Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit" is an American/Czechoslovakian cartoon from 1962, so this one had its 55th anniversary last year and despite the age, it is still among the later Tom and Jerry works. This is also proven by Gene Deitch having taken over at that point already from Hanna Barbera in this MGM production that runs for a bit over 6.5 minutes as they always do. I would say that story-wise and comedy-wise it isn't too bad and probably not worse than some of the weaker HB original T&J cartoons, maybe even better. The melon scenes were kinda okay and the martial arts judo stuff wasn't too shabby either, at least at the very end when the ground breaks under Tom. The title is really random though as it only refers to the first minute. And Jerry must be quite a talented fighter if he picks up all these amazing skills from a book without actual training. The film's biggest weakness though was not just the background animation, but the complete lack thereof and the longer it goes the more painful it becomes to see. Eventually it is just the two central characters in front of one background color. Essentialism is one thing, but I just cannot approve of that. A bit of a pity as plot- and comedy-wise it was solid for the most part, but the lows are lower than the highs are high, so I give this one a thumbs-down and recommend skipping the watch here.

themadstork Okay so it's pretty far out there, but it isn't as bad as the safari one or the one where the same guy is barbecuing. Those are really, really wretched. Almost as bad as the series where Tom and Jerry are actually friends. I don't know maybe I just appreciate weird, but I thought there were a few cool moments in this one.

Victor Field Fans claim that Chuck Jones' Tom and Jerry cartoons were the worst, but for my money the theatrical lowpoint for the cat and mouse were when MGM contracted Gene Deitch and William L. Snyder to direct and produce a series of low-budget, low-quality Czech-animated adventures. "Landing Stripling," "Switchin' Kitten," "Sorry Safari," "Buddies...Thicker Than Water," "Down And Outing," "Dicky Moe," "Calypso Cat" ... painful to behold, all. (Although they're still better than Filmation's horrid "The Tom And Jerry Comedy Show.")Only two of them are halfway watchable, "Tall In The Trap" and this one, "The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit" (any relation to Bob Godfrey's "Do-it-Yourself Cartoon Kit"?), which supplies animators with a mouse, a cat, and assorted deadly weapons ("The coffee and cigarettes are for the cartoonist"), and leaves them alone to muck about for a few minutes. Basically, this is Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer admitting that anyone could do better than the lot they had under contract, and while it's not very clever and as sloppily animated by Vaclav Bedrich and company as ever, it passes the time less painfully than the others.You should still take the ones made before the 1960s, though. We all should.

Popeye-8 Gene Deitch could ruin ALPO. But, he managed to breathe some fresh air into the vastly overrated TOM and JERRY series, but only in this single cartoon. Its premise is that ANYONE (even himself, I suppose) could make cartoons. The bit about coffee and cigarettes for the animators is the best part of the cartoon. Other than that, it's the same old "Mouse beats up stupid cat" theme that was already years past anything original or valid.Deitch's style is way too eerie and absurd (see his Popeye cartoons--they ain't much better), and should NEVER have been used for a "serious" studio's product. This is the sole example of where it seemed to work.