Rating:
This is the hardest kind of review to write. When a movie is great, you can’t wait to discuss it with the world and recommend it to everyone you meet. When something is painfully, unendurably awful, it inspires you to make humorous, rage-fueled observations. But when, like Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale, a movie is just sort of whatever, there isn’t much to say.

Granted, by comparison with yesterday’s version of The Nutcracker, this thing is practically Citizen Kane. But on its own merits, the only word you can use to describe it is: meh.

The cartoon is a very loose telling of the Nutcracker story, with Jerry the mouse taking on the duties of the title character. A pretty little ballerina has been kidnapped by the evil cat king, who has also usurped the leadership of Toyland. (It’s sort of weird to use a mouse as the hero in a story where it’s traditionally the villains who belong to the order rodentia, but there it is.) Jerry must rescue the imprisoned ballerina and depose the pretender to the throne. The cat king sends out troops—led, of course, by none other than Tom—to put a stop to Jerry’s do-goodery.

For the most part, the story just kind of happens. It never really engages the viewer, though it never actively offends him, either. The truly disappointing thing is that—with a few exceptions I’ll come to in a moment—the movie has none of the manic energy and hilarity of the best classic Tom and Jerry cartoons (though it’s far superior to the better-left-forgotten era when Tom and Jerry wore bow ties and cooperated).

I mentioned exceptions to the flatness of the majority of the piece, and there are some. Isolated moments capture the comic-violence spirit of classic Tom and Jerry, capture it well enough to have me laughing aloud. There’s the time Tom gets stuffed in a wood chipper and the time every last one of his teeth is shattered by a hammer. My personal favorite gag has Tom being poked directly in his wide-open eye with the tines of a pitchfork. It isn’t just the violent nature of the gags; there are other moments of Tom and Jerry mayhem that don’t work so well and only contribute to the movie’s overall blandness. But the three moments I’ve mentioned, along with a few (too few) others, have not just a funny concept but a funny execution, with the perfect combination of subtle timing and exaggerated drawing that is the hallmark of a great cartoon.

Tchaikovsky is among my favorite composers, and his music for the Nutcracker ballet is used extensively throughout the cartoon. Scenes where the score and the animation are truly synchronized—like a Tom and Jerry version of Fantasia or “Rabbit of Seville”—are the best visually, the most fun to look at.

But aside from these few positives, there isn’t much here to recommend. The movie runs, and when it ends you’re neither richer nor poorer for having seen it.

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Care Bears: The Nutcracker
• Mickey’s Christmas Carol
• Has Anybody Seen Anchors Aweigh?
• I Hope Books Still Exist
• The Muppet Christmas Carol