Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!
I’ve reviewed quite a number of ‘Tom and Jerry’ movies on my blog. This includes ‘Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory’, ‘The Wizard of Oz’, ‘Back to Oz’ and they ‘Meet Sherlock Holmes’. Now it’s time to review something a little festive with the cat and mouse duo as the year’s drawing to a close.
‘Tom and Jerry Christmas: Paws For A Holiday’ is a collection of holiday themed cartoons featuring Tom and Jerry. At least, that’s what it’s supposed to be. But after watching the entire collection, there wasn’t many Christmas-themed cartoons featured. This ended up being a mixed bag for me. 😦
Now I wouldn’t have minded this if all the cartoons were good. But that’s not what this DVD contains. It has two very good cartoons from the classic days of Tom and Jerry; one decent one and four very average ones. I don’t see this as something very fulfilling for many Tom and Jerry fans here.
The cartoons are as follows. There’s ‘Mice Follies’ and ‘Designs on Jerry’. I find these to be really good Tom and Jerry cartoons with good animation provided by producer Fred Quimby and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. I even recall seeing these cartoons as a kid back in the 1990s.
The next one after that – ‘The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit’ – is decent. Whilst it’s not one of the original Tom and Jerry cartoons from the 1950s, it has the duo looking like them. There were some funny antics in it and it’s amusing to see Tom and Jerry used to demonstrate how to make a cartoon.
The last four cartoons are produced by Chuck Jones, who is well-known for doing ‘Looney Tunes’ cartoons and the 1966 ‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas!’. The four cartoons are ‘Snowbody Loves Me’, ‘I’m Just Wild About Jerry’, ‘The A-Tom-Inable Snowman’ and ‘Advance and Be Mechanized’. 😀
I don’t care for these cartoons very much with Chuck Jones’ style. They’re okay as far as I’m concerned but the animation feels wrong with Tom and Jerry not looking like Tom and Jerry from the 1950s cartoon. I didn’t like them very much as a kid and I don’t like them very much as a grown-up.
They bring back nostalgic memories as I do recall seeing ‘The A-Tom-Inable Snowman’ as a kid, but the animation style distracted me from enjoying them as Tom and Jerry cartoons. The plots also aren’t good and funny as the original 1950s cartoons. I found the 1950s ones funnier than later on.
In terms of how these cartoons connect to Christmas – well…the connection I can come up with is that they have snow and ice in some of them. ‘Mice Follies’ has Jerry and Tuffy ice-skating in an ice-filled kitchen with Tom joining them. ‘Snowbody Loves Me’ is literally in the Swiss Alps for the duo. 🙂
There’s also a toy store featured in ‘I’m Just Wild About Jerry’ which I suppose does have a Christmas-related theme to it concerning toys. ‘The A-Tom-Inable Snowman’ speaks for itself with Tom and Jerry skiing in snowy mountains and Tom ending up getting frozen in ice blocks and such. 😀
But there’s not much Christmassy things going on in this DVD apart from the DVD cover and seeing the DVD special features which includes a ‘Jerry’s Winter Wonder Run Challenge’ menu based game which I can’t get the hang on. ‘The Holiday Melody with Tom and Jerry’ music video is also included. 🙂
I couldn’t help but notice similarities between ‘The A-Tom-Inable Snowman’ cartoon and the Disney cartoon called ‘Alpine Climbers’. Both of them featured a dog who healed animals with alcohol. Tom ends up ridiculously drunk in the cartoon and is sillier compared to how Pluto ended up being drunk.
So yeah, ‘Tom and Jerry Christmas: Paws For A Holiday’ was a disappointing Christmas DVD release for me. I hoped for something good with this ‘Tom and Jerry’ collection, but it’s just a mixed bag. I hope for things to be pretty better with my next ‘Tom and Jerry’ DVD release – ‘A Nutcracker’s Tale’.
Thanks for reading!
Bye for now!
Tim. 🙂
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