Sadly Over-hyped

Did you people see the same film I saw?

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

As the voice-over for director Gene Deitch's The Tom & Jerry Cartoon Kit explains: "Anyone can now enter the lucrative field of animated cartoons". We know, Mr. Deitch—you're living proof!This one does away with a plot entirely, the cartoon consisting of totally random and surreal action, and keeps the need for drawing to an absolute minimum by making all of the backgrounds flat colour. What next? Pure white backgrounds? That would keep the costs down even further.Others here on IMDb seem to like The Tom & Jerry Cartoon Kit slightly more than Deitch's other efforts, but I don't get it, finding this just as wretched.

Growing up, I didn't realize that this short had narration. When I was watching the same short in another state years later, I suddenly noticed the narration (especially the coffee and cigarettes part) but every time I saw this on the WPIX NY station, there was only music and sound fx. That made for a trippy ride. But then again, I grew up on a lot of cartoons that were considered trippy. A lot of cartoons today are either too talky or everyone's shouting. But it does raise the question, why was there a version of this without narration? But this is one of the Gene Deitch T&J cartoons that I remember the most. It looked like it was set in some sort of two dimensional Be-bop Jazz world, which actually worked for the music that was playing. It never occurred to me that these were not American made, only that they were different from the Chuck Jones cartoons as much as the Chuck Jones toons were different from the Hanna Barbera (40s-50s) versions. Of course the classic HB shorts are the best, but I would put the Deitch versions a close second just because I like the atmospheric mood. It's just too bad that Gene Deitch hasn't been more prolific. His trippy style, while admittedly unusual for T&J, would have been ideal for serious science fiction adventure cartoons.

Okay so it's pretty far out there, but it isn't as bad as the safari one or the one where the same guy is barbecuing. Those are really, really wretched. Almost as bad as the series where Tom and Jerry are actually friends. I don't know maybe I just appreciate weird, but I thought there were a few cool moments in this one.

Gene Deitch could ruin ALPO. But, he managed to breathe some fresh air into the vastly overrated TOM and JERRY series, but only in this single cartoon. Its premise is that ANYONE (even himself, I suppose) could make cartoons. The bit about coffee and cigarettes for the animators is the best part of the cartoon. Other than that, it's the same old "Mouse beats up stupid cat" theme that was already years past anything original or valid.Deitch's style is way too eerie and absurd (see his Popeye cartoons--they ain't much better), and should NEVER have been used for a "serious" studio's product. This is the sole example of where it seemed to work.