It’s been awhile since I’ve done a Tom and Jerry animator breakdown, so here is one of the best ones.
One of the problems I’ve started to have with a lot of T&J (and the Hanna-Barbera team’s direction in general) is that the gags don’t have much of a payoff, or at least ones I laugh at. Even in the best ones, like Mouse Trouble, there’s the infamous “surprise package” that goes on for half a minute, that doesn’t even have a payoff until we see that Tom actually did survive the Guantanamo Bay treatment in the next scene – a payoff I do laugh at, but it takes too long to get to. Had such a gag arose in a Friz Freleng Sylvester, the humor would have derived from the fact that we don’t see the cat get mutilated, and only see the results.
Mike Barrier has said that the H-B T&Js are “Terrytoons in a Harman-Ising shell,” which is too sweeping a statement. While it’s clear that H-B were not nearly as talented or inventive in their directorial approach as their co-worker Tex Avery (or most of their contemporaries at Warners), most Terrytoons generally feel as though somebody told those guys about comedy timing (never mind animation timing) over the phone, a vibe even the worst T&Js don’t give off.
Mouse Trouble, though, works on several levels. The cartoon, with its frequent renditions of “All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm”, is timed and animated like a musical, even more so than the ‘actual’ musical T&J shorts. For once the Bradley score and the action onscreen are in perfect balance. When Tom places the mouse trap, he just doesn’t scurry out of sight, he dances out of sight. Even the underscore of Tom setting the bear trap is meticulously done. The obscene violence also actually builds up in the short, leading to Tom’s inevitable demise. And you’ve got Jerry blatantly taking the Mae West quoting wind-up toy to make sexytime with. (Amazing that it got passed Joe “sex isn’t real” Breen; but then again, Tom & Jerry is the last series you’d think of looking for sexual promiscuity in).
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