This movie is a loose retelling of E.T.A. Hoffmann's story, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King and the famous Christmas ballet based of that story. Jerry takes the role of the nutcracker, while Tom takes the role of one of the subjects of the mouse king (now the cat king of course). The story idea for this movie came from Tom and Jerry co-creator, Joseph Barbera. As he died before the movie was finished this film is dedicated to him.
This movie does an excellent job with making a feature length film about the cat and mouse duo that has enough of a story to justify the feature length, while still keeping the focus on the character we watch the movie to see. The story itself is charmingly simple. Even with this simplicity it mixes slapstick humor and sentimentality very well. While some may not be happy with the idea of sentimentality in Tom and Jerry, it is done very well here and never distracts nor takes away from the humor. The animation here is also wonderful. Not only does it look very appealing but it is perfectly timed. Each joke is timed just right to make sure it has the greatest impact possible. This probably makes this one of the finest directing jobs from Tony Cervone and Spike Brandt.
If I were to make a complaint about this movie, it is that there is more dialogue than needed. While Tom and Jerry remain pantomime characters, the side characters speak quite a bit and too often say what we can easily see. Still I believe the good parts of this movie outshine this fault.
While this may not be the classic shorts it comes closer to capturing the spirit than any other feature length movie with the cat and mouse duo.
-Michael J. Ruhland
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