Just Ducky

This is an extremely likable Tom and Jerry cartoon where you get a good combination of humor, sentiment, drama and just plain cuteness with an ending that is guaranteed to make you smile - guaranteed!

It all revolves around a little duck who can't swim. Tom doesn't enter the story until the halfway mark. By then, Jerry has given up trying to teach the little one how to swim. His mom and brothers/sisters have swum away leaving him by himself. Tom and Jerry are on the farm in this episode, near the lake where the chick tries to swim.

Most of the highlights of this cartoon are the inventive slapstick scenes in which Tom (and a couple of times, Jerry) are made into odd shapes through some accident or whatever. There are all funny gags. The clever stuff comes in the last two minutes and the "cute" part is the ending.

All in all, a cartoon that should satisfy about everyone.

Quacker the duck has to be one of my least favourite of Jerry's sidekicks: he's just way too cutesy for my liking. In this cartoon, he is the last of a clutch of eggs to hatch and is left behind by his mother and siblings when they take to the water (aaaww!). And to make matters worse, he can't swim. Convinced that 'nobody loves me', the sad little duckling wanders into the path of Tom, who tries to cook the little fellow. Jerry intervenes, however, and tries to teach Quackers how to swim while avoiding Tom.

Just Ducky is a long way from the early Tom and Jerry shorts, in which the characters would inflict massive amounts of pain on each other. Nobody here really gets hurt, and when it looks like Tom is going to drown, Quacker overcomes his fear of water to save the cat. I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

One of the ducklings hatched finds that he cannot swim, so enlists the help of Jerry after he saw the poor thing in tears. After some vain attempts, the duckling wanders off, where a hungry Tom is waiting...

This cartoon's funny, and the little duckling is as amusing as ever. It's just a shame that this was the last of the cartoons where Tom had his most memorably superb appearance visually. From the next cartoon ('Two Little Indians') onwards he began to simplify...

It is not my absolute Tom and Jerry cartoon or one to feature Tom, Jerry and Little Quacker, but it is one of the cuter ones I think. The story is a very nicely constructed one, revolving around Jerry trying to teach a newly hatched duckling to swim and saving him from Tom who intends to eat him. The animation is very beautiful and lively, and the music I had no qualms with either. Same with the sight gags, all of them were inventive and unpredictable, and they were funny too. Plus the ending is very cute. Tom doesn't appear till halfway through, but he is a lot of fun, and Jerry is still cunning and caring. Little Quacker almost steals the show, for he gives one of his more cuter performances here, and is well voiced by Red Coffee. Overall, very funny and I think cute too. 10/10 Bethany Cox