Tom and Jerry

Watching Tom and Jerry cartoons has been like looking at one of those evolution charts, except the animals in the line have been devolving. For T&J cartoons, this flick represents the return to primordial ooze, a dive to rock bottom for what were once the stars of animated classics but are now just hopeless studio "property" items that exist only to be brutally commodified to exploit whatever good feelings remain out there for what once was. In other words, this is a dreadful film. I knew it was going to be awful from the moment I saw the hip-hop rapping pigeon--sadly, I kid you not--in the opening sequence. It gets no better from there. The "music" throughout is awful, designed to appeal only to the absolute lowest common denominator of Generation AA; the live action performances range from mostly bland to downright awful--Michael Pena particularly shames himself--and even the cartoon bits, many shamelessly pilfered from the best of the old cartoon shorts, come across as tired and lame. This is a sad spectacle if you can remember how great the original run of Tom and Jerry cartoons were back in the day--but then, that's the point of this: it's designed to appeal to people who can't remember the app they downloaded yesterday. Personally, I'd rather have the memories than more of garbage like this. Nuff said.