The Mouse Comes to Dinner (1945)

 

This film continues the strong winning streak that the Tom and Jerry cartoons were on at this time.

This cartoon marked the second (after Puss N' Toots  (1942)) and last full appearance (not counting a clip from this film used in a later short) of Tom's girlfriend, Toots in a theatrical cartoon short, though she would become a reoccurring character on TV's The Tom and Jerry Show (which premiered in 2014). Her design her looks a little older than the one used in Puss N' Toots and that was the design that would later be used on The Tom and Jerry Show. In this film Tom invites Toots over to dinner, specifically a dinner that Tom's owner has prepared without Tom in mind. At this dinner Tom makes Jerry carry food back and forth and further do the work of a servant. When Jerry gets tired of this he decides to do everything he can to ruin the dinner for Tom. 

This is simply a wonderful cartoon. Already by this point, the storyline was nothing new for this series. Yet when the film is so full of energy that you hardly notice this. The film moves at an incredibly fast pace, giving us gag after gag. As soon as you stop laughing at one gag another one comes right after. What is more important is that so many of these gags are truly funny. While the gags may be violent they are presented with such a fun and irresistible energy that they come off as funny instead of gruesome. The pacing on these gags is perfect with giving us a clear set up followed directly by a gag. While the set up often tells us exactly what will happen next the fast pace and the over-the-top reactions make each joke come off as very funny. Each of these gags is made funnier by the character animation and especially the facial expressions. The scene where Tom hits Jerry with a spoon should only be a mildly amusing gag, but the character animation and the look on Jerry's face make it truly hilarious. There is no doubt that Bill Hanna's timing on this gag is also simply perfect. This film becomes a perfectly good example of just how much the execution of a gag can be funnier than the gag itself. Adding to the fun is Scott Bradley's music, which is simply perfect here and helps this film have a truly wonderful energy to it. 

The credited animators on this cartoon are Pete Burness, Irven Spence, Kenneth Muse and Ray Patterson, all of whom were regulars on the Tom and Jerry series.