Carmen Get It! (1962)

User Rating:

4.2/10   

Director:

Gene Deitch

Writer:

Gene Deitch (story)

Release Date:

December 1962 (USA)

Genre:

Family | Animation | Short | Comedy | Music

Plot:

Jerry runs into the Metropolitan Opera (preparing to perform Carmen), so Tom poses as a violinist, with help from a hidden tape recorder. |

Plot Keywords:

Opera | Tom And Jerry | Cat Versus Mouse | Symphony | Orchestra

Runtime:

8 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #20436)

Company:

Rembrandt Films (I)

Trivia:

The last Tom and Jerry cartoon directed by Gene Deitch.

Movie Connections:

Follows The Dog House (1952)

Soundtrack:

Yankee Doodle

this should never have been made

I am so very, very grateful that Gene Deitch stopped making Tom and Jerry cartoons after this. I can sort of appreciate some of his cartoons as representative of an era--a sparse, artsy, '60s look with a harsh, "hip" sound. But aside from that, all these cartoons are terrible. "Carmen Get It" is probably the Deitch cartoon that I hate the most passionately. I've always loved the musical Tom & Jerry cartoons. In the 1940's these cartoons were elegant tributes to the music they were they were using. "Cat Concerto" even won an Oscar, although "Mouse in Manhattan" is my favorite. "Carmen Get It," like all Deitch cartoons, tries to repeat this previously successful formula, but fails entirely.

The sound and animation quality is appalling. The images are choppy and uneven--backgrounds and characters disappear and reappear, and all movement is jerky and unpleasant. The classical music they are supposedly focusing on, Bizet's Carmen, is continuously interrupted with acrid sound effects and Steven Konichek's repetitive themes. Eventually the music from Carmen is abandoned entirely as Jerry "mixes up" the musical notes and harried Tom is forced to conduct increasingly fast and difficult music. This could be fun to watch, but it just isn't. It isn't done with any sort of beauty or style. The music is abused and wasted, and the images on the screen are unattractive and unmemorable.