I can’t believe there’s more to delve into with Tom & Jerry: The Movie.
If you remember, I put this movie in my list of the top 30 worst movies I’ve ever seen, and I still stick by that even today. Tom & Jerry: The Movie took everything that made Tom & Jerry so special and ruined it, they relegated Tom & Jerry to supporting roles in their own damn movie, the story is just a terrible ripoff of The Rescuers, the music and animation is good but it’s all wasted on this, you needed William Hanna & Joseph Barbera, who were both still alive when this was made by the way, there to tell the animators how to do Tom & Jerry the right way, and no Creative Consultant Joseph Barbera doesn’t count, you needed the both of them to be involved with the production of the film and not just collecting a damn check or get somebody who knows how to do Tom & Jerry right.
And it’s a shame because the animation is really solid and the music can be pretty good but everything else, it’s just a mess.
And yet, even in the years after I’ve looked at this movie, the good old internet has resurfaced some stuff that I just need to talk about because in the last few months, the first teaser trailer for Tom & Jerry: The Movie in its’ original cut was put on Youtube and I mean, it shouldn’t that big of a deal, I mean we’ve had other language versions of the teaser out there such as the Portuguese version:
And you might be thinking okay, that’s nothing too bad, it has a good fakeout, it doesn’t feel threatening in any way shape or form, and it at least has a comedic musical tone in the second half to convince kids that “okay, this isn’t something crazy or freaky that will give me nightmares.”
BUT then you take a look at the original English trailer and notice how drastically different it is compared to the one I just showed you…oh boy, you’re in for a real treat with this…
Yeah, certainly a radical difference in theming here guys. Where, oh, where do we begin?
Let’s start with the dialogue from the announcer, I mean it’s Percy Rodriguez, one of the definitive trailer announcers especially when it comes to horror movies, this is the guy made Jaws 3D & Jaws The Revenge seem kind of awesome:
And those were terrible movies but leave it to Percy to make them sound so incredible.
But even a man like him can’t make lines like what’s in this trailer work. Lines like “It’s coming, can’t you feel it getting closer?” don’t work if have no real idea what we’re suppose to be threatened by. “Soon, it will be in every town, every city, and every country” well, no shit, it’s a wide theatrical release all around the world, I would assume that yes, it would be in every town, every city, and every country. “You can’t run, you can’t hide, nothing can stop it”, well, yeah, nothing can stop it from coming out (unless it’s 2020 and the coronavirus has ceased society as we know it but not in 1993) but I can surely pretend like it doesn’t exists.
So, okay, the lines are pretty bad but like I said before, it’s a good fakeout when you see Tom & Jerry on the screen. At this point, kids at least have the idea that this is a family movie but then…the screaming starts.
Which leads into the next problem with the trailer, in the Portuguese trailer, the screaming is brief but with comedic music behind it to at least bring some humor back to the swing of things. Not the English trailer, no, no, because we not only have the screaming of both Richard Kind and Dana Hill for a brief period of time but for a full 15 seconds with this Psycho style music playing in the background and not only that but as Tom & Jerry are screaming, the shots gets closer and closer and it’s not only uncomfortable, it’s just unnecessary. What about Tom & Jerry is horrifying that warrants a Psycho style soundtrack with a close up Tom & Jerry screaming at the top of their lungs?
Actually, what are Tom & Jerry even screaming about? Did they show them the final cut of the movie and then before they could let out their screams at what they’ve just done, Ted Turner just says “wait, before you say anything, let’s shoot the teaser” and then they started the screaming because that’s the first thing that came to their minds after watching the final cut? And yes, I know, I’m joking, Tom & Jerry aren’t real but you get what I’m trying to say.
And just having those screams with the camera getting closer and closer like they’re both about to eat the audience for that long period of time, it’s like what the hell was Turner Pictures thinking? The music choice doesn’t make this funny, this makes this look absolutely horrifying…apparently something that was also a part of the movie as well, this infamous scene…
Actually, when you think about it, who knows, maybe that’s what Tom & Jerry were screaming at in the trailer? Anything’s possible at this point. Were the animators in on this? Was this the thought of somebody at Film Roman or was this the Completion Bond company that did this? The animation certainly looks a lot different than it is in the actual movie so it wouldn’t surprise me if this was not Film Roman, it also wouldn’t be the first time a Miramax animated feature was chopped and screwed because of Completion Bond, *cough*Thief & The Cobbler*cough*.
Even the taglines at the end sound weird. “You’re in for a big surprise”, that just seems like even the writers for the trailer were just done at that point and the line feels like it was thrown in at the last second to trick people that there’s a big twist in the film…which is, of course, revealed that Tom & Jerry can talk….which was also revealed in another trailer that came afterward….oops.
And even the last shot, “A world premiere, coming soon”. What trailer for a movie in theaters has a reason to include the line “a world premiere” like this is some major event that everybody needs to see. What exactly makes this a world premiere event? I guess because Germany got it first in October 1992 and then it came to us in July 1993? But even then, that’s a pretty lazy way to end a trailer that has so many WTF moments behind it, it just makes you wonder what the people behind the production thought of this.
Why did Miramax and Turner Pictures feel like this trailer was going to sell kids on seeing this film? It just makes Tom & Jerry The Movie an even bigger mess of a film than I previously thought, it’s an even more baffling decision and I really would’ve like to know what Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera thought when they saw this marketing in the beginning.
So yeah, this trailer really got a lot out of me and not in a good way, it just makes this whole movie even more bizarre and insane than you would’ve thought. Nevertheless, it’s certainly one of the oddest and most bizarre trailers for anything I’ve ever seen, I’ve never thought Tom & Jerry deserved this much of a horror vibe but apparently somebody disagrees.
What better way to end this but ask again…
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