 Contemporary media conglomerates do love their franchises. They almost never produce mass-market entertainment without keeping an eye cocked at the potential for sequels, tie-in products, merchandising, and all those other wonderful ancillary sources of revenue. Today, even if a franchise peters out and dies, it's more likely than ever to return from the dead in revised, revamped, or re-visioned form: Witness the recent or promised revivals of old chestnuts like Spider-Man, Batman, G.I. Joe, the Transformers, Thundercats, Scooby-Doo, and the Looney Tunes. Some art is required in reviving a franchise: alter too much and you lose the name-recognition and emotional attachment that is the franchise's greatest strength. Alter too little and fans will wonder (rightly) why it was necessary to revive the franchise at all.
With Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes, a new direct-to-video movie, it seems that Warner Bros. is trying to inject new life into the Tom & Jerry franchise by pairing them with the famed literary detective, another franchise that Warner Bros. has been recently exploiting. Unfortunately, the combination is more oil-and-water than chocolate-and-peanut-butter. Its attempts to balance both franchises in a 50-minute animated film result in a product that manages to be faithful to both while being true to neither. It's like an improvised dance duet between a prima ballerina and a black belt: while either could have great talent individually, putting the two together just results in lots of missed signals and stomped toes.
 The movie is set in the Victorian England of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous fictional detective, who has taken on Jerry the mouse as an assistant. Tom is cast as the manservant (catservant?) of Miss Red, a curvaceous American singer who is being blackmailed on the eve of her wedding and seeks Holmes' help at the prompting of a friend. When Miss Red is subsequently framed for jewel thefts occurring all over London, she is put on the run with Tom & Jerry as her chaperones while Holmes and Watson try to solve the mystery.
It is clear that the entire crew behind Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes have much affection for both sets of characters, as well as a thorough understanding of what makes each one work on its own. The cartoonishly hyper-violent pratfalls we've come to expect from the cat and mouse are translated intact, as are a number of supporting characters from classic MGM cartoons. The voluptuous Red Hot Riding Hood plays Miss Red, while the father-and-son bulldogs Spike and Tyke play security guards, Butch and Droopy the Dog are police constables, and Jerry's diminutive gray pal Tuffy (sometimes called Nibbles) plays an Irish preacher. The set dressing might be a little different, but all of them act entirely within character, although Miss Red stretches just a tiny bit since she gets to do a little more than just strut, shimmy, and sing on stage.
The movie also turns in perfectly serviceable animated renditions of Holmes and Watson. There was clearly at least one long-time Holmes fan in the crew, considering the numerous references and in-jokes in makes to the original stories as well as Holmes' many on-screen portrayals. As one example, one throwaway line references a Holmes story that's appropriate on multiple levels, even including a plot twist that was added in the most recent TV adaptation of the tale starring Jeremy Brett.
However, while both sets of characters do decently well individually, neither is especially memorable or groundbreaking. Tom & Jerry themselves require little if any story, and what story they ever got was just an excuse for mayhem. As a result, much narrative momentum in the first half of the movie is lost so Tom & Jerry can chase each other and smash into things, while the demands of the story mean Holmes has to sternly tell the two to "learn to work together" relatively early on, neutering Tom & Jerry's strongest appeal. The gags themselves all have a too-powerful sense of déjà vu. If you've never seen a Tom & Jerry cartoon before, these gags will probably be hilarious, but if you have, all the anarchy will feel overly familiar. Only one gag in the whole movie really managed to pull a genuine laugh from me; the rest only elicited snickers as I'd think, "Oh, that reminds me when they did something like that before." The best Tom & Jerry shorts successfully disguise the fact that you're watching the same cartoon over and over again, but Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes doesn't quite make it all the way there. It's all just a bit too familiar and tempered down just enough to keep it from the same explosive chaos of the classic shorts or even the later Chuck Jones cartoons. It's not until the closing scenes of the movie that it manages to blend these two elements together successfully in a rousing (if slightly incongruous) climactic chase sequence through the streets of London that shifts from comic violence to real violence with ease. For their part, Holmes and Watson mostly play second fiddle to the cat and mouse, and the one big deductive moment feels less like eliminating the impossible to find the improbable truth and more like a massive hand wave in the hopes nobody's going to notice.
 These disappointments are magnified by the generally high production values of the movie. The animation is excellent all around, from the wonderfully fluid cat-and-mouse chases to the richly detailed backgrounds. Stepping through any of the Tom & Jerry chases reveals a meticulous attention to detail for movement that's barely visible while the movie is running full-speed, but that same detail is present even in the slower scenes. The classic cartoon characters are dead-on renderings of their older selves with only the slightest modernizations (although Miss Red looks off-model surprisingly often). Holmes and Watson are also easily recognizable, especially in Holmes' lanky frame and distinctive hawk-like nose. They are also all assigned excellent voice actors where appropriate. Tom & Jerry remain mute, of course, but Grey Delisle is wholesomely sultry as Miss Red and gets to show off her singing voice again. Jeff Bergman has amusing conversations with himself as both Butch and Droopy, Phil LaMarr brings a familiar genial gruffness as Spike, and Kath Soucie puts on an adorable Irish brogue as Tuffy. As for the humans, Michael York gives a credible Holmes, and Malcolm McDowell turns in a familiar performance as the villain of the piece. Unfortunately, John Rhys-Davies is left with the short straw, as his Watson gets so little to do that he might as well not have been in the movie.
The DVD presents the movie beautifully, rendering the cartoon London in a beautiful anamorphic widescreen image and a 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack that makes selective but generally good use of the surround channels and the subwoofer. Language soundtracks are offered in English, French, and Spanish, with subtitles in English only. The only bonus feature is a six-minute featurette on "How to Draw Tom & Jerry" with co-director Spike Brandt. It stretches a bit past its mandate for a brief but interesting cover on how animation works. One of the best bits of this featurette is Brandt "flipping" a sequence and then showing the massive stack of drawings required for just 10 seconds of footage.
It's really a shame that all the hard work of the movie just doesn't manage to produce a better film. I'm sure the kids who haven't encountered much Tom & Jerry in the past will find their antics in this movie hilarious, but old friends of the duo may not find as much to laugh about. The best I can say about Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes is that its heart is in the right place and you can do a lot worse, but it really seems like this one should have been better.
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