Matinee Mouse is a 1966 Tom and Jerry cartoon, acting as a wrap-around short, featuring clips from a number of older cartoons from the Hanna-Barbera era.
Plot[]
Tom chases Jerry all over the house (scenes from Love That Pup, The Flying Cat, Professor Tom, and The Missing Mouse) until Jerry gets back at Tom by beating him up in the closet (a clip from Jerry and the Lion). Both call a truce, and while walking happily down the street, they stop by the local cinema, where they notice a poster advertising their cartoons (implying that Tom and Jerry have occupations as actors). The man who was standing by the wall noticed this cat and mouse. He looks up at the poster, then shrugs.
They walk in to watch the feature (clips from Love That Pup, Jerry's Diary, The Flying Sorceress, and The Truce Hurts), but cannot help laughing at each other every time the other is hurt onscreen. Mild annoyance soon turns to violence in the seats, where Tom and Jerry continually slam the seats on each other. Eventually, Jerry tears apart his flag (with Tom following suit) before hitting Tom with a xylophone mallet. The fighting scene in The Truce Hurts stops as the onscreen characters pause their fight to watch the ongoing fight in the seats.
Characters[]
Main[]
Minor[]
- Droopy (cameo in poster)
- Spike Bulldog (in theater screen, via clips from Love That Pup and The Truce Hurts)
- Cuckoo (via clips from The Flying Cat)
- The Witch (via clip from The Flying Sorceress)
Notes[]
- The story was supervised by Tom Ray, while William Hanna and Joseph Barbera received a special director's credit on the cartoon, despite neither of them doing any actual work on it.
- It is the first Sib Tower 12 Tom and Jerry cartoon that features Spike. The second being Rock 'n' Rodent.
- A poster of Droopy is seen when Tom and Jerry walk into the movie theater. Here, Droopy's top hair is black instead of red.
- During the scene where both Tom and Jerry walk into the movie theater after buying their tickets, if one looks closely at the movie posters, both the Tom and Jerry and Droopy movie posters have a small byline each that reads as "Dial "M" for Mouser" and "The Sand Pauper" respectively. The real films parodied here: Dial "M" for Murder (1954) and The Sandpiper (1965).
- The cartoon's plot is an expansion of a gag from the Hanna-Barbera-era Tom and Jerry short Cruise Cat, where both Tom and Jerry get annoyed at each other when they laugh at each other's onscreen misfortunes when the cartoon Texas Tom is shown in the ship's theater.
- Ironically, archive footage from Cruise Cat and Texas Tom are not included in this short.
- This is the only Chuck Jones episode to feature Tom's "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, ha-ha-ha-ha" scream.
- This cartoon and Shutter Bugged Cat are the only two Tom and Jerry shorts from the Chuck Jones-era where the cat and mouse duo are designed more like the Hanna-Barbera-era character designs of the mid-1950s, as opposed to Chuck Jones' new redesigns from 1963's Pent-House Mouse, due to both cartoons using re-used footage from the original Hanna-Barbera era cartoons, perhaps for design consistency reasons.
- Similarly in both cartoons, all the clips from the Hanna-Barbera era Tom and Jerry cartoons have heavily altered audio, most notably Scott Bradley's music used in these cartoon clips being replaced by newly-recorded music by Dean Elliott.
- The duo's designs in this cartoon were also used in the sketches of the Tom and Jerry televison series made at the time.
- In the scene where Tom steals the witches' broom, the dialogue "Stealing a ride, eh? Well, I'll give you a REAL ride" from the witch is muted; the scene skips to the witch casting a spell on Tom and the broom. That edited scene is from The Flying Sorceress.
Availability[]
Errors[]
- Chuck Jones is uncredited for producing this cartoon. He is also uncredited in Shutter Bugged Cat.
Gallery[]
Main article: Matinee Mouse/Gallery