The Mansion Cat

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.