Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale

Tom and Jerry: A Nutcracker Tale is a 2007 animated holiday themed fantasy comedy direct-to-video film starring Tom and Jerry produced by Warner Bros. Animation and directed by Spike Brandt and Tony Cervone. It is loosely based on the story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E. T. A. Hoffmann, with Jerry in the role of the Nutcracker, while Tom played one of the King Mouse's (who, in this version, is replaced with a cat) henchmen.

This film would be the last animated production for co-creator, Joseph Barbera, who died on December 18, 2006, and the film was dedicated to his memory. This would also be the last animated direct-to-video to be released under the Warner Bros. Family Entertainment label before it became an in-name-only unit of Warner Bros. Pictures.

Plot:
The movie begins with Jerry and his little nephew Tuffy watching the Christmas ballet in New York City, while a group of cats, including Tom, in an alley overlooking the Empire State Building, sing a song for the Cat King. Later, Jerry goes to the empty stage floor, where magic begins to happen. Toys come alive including Nelly the pony and Paulie the Christmas Ornament. The magic then makes a Music Box Ballerina come to life, and Jerry dances with her (the Miniature Overture plays through this scene).

The stage is transformed into a wintry wonderland, where the toys are enjoying a dinner. Tom, hears this, and, with the other cats, raid the feast, trapping the toys (the Nutcracker March plays through this scene). Jerry, Paulie, and Nelly try to stop this, but are stuffed into a can and shot out of a cannon, ending up worlds away (the Battle Scene play through this scene). Tom as the Captain of the Cat Guards traps the Ballerina in a cage, then brings her to the Cat King, who asks her to dance for him but is shot down. The Cat King tells the Ballerina there is nothing she can do about it. Later on, Tom is called to gather other cats and stop Jerry, and sing a song (Mother Giongne with their own lyrics / The Old Lady plays through this scene) as they march away from the castle. Tuffy gives the Ballerina a string attached to a ring of keys. He then goes to warn Jerry and stop the cats. Meanwhile, Jerry, Paulie, and Nelly decide to follow a very bright star to a man called the Toy Maker. They stop in front of a frozen river (the Journey Through The Snow plays through this scene). All make it safely, except Jerry who falls from a frozen waterfall and through the ice, becomes tangled in a weed and seemingly drowns. He is revived and freed by the magic, and is pulled up by Nelly and Paulie. This makes Paulie unravel by melting the glue that keeps him together. Tuffy gets to Tom, and dresses up as an angel, with a white dress, wings, a halo and a harp, and a devil, with horns, a cape, a trident and a tail, to convince him not to harm Jerry. His cover is blown when he has his dress, wings, tail and trident at the same time, and ends up sticking the trident in Tom's eye, causing the tower of cats to fall off of a cliff (Tom screams the Wilhelm Scream). Tuffy continues on to Jerry, warning him of the cats. Tom and his friends, disguised as Christmas trees, surround Jerry, but Tom gets attacked bysquirrels, and shredded in a tree shredder (Toy Flutes plays through this scene). The cats attack, but the heroes escape, inside a tree. The cats beat up Tom by mistake.

The heroes then come to a hill, where Paulie's head is sent flying into another hole. They go into the hole, only to find a fiery world with lava pits and dragons (the Arabian Dance plays through this scene). A flame fairy gives Paulie his head back. A dragon wakes up, but is hypnotised by Jerry into lifting them out of the pit.

They launch a cannon, which blasts Jerry and his friends into a house with clocks (the Chinese Dance plays through this scene). Tom gives chase, but is crushed in the doors of an elevator (his midsection is now a metre long, just like the in end of Ah, Sweet Mouse-Story of Life) and pecked on by wooden birds. The mice and toys are chased by the cats again, and run into a fairground (the Russian Dance plays through this scene). Tom is virtually destroyed here, being thrown onto the merry-go-round and the swirling cups and crushed again and again on the roller-coaster - of course, this being a cartoon, he always revives - after Jerry pulls out the pin that couples two of the cars together. They make it to a ridge, and Jerry blows up balloons with which they make it off safely (the Waltz of The Flowers plays through this scene). Tom, though, is blasted by cannons. One cat shoots an arrow, bursting Nelly's balloon. Tuffy grabs on to her, and unravels more of Paulie. Nelly is let down, and chased by the cats. Jerry saves her, but his grip fails him and her string slips out of his hand. The cats pull her string, and she tells them where the others are headed. The remaining three make it to the Toy Maker (the Spanish Dance plays through this scene), and after initially looking like they have failed when Tom and the other Cat Guards cut them off at the door, only to be swiftly sent packing when the door smacks them away as the Toy Maker answers it, the Toy Maker fixes Paulie and gives them a key (the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy / Toy Flutes plays through this scene) which allows them to awaken an army of toy soldiers. The three depart with their newly attained army in order to take back their kingdom (Tarantella plays through this scene. Also, the scene hints at the Toy Maker beingSanta Claus due to the calendar showing that it was December 24th).

Later, when the cats attempt to escape the army of toy soldiers, the Ballerina appears with the other toys, and she leads them in an army in rebellion against the Cat King (the Nutcracker March plays through this scene once again). One of the cats attempts to fire a cork at the toy soldiers, but instead throws himself backwards at the cannon, causing it to fire a ball into the air and back down again and destroy the cannon, and sending debris into a gunpowder store, which in turn causes it to explode, disfiguring Tom. Jerry and Tuffy are eaten by Tom, but Nelly returns, and throws a hammer, smashing Tom's teeth. Tom vacuums up many of the soldiers, but the vacuum explodes and they are blown onto the cats. As the Cat King orders his followers to retreat, Jerry then activates a toy train that knocks all the cats on top of it as it crosses the stage and exits through the backstage door (which magically opens and then closes after the train passes through it), hitting the wall of the building next door to the theatre and falling into a dumpster in New York. The Ballerina hugs Jerry, telling him that she never doubted him. Suddenly, the wall next to them begins to crumble and collapses on Nelly as she shoves Jerry and the Ballerina out of the way, killing her. Seeing Nelly dead, Jerry, Tuffy and Paulie are in tears (the Journey Through The Snow plays through this scene once again). However, the magic revives her and removes her string, allowing her to talk without a string. Jerry and the Ballerina dance after receiving their crowns back. The Toy Maker and the ballerina from the Christmas play are shown to be watching from the audience; the real ballerina throws Jerry a rose and the curtain is let down, ending the show.

Voice Cast:

 * William Hanna (Archive audio; Uncredited) – Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse
 * Chantal Strand as Tuffy
 * Ian James Corlett as Paulie
 * Kathleen Barr as Nelly
 * Tara Strong as La Petite Ballerina
 * Garry Chalk as King of the Cats
 * Trevor Devall as Lackey
 * Richard Newman as Toymaker
 * Mark Oliver as Dr Malevolent
 * Michael Donovan as Additional voices

Widescreen
This was the fourth Tom and Jerry film to be filmed in widescreen (the first three being Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars, Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry, due to its limited theatrical release back in 2006, and Tom and Jerry: Shiver Me Whiskers) and the fourth one to be filmed in the high-definition format (the first three being Tom and Jerry: Blast Off to Mars, Tom and Jerry: The Fast and the Furry, and Tom and Jerry: Shiver Me Whiskers), although the Region 1 DVD and the U.S. version of Boomerang were in full screen (cropping the left and right of the image), though not pan and scan as the camera stays directly in the center of the image. Like other television shows filmed in high-definition and other films filmed in high-definition, the monitor the animation team would have worked from would have 16:9 and 4:3 safe areas so that the full screen version would not crop off too much of any important visual elements (such as characters). However, the film is broadcast in widescreen on Cartoon Network in the United States.

Follow-up film
Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes was released on August 24, 2010.