Tom and Jerry, the cat and mouse duo who love to fight, were introduced to audiences in 1940 with a theatrical short called Puss Gets The Boot. Director Tim Story gives us a live-action/animated film that has a New York setting for the two to explore.
Jerry is looking for a place to live in the City, but first he has to torment his nemesis, Tom by disrupting the cat’s scheme to make money. After a couple of knock down-drag out fights, Jerry sneaks into a luxury hotel and takes up residence. When Tom sees the mouse living the life of Riley, he does his best to get some of the good life himself.
From that point on, the hotel staff and guests take over the lead roles, and the animated stars take a back seat. Chloe Gracie Moretz plays Kayla, an ambitious young woman who passes off another woman’s resume as her own in order to get a hospitality job. She’s hired and her first assignment is to get rid of the mouse that the hotel chef (Ken Jeong) discovers in his kitchen. She hires Tom to take care of the situation, and for a short while the plan works.
The entire hotel staff is preparing for a large celebrity wedding and nothing can go wrong. Because Kayla was successful handling Jerry for the time being, she’s given the task of supervising the wedding, a job she’s ill prepared to handle. Her inexperience is reason enough to be skeptical, but when you add in a cat and mouse who enjoy knocking each other around, you have the makings of a disaster.
Moretz is a charming young actress and Michael Pena, is good as an Event Planner who wanted Kayla’s job for himself, but Tom and Jerry are the draw. There was a couple of good scenes between them, but not enough laughs. Kids lost interest in the struggles of running a hotel, a side story about a lost ring and squabbles between staff. Too much screen time was devoted to the background characters and not enough to the stars.