I wanted to but couldn't!

best movie i've ever seen.

Best movie ever!

Blistering performances.

"Mouse in Manhattan" is an 8-minute short film from the last year of WWII, so this one is already over 70 years old an even without consideration by the Academy Awards, this is one of the most known cartoons starring Tom and Jerry, the world's most famous cat-and-mouse duo. Needless to add it's another Hanna Barbera movie. The film's popularity may have to do with the fact that it's really very different from the usual chase escapades between the two, but sadly these short films are the one that I like the best unlike everybody else it seems. Tom is basically sleeping from start to finish here while Jerry gets into a lot of trouble exploring the big city for the first time. I must say I did not find all the stuff happening to him particularly funny or entertaining. He was also surprisingly clumsy in here, a side we don't really know from him. So the heartfelt reunion scene with Tom at the very end was probably the best part of the film overall, even if it was very predictable admittedly. All in all, one of the weaker T&J films I have seen and I give it a thumbs-down. It seems the two really need each other to make an impression. They are at their best when sharing the screen. To me at least. Not recommended, although I can see country bumpkins enjoy the message here.

Mouse in Manhattan (1945)** 1/2 (out of 4) This is one of the lesser Tom and Jerry shorts as it pretty much has the mouse going solo. The short starts off with Jerry leaving a note saying that the country life has him bored so he's off to the big city. Once in the big city he enjoys what he sees but soon realizes that it can be scary. As I said, this short pretty much has a brief appearance by Tom at the start and end so it's basically a showcase for a solo Jerry. The end results aren't bad but there's no question that there aren't too many laughs and at times you can't help but wish the cat was around to jack up the action. I will say that the animation is extremely good and I really liked all the details during certain scenes including the skyline when Jerry is dancing on the table.

I don't know about you, but what I love about Tom and Jerry cartoons is the (often violent) interaction between the two characters. Mouse In Manhattan sees Jerry leaving Tom behind to have an adventure in New York, and as far as I am concerned, this one definitely suffers from a lack of cat!As magical as Jerry's exploration of the 'Big Apple' might be for the other T&J fans who have commented here on IMDb, I couldn't wait for this self-indulgent rubbish to end, so I could watch the next cartoon on my DVD.In fact, the only part of the whole episode that I genuinely enjoyed was when Jerry almost 'buys the farm', hanging precariously off the end of a broken candle, hundreds of feet above a busy road.

There's a lot of good that can be said for this cartoon; the backgrounds are rich, lushly colored and full of nicely done art deco details. The animation is up to the usual studio standards of the time, which are unquestionably higher than those of the present day. However, I find it tedious for a number of reasons.The Music: It's definitely not up to Scott Bradley's usual standards. Although it's probably supposed to be evocative of a "Great Gatsby" setting, it ends up being dreary, sleepy, repetitious AND monotonous (repetitious and monotonous are not the same, as Beethoven's 5th Symphony attests). Since most people (including me) tend to close their eyes when they yawn, there's a lot of the visual part of the cartoon that will be missed by the average viewer.The Storyline: I'm not giving away any secrets that aren't already in the plot summary - country good, city bad. This is a common theme in films, both animated and live, from this era. It's a misplaced nostalgia for a nonexistent rural idyll, which, in the present day, is reflected in a similar nostalgia for "values" that never were.