Cumulative rating:	(4 ratings submitted)

Synopsis

Characters

Tom (II) Jerry (II)

Rossini, Gioachino : "The Barber of Seville "

Donaldson, Walter and George Whiting : "My Blue Heaven "

Burns, Robert : "Auld Lang Syne "

Edens, Roger and Arthur Freed : "Here's to the Girls "

---

MeTV Toons

Distributor(s)

MGM

Life With Tom

Toon In With Me

• Season 5, Episode 26

United States

The Art of Tom & Jerry

United States

Tom and Jerry's Greatest Chases

Tom and Jerry - Golden Collection - Volume 1

Tom and Jerry Spotlight Collection

Tom and Jerry - Pint-Sized Pals

Kitty Foyle

United States

Tom and Jerry - Golden Collection - Volume 1 (BluRay)

Running Time: 7:32

Production No.: 167

MPAA No.: 12366

Animation Type: Standard (Hand-drawn-Cel) Animation

Aspect Ratio: 1.37 : 1

Cinematographic Format: Spherical

Color Type: Technicolor

Negative Type: 35mm

Original Country: United States

Original Language: English

Print Type: 35mm

Sound Type: Mono: Western Electric Sound System

Reviews and Comments

From Toadette :

A not-so-typical example of Tom and Jerry at their prime, this cartoon introduces a pet canary into the well-established violent dynamic. Unlike later cartoons in which the side characters were just a way of thinly disguising that the series was out of ideas, here the canary’s presence as Jerry’s new ally results in several gags even more ingeniously offbeat, brutal, and manic than usual, backed up by Hanna’s solid timing, top-notch character animation by the likes of Irv Spence, Ken Muse, and Ed Barge, colorfully brash sound effects, and an excellent, somewhat powerful score by Scott Bradley that quotes liberally from the overture to Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville.

The sequence involving the gun is surely one of the finest moments in the entire series. Just as Tom lunges at the canary, the latter picks up a gun and begins backing towards the terrified cat with it over a long distance; the fear that both characters feel in the presence of the dangerous weapon is all too authentic, hence Tom mindlessly handing the gun back to the bird when he drops it at one point rather than using the opportunity to take it for himself! When Jerry deliberately drops a light bulb, the resulting noise convincing Tom that he has been “shot” right in the heart, the poor cat puts on one of the most hilarious gun death enactments in cinematic history: stumbling across the room with a frighteningly funny expression (his whited-out pupils!) while making pained groans, he looks into the mirror only to see his grave, and, thus convinced, slowly sinks to the ground while flipping a coin, spins around, and “dies” —much to Jerry’s and the canary’s great elation. It must be noted, though, that this is just one highlight among the many brilliant scenes that make up this cartoon, among them the climactic sequence in which Tom, in a truly demented fit, actually tries to run over Jerry with a toy train only to meet his final demise in a hole created by a bowling ball dropped from high up by the canary; even the lesser gags have a bizarre streak and animator-infused personality that make them enjoyable, like the scene in which the bird and Jerry disguise themselves as Indians in order to get away from Tom (animated by Irv Spence). Easily one of the best Tom and Jerry cartoons ever made, Kitty Foiled demonstrates the wonders that can be achieved with a cat, a mouse, and a bird, a diverse team of great animators, a violent imagination, an uncanny sense of comedic timing, and a gifted musical arranger-composer.

(Originally published in the Capsule Reviews for August 2016, on the ones!)
See all comments by Toadette