jerry". It is simply wretched and about as terrible as the few Tom and Jerry cartoons made in Czechoslovakia in the early 60s (that's another story that I won't get into here).

Tom and Jerry are living in the distant future. And, being the future, they use robot versions of themselves to wage war. The entire chemistry of the old Tom and Jerry cartoons is absent and the film just isn't funny or entertaining. Additionally, the animation quality is just bad--both the characters and the backgrounds look cheap. The bottom line is this franchise in the 1940s meant quality and fun--2 things entirely missing here.

From Chuck Jones comes a pretty good Tom and Jerry cartoon. Guided Mouse-Ille I admit doesn't hold a candle to the wonderful Tom and Jerry cartoons of the '40s and '50s, most of which are cartoon classics and even the weakest of them are worth watching, but it is a huge improvement over any of the Gene Dietch cartoons, Switchin' Kitten should never have been made especially.

Guided Mouse-Ille also in my opinion is one of the better Chuck Jones-produced Tom and Jerry cartoons, and I actually found it funnier than Advance and Be Mechanized. The story is a little on the predictable side and the ending doesn't quite work. I had mixed feelings on the animation, the backgrounds are very handsome with unique colouring, however the characters don't look the same, Tom especially looks odd. On a more plus side, the soundtrack is nice, jazzy and upbeat, and the visual and sight gags are fun and clever- Invisibility and electrocution in typical Tom and Jerry fashion. Plus the pacing is very brisk. So overall, Guided Mouse-Ille isn't outstanding but it is a good cartoon. 7/10 Bethany Cox