It's All Greek to Me-Ow (1961)

 

This short film marks the third final Tom and Jerry short of 1961, which proved to be a very poor year for the cat and mouse duo. 

In this short film, we find Tom and Jerry in ancient Greece, where they are chasing each other as always. 

As is common with these Gene Deitch directed shorts, on paper it seems like this should be a strong cartoon. However, it fails to live up to its potential. Having Tom and Jerry have their usual battles in the setting of ancient Greece is a great idea and should lend itself to some great variations on typical Tom and Jerry gags. The idea of that their fighting inadvertently led to the creation of the Greek Acropolis is also a very clever idea. That makes it unfortunate that the execution is so poor. The drawings and character animation are often downright poor. The characters are too rubbery, which takes away any sort of weight from them, making the slapstick much less effective. One of the worst examples is the scene where Jerry uses the mace on Tom. The action has little weight and Tom's reaction is completely minimal. This is the top of gag that needs over the top action or a Tex Avery like take or even just an exasperated reaction from Tom. Without any of these things, the gag is just kind of there leaving no effect on the audience. However once again, the sound effects are the worst offender. They are simply bizarre and completely ill-fitted to the actions on screen. Rather than add to the humor (as the sound effects in the Hanna and Barbera directed shorts did), they distract from it. It doesn't help that the volume on these sound effects is often much too loud. The music, meanwhile, tries much too hard to emulate Scott Bradley's music from the Hanna and Barbera directed shorts. Instead, though it also comes off as distracting and sometimes ill-fitting from the action on screen. I will admit however the background art is very nice. 

A similar gag to the one where Tom uses the garbage can as a type of armor would be used in the Chuck Jones produced short, Filet Meow (1966). 

Once again there are no animation credits for this film. However, Eli Baurer receives a story credit, Tod Dockstader receives a sound effects credit and Allen Swift receives a voice credit (he provided the narration at the start of the film). This marks the 117th Tom and Jerry cartoon short overall. It is available on the DVD sets, Tom and Jerry: Classic Collection Volume 5, Tom and Jerry: The Gene Deitch Collection and Tom and Jerry: Once Upon A Tomcat. 

-Michael J. Ruhland