This past weekend was the second biggest this month for the box office, grossing $16.7 million.

Top 5 Highest Grossing Films for Weekend of March 26-28, 2021:
1. Nobody
2. Raya and the Last Dragon
3. Tom and Jerry
4. Chaos Walking
5. The Courier

Nobody just rolled into theaters on Friday, and quickly became number 1 in the box office. This action thriller, which stars Bob Odenkirk, grossed $6.7 million this weekend. It has been met with mostly positive reviews, and follows a man on a mission to save his family from a revenge-seeking drug lord.

The second highest-grossing film of this past weekend was Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon. Currently in its fourth week at the box office, this movie features a predominantly Asian-American cast as it tells the story of Raya, a warrior on a quest to track down the last dragon in her homeland of Kumandra before it gets attacked by evil monsters. Currently available in theaters, as well as on Disney+ for an additional fee, Raya and the Last Dragon grossed $3.5 million over the weekend, and has now grossed $28.3 million in total.

Tom and Jerry, currently in its fifth week of release, came in at number three, having grossed $2.5 million over the weekend. When this live action/CGI hybrid arrived in theaters at the end of February, it had the most successful opening weekend all year. It features the famous animated rivals when they escape to the Big Apple and their long-lasting feud threatens a lavish, high-profile wedding. Since its release last month, Tom and Jerry has grossed $37.1 million.

Chaos Walking, which stars Tom Holland as a boy named Todd who lives on a mysterious planet populated entirely by men, grossed $1.2 million. It has now grossed $11.5 million since its release four weeks ago.

Two weeks into its release, The Courier has grossed $3.4 million in total. This weekend, the Cold War thriller film about a Russian spy (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) on a mission to end the Cuban Missile Crisis raked in $1 million.

Coronavirus restrictions are gradually loosening across the United States, specifically for movie theaters. With cinemas slowly reopening – at reduced capacity – people are thrilled to be able to leave their homes and enjoy films on the big screen for the first time in a year, and the box office is flourishing, slowly returning to the active and prosperous state it was in before the ongoing pandemic.

Top 5 Highest Grossing Films for Weekend of March 12-14, 2021:
1. Raya and the Last Dragon
2. Tom and Jerry
3. Chaos Walking
4. Boogie
5. The Croods: A New Age

The highest grossing film for last weekend was Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon. Having been in theaters and available on Disney+ with Premier Access since March 5, this film continues to soar at the box office a week after its release, raking in $5,500,000 this past weekend. In total, the animated action feature has grossed $15,837,165 since its release.

Tom and Jerry, which had the most successful opening weekend of 2021 when it first rolled out to theaters and HBO Max on February 27, continued to thrive at the box office this weekend, grossing $4,100,000. The live-action/CGI film following the iconic cat-and-mouse rivals as they chase each other around the Big Apple has now made $28,200,000 in total.

Now in its second week of release, Chaos Walking grossed $2,250,000. This sci-fi action film stars Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley, and is based on Patrick Ness’ novel series of the same name. It has now grossed a total of $6,911,407 since its March 5 release.

Coming in at number four is coming-of-age drama Boogie, which made $730,000 this weekend. Written and directed by Eddie Huang, this film follows basketball prodigy Alfred Chin, also known as “Boogie,” who feels pressured by his parents as they make him focus on earning a scholarship.

The fifth highest-grossing film for this past weekend is The Croods: A New Age. This Dreamworks animated feature released on Thanksgiving in 2020, and has now been out for sixteen weeks. Over the weekend, it grossed $520,000, a slight decrease compared to the weekend before. In total, it has grossed $54,303,725 since its release nearly four months ago.

[usr 1]

I was never super into Tom and Jerry as a kid, but I was familiar with them and their slapstick antics. With Cartoon Network being one of my go-to channels for years, it was one of those shows I’d sometimes watch in the mornings while eating breakfast, or if I was out sick from school.

When I watched the trailer for the new Tom and Jerry movie, I was initially a little skeeved out by the lineless, three-dimensional visual style of the iconic cat-and-mouse rivals. I understand they were trying to do something a little different from their usual 2D appearance, but it reminded me more of one of those AR Snapchat filters than animation for a feature film. Regardless, I decided to give it a shot and see how it was, since I’ve always admired animation. There’s so many different ways to do it, from CGI to clay to hand-drawn mediums. Based on the vibe you’re going for, there’s often multiple approaches that can be taken – you can go for a darker, creepier style, or you could create something on the bouncier, more colorful side based on what type of story you want to tell. There’s nothing wrong with trying out a different approach.

In the case of Tom and Jerry, the film was a combination of live-action and animation, with the plot being set in New York City and all the animals, even fish and birds, being animated with CGI. The animation style they chose felt out of place set against the real-life backdrop of New York City, and it was too brightly colored. The characters may have looked better if they had been portrayed a more realistic, textured style, like the animation styles used in Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog. Pikachu and Sonic started out as 2D characters, but the way they appeared in those movies worked because they fit the environment they were in. Since they’re supposed to be furry animals, their 3D designs were made to look fluffy, and almost like you could reach through the screen and touch them. With Tom and Jerry, however, the animated creatures look like somebody placed them into the scene from a completely different film. They don’t blend in at all with their environment.

Among this colorful cast of animals is a group of pigeons (all voiced by director Tim Story) – credited as the “Pigeon Announcers” – who don’t contribute anything to the film other than performing a rap at the start of the movie and telling the audience what’s going on, even when it’s clear what’s happening. When it’s finally the day of the wedding, they fly up to the camera and explain that to the viewer, even though we had spent the last 20 minutes watching Kayla meet with the bride and groom to get everything ready for the big day.

The human characters in this film aren’t much better. The people in it are flat and boring, and have no personality. The main human character is young, ambitious Kayla (Chloë Grace Moretz), who talks her way into a job working an upscale, elaborate wedding at the swankiest hotel in the city by using somebody else’s resume. She walks into the hotel and scares a woman who’s applying for a job out of it, and then hands in that woman’s resume to the hotel staff, passing it off as her own and lying that she has all this experience that she doesn’t actually have. The movie delves a little bit into the bride and the groom’s dynamic, but it doesn’t really go that deep. Ben (Colin Jost) has visions of a big wedding, with the couple riding into the room on British-accented elephants, but bride-to-be Preeta (Pallavi Sharda) doesn’t see why it’s necessary for the couple to have all these things at their wedding, and just wants Ben to listen to what she wants. Why doesn’t she just talk to Ben? Who knows. We don’t really get to see much about the couple’s relationship, other than the fact that they don’t communicate about what they want. They don’t even open up to each other until the end.

So, where do Tom and Jerry come in? Even though the film is titled “Tom and Jerry,” it’s actually not even really about them. The two are more like side characters, as opposed to the stars. All they do in the movie is cause chaos by destroying the hotel and the wedding, as well as blowing Kayla’s cover, causing her to get fired from the job she never deserved in the first place. The slapstick humor that they’re known for doesn’t even last for half the movie. A teaser from last year shows us that they’ve left their home for some reason, but this is cut from the final film, so the audience is left wondering why Tom and Jerry are wandering around the city. What happened that made them end up here? Tom lives on the street making money by playing piano, while Jerry has a luxurious home living inside the walls of the hotel. When the kitchen staff (the head of them being played by Ken Jeong) discovers him, Kayla takes on the task of discreetly catching and getting rid of the mouse, so as to not ruin the hotel’s reputation or disrupt the wedding. Meanwhile, Tom is on the street and notices Jerry through a window, and pursues him, wrecking the whole hotel room. Kayla happens to be passing by and checks the room after hearing the commotion, and joins forces with Tom to get Jerry out of the hotel, reigniting the cat and mouse’s 80-year rivalry.

The jokes in this movie aren’t funny, either. I found myself cringing multiple times throughout the 101-minute film. A lot of the jokes were awkwardly delivered, or they just weren’t clever at all. One that stood out to me was when the couple first arrives at the hotel, and their dog Spike lashes out when he sees Jerry, to which Ben says, “I’m sorry, he’s a little animated.”

The film as a whole was disappointing and I didn’t find it to have any redeeming qualities. It didn’t have much in common with the traditional animated Tom & Jerry shorts, as it was focused more on Kayla and the wedding than on Tom and Jerry.

Tom and Jerry is being distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, and is available now in theaters, or free on HBO Max for the next month.