The Mansion Cat (TV 2000)

The owner of a large house tells Tom he's going away for a while, the house is in perfect shape, and that he doesn't want Tom blaming "the mouse" (who's a family pet, in a cage) this time. ... See full summary »

Director:

Karl Toerge

Writers:

William Hanna (characters), Joseph Barbera (characters),

Stars:

Joseph Barbera

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Joseph Barbera	...	Homeowner (voice)

Storyline

The owner of a large house tells Tom he's going away for a while, the house is in perfect shape, and that he doesn't want Tom blaming "the mouse" (who's a family pet, in a cage) this time. Of course, this means Tom will spend most of the picture chasing Jerry around the house, causing extensive damage. Among the sequences: Jerry shoves Tom into a VCR, then shelves the resulting cassette-sized cat; Tom traps Jerry in a coffeemaker; Jerry traps Tom in a refrigerator, and he comes out again in ice cubes; Jerry sucks Tom and half the living room into a vacuum cleaner; Tom chases Jerry through the yard and into the house on a riding lawn mower. At the end, he crashes the mower into his owner's returning car, and is told he makes a better hood ornament than a house cat.

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Plot Keywords:

cat | refrigerator | vacuum cleaner | mouse | mansion | 

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Genres:

Short | Animation | Family | Comedy

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Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Company Credits

Production Co:

Hanna-Barbera Productions, Turner Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

7 min

Color:

Color

Did You Know?

Trivia

This is the first new Tom and Jerry cartoon to be produced by Boomerang.

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Connections

Features Muscle Beach Tom (1956)

User Reviews

Where has the slapstick gone?

I had The Cartoon Network on in the background while I was just sitting around, and this Tom and Jerry short caught my attention, obviously being relatively modern. Usually, of course, these attempts to revitalize or even just homage old franchises fails horribly, but this one caught me off guard -- it barely tried. In fact, I believe I counted three actual attempts at gags. The bulk of the cartoon seemed a showcase for those "wacky modern art backgrounds" where the fill colors are misaligned with the outline of objects, every sound effect the director could pull out of his library, and modern appliances (boringly enough).

Of course you might recall that the classic Tom and Jerry cartoons often involved household objects from ironing boards to steam presses to refrigerators. So apparently these references to everyday devices were what the creative team behind The Mansion Cat remembered most fondly, so instead of supplying us with the inventive slapstick of olde, they try to impress us with ice-makers, big-screen TVs, VCRs, coffee machines, riding lawnmowers, and wall-mounted fish aquariums. Frankly it looked more like a Sears ad than an attempt at humor.

This just compounds the fact that modern cartoons couldn't hold a candle to the old '40s and '50s cartoons pouring out of MGM, Disney, and Fleischer Studios. With the exception of Spongebob Squarepants and the older Dexter's Laboratory, you'd think modern creators aren't even trying, even though they've got the luxury of having an actual paradigm to follow (unlike the creators of the classics). I don't know where the funny cartoonists have gone, but they certainly didn't come anywhere near this one.