Sorry Safari

An obnoxious fat man with an uncontrollable rage goes on safari in Nairobi, accompanied by his cat Tom, and stowaway mouse Jerry. Chaos ensues, but laughter doesn't.

A jungle-bound Tom and Jerry cartoon offers so much scope for decent gags—quicksand, man-eating plants, snakes, monkeys, crocodiles, lost civilisations—and yet director Gene Deitch limits Sorry Safari to having Tom and his owner fall off the back of an elephant and get chased by a purple rhinocerous. Excruciatingly bad animation and horrible sound effects abound, making this yet another stinker to be avoided by all but the bravest of animation adventurers.

Let me say first and foremost, I can only take so much of the Tom and Jerry cartoons (with the exceptions of the classic ones from the early years) and I absolutely despised the ones from the Gene Deitch era, but this has to be the worse. When ever I see this cartoon come on Cartoon Network, I try to change the channel. This cartoon ultimately lacks what makes a charming Tom and Jerry cartoon. The drawings look like they were done by a kid, the music was awful, and I have to agree with the earlier comment about Tom's owner. A guy like that would be asking for a charge for animal cruelty and therapy for anger management. There is nothing likable about the guy and so your sympathy goes more towards Tom rather than Jerry like it should. In all advice, I would suggest avoiding this cartoon at all cost.

In the early 1960s, some evil trolls at MGM decided to revive the Tom and Jerry series but wanted it done with practically no budget at all. So, the cartoons were farmed out to be done in Czechoslovakia by people that had hardly any notion of who the characters were. As a result, they didn't look all that much like Tom and Jerry and they acted nothing like the originals. Apparently, the staff hadn't really seen the cartoons before but that didn't stop them! This film is about a safari. But, who really cares?! This is a boring, horribly animated pile of manure posing as a Tom and Jerry cartoon. I loved the originals, but cringed at seeing this film.

You can't blame MGM switching to Chuck Jones and company to do Tom and Jerry. I never saw his award winning cartoons, but Gene Deitch made Tom and Jerry rather nauseating and creepy.

Here we see them on a safari, with one macho mad man who gets p***ed at Tom for every little bad thing he does, especially when he attempts to get Jerry the mouse. The mad man is EXTREMELY bitter towards Tom (you feel sorry for the poor feline).

The music and scenery is far from relaxing and the music seems to get to your head like nausea. This is true of some of the other Gene Deitch T&J shorts.

The jungle safari man is so one-dimensional and cold that he isn't funny. Some of the dog foes of Tom, most noteably Spike, had a personality and audiences could laugh every time Tom caught him, but this guy...

This particularly falls with the rest of the Gene Deitch T&J ones...his directing style did NOT fit Tom and Jerry. It's like putting a round peg into a square hole.

This 11th episode of the Gene Deitch era of Tom and Jerry falls somewhere between good and bad but it's more good than bad so it's enjoyable. The drawings of the characters are at their ugliest but the cartoon moves along at a quick pace. Using the same format as Down and Outing and High Steaks, it is the weakest of the three but voice actor Allen Swift gives his best performance as the foul tempered, grouchy semi- Clint Clobber. The music and coloring are also effective. There is also an interesting Jacob's Ladder gag. Despite some flaws, I recommend checking this out. 7/10.