Kayla (Chloe Grace Moretz) is a grifter who has just tricked her way into a prestigious job at the Royal Gate Hotel. Can she successfully oversee an extravagant wedding at the hotel or will some cat and mouse hi-jinx scupper everything?

Tom & Jerry is a bit of an odd hybrid of a movie in two ways. Firstly, this is a live action world where all the animals are cartoon creatures. Think ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ but it is just normal animal life rather than a different race of toons. Secondly, the plot is very much focused on Kayla’s story with cat and mouse interludes. And her story is difficult to engage with for a few reasons. 

When the film opens Kayla is cycling through Central Park and crashes into Tom. She loses her job but shows us she has an affinity for communicating with animals. At this point Tom and Jerry appear not to have met as we see Jerry arriving into New York City with big dreams of finding a luxurious home. Kayla then blags her way into a job at the Royal Gate where Jerry is setting up home and in an effort to stop him ruining the wedding she engages Tom’s natural mouse catching skills. 

What is odd though is that we get no real insight into why Kayla is a grifter and desperate for a roof over her head and free meals. Is she homeless, does she have a family or friends, what brought her here? The sort of questions that should not matter in a Tom and Jerry movie but they did make her the main character! On top of that we have the wedding of two super rich social media influencer types. I may be showing my age here but why on earth should I care about these two? People who are only interested in how their wedding will look to the outside world and burn money on frivolous and stupid things? We also are treated to no background to these characters either. 

It is also worth mentioning that the cast is filled out by good comedic actors such as Michael Pena and Rob Delaney as hotel management, but they are mostly wasted. 

So clearly the film is bad right? Well, no. When Tom and Jerry get their interludes they are good fun. We are also treated to Spike, a goldfish, another cat and some singing birds to fill out the cartoon humour. 

And of course this film is aimed at young kids and both of mine laughed throughout because there is plenty of chaos, destruction and cartoon violence in these segments of the film. 

So a mixed bag but fun for the very young.