Tom and Jerry: Spy Quest Review and Retrospective

Since my youth, I have been a follower of everything Hanna/Barbera. From those sleepy eyed Saturday mornings of my childhood, spent pouring over cartoon after cartoon, to my youth, reliving those days as well as relishing in the yearly offerings, all the way to now, I have been much like a botanist or archeologist digging through episode after episode, show after show, carefully studying the imagination and work that started with two men so long ago.

So, when Warner Brothers came to me and asked me to look over their newest toon movie, I was ecstatic

to say the least. It didn’t hurt that they had coupled one of their oldest and most popular cartoons with one of those shows that developed my youthful imagination. Tom and Jerry may have not been their first project, but it is, by far, one of their most well known. Created in 1940, it became a hallmark in the way America did animated shorts winning seven Academy Awards and it has had an incarnation in every decade even as late as last year on THE TOM AND JERRY SHOW.

This newest movie, Tom and Jerry: Spy Quest, teams Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse with another of Hanna/Barbera’s well known properties: Johnny Quest. Debuting in 1964, just one year after my birth, this show featured a single father, Dr. Quest and his body guard, Race Bannon, trying desperately to save the world all the while keeping his young son, Johnny, his dog, Bandit, and his friend, Hadji, out of trouble. This action adventure, created by Doug Wildey, became the model for so many other shows coupling action, sci fi and the dynamics of family and friends. Only airing for one season, it had a magic that has survived the years and has rarely duplicated.

But coupling these two wildly diverse shows into one movie seemed a strange stretch. Making TOM AND JERRY’S slap stick, silent film style work with the action packed, and amusing banter of JOHNNY QUEST just didn’t seem like a good idea, at first thought. But, once I sat down and gave it a watch, I realized that the creative minds at work here had done an amazing job balancing the two and not letting one style overshadow the other. In fact, it was an incredible blend of the two.

Now, I will warn you. If you are not a fan of either style, it may fall a little flat. I believe children of present day, though different from my era, will enjoy the antics of the ‘cat and mouse’ chase and older children and preteens will also enjoy the action and older jokes. But I strongly encourage you, if you were a fan of either as a child, you need to pick this up and expose your children and grandchildren to it. It’s the kind of entertainment that, I believe, is timeless and needs to be shared through the generations. It may be different from the cartoons of the day (which, I feel, lacks what both cartoons had) but it still has that appeal to it. My teenager didn’t get it. But, to be fair, he didn’t take to the other Johnny Quest episodes offered on the DVD. To me, that was part of the appeal. Not only do you get to see this unique joining of the two shows, but you get to look back and see the old episodes that made them great. You might start out with these re-aired shows to give the new generation a taste of what you encountered as a child. And, then, enjoy, together, the mesh of slap stick and action adventure in a way never seen before.