The Year of the Mouse

Infobox Hollywood cartoon
cartoon_name = The Year of the Mouse
series = Tom and Jerry


caption = Title card
director = Chuck Jones
Maurice Noble
story_artist = Michael Maltese
animator = Ben Washam
Ken Harris
Don Towsley
Dick Thompson
voice_actor = Mel Blanc
June Foray
musician = Eugene Poddany
producer = Chuck Jones
Les Goldman
distributor = Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
release_date = flagicon|US 1965
color_process = Metrocolor
runtime = 6'
movie_language = English
preceded_by = "Of Feline Bondage"
followed_by = "The Cat's Me-Ouch!"
imdb_id = 0059818

"The Year of the Mouse" is a Tom and Jerry cartoon released in 1965, directed and produced by Chuck Jones, with animation by Dick Thompson, Ben Washam, Don Towsley, and Ken Harris.

Plot

Jerry and an unnamed grey rodent are laughing together on the top of a chimney. The other mouse uses a fishing line to lower Jerry to the bottom of the chimney. Jerry, through a combination of hitting Tom (who is asleep each time), leaving a weapon in Tom's hand, and having the other mouse quickly reel him back up the chimney, causes Tom to believe that he is attacking himself in his sleep, similar to the plot of "Gas Light".

Five gags are used before they are discovered:

"GAG 1": Jerry hits Tom with a flyswatter from the garage, plants it in Tom's hands, and gets reeled up. Tom wipes his head back and sees the flyswatter; then he rattles it again. Tom laughs and points at the flyswatter before he realizes he knows nothing about what happened, and shrugs his shoulders. He goes back to sleep. Jerry is watching and relays everything that happened to his buddy.

"GAG 2": Jerry procures a gun, puts it in Tom's hands, and pulls the trigger with a second string; then the other mouse pulls him up. Tom wakes up startled, then panics and the gun fires a second time, burning the top of his head. Tom is annoyed. Jerry mimics the exact appearance of Tom's head such that his partner can see.

"GAG 3": Tom is worryingly pondering how he could have shot himself and goes to sleep, troubled immensely. Jerry drills a hole in the ceiling and drops a rope with a noose in it. Tom hears the noise and wakes up. He turns his head and gets it caught in the rope. A second, straight section of rope comes down and Tom grabs it while trying to go back to sleep. Tom wakes up, puzzled, and notices he's trying to hang himself. He pulls on the rope and then screams, pushing the rope away from himself. Because of this, however, the fan falls on top of him and knocks him out. Jerry mimes the fall to his buddy.

"GAG 4": Jerry receives a knife from his buddy and places it in Tom's hands. Jerry splatters ketchup on Tom's chest and on the knife and tugs on the rope in order to be reeled in. Tom wakes up, screams and runs backwards into a wall, thinking that he has stabbed himself. He grabs his chest and some of the ketchup is on his hand. Thinking that it is blood, Tom screams again, inflates himself and lets himself float through the house. As Tom bounces on the ceiling, he spots the ketchup bottle. He tastes the "blood" and finds it is ketchup. He laughs, but lets go of the pressure that keeps him inflated and he bounces through the house and falls onto his pillow again. He gets up, giggles, and falls to sleep. Jerry mimes this last gesture and the mouse titters.

"GAG 5": While he is laughing his head off about the last gag, the second mouse spots an archery bow. Jerry positions it on both ends of Tom and tugs on the string. Tom wakes up and stretches, but this activates the bow. Tom sits up, confused, and is then shot into the plumbing, and somehow, into the furnace. Tom yells and launches himself out of the furnace, up the water pipe, and down the chimney as the two mice look on. However, Tom spotted them and points a gun at Jerry and the other mouse.

He then traps the two in a bottle with a cork in it; the bottle is booby trapped so that a gun will fire down the length of it if the cork is removed. That is, there is no non-lethal means of escape. Tom then settles down to take a peaceful nap.

Notes

*Most Tom and Jerry cartoons during the Jones era were animated by Thompson, Washam, Towsley, Harris, and Tom Ray. However, Tom Ray is not credited on this short.
*The other mouse is grey, but in no other way resembles Nibbles/Tuffy, who only appeared in the shorts directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.
*In this short Jerry and his nameless friend behave much like Jones' other famous mouse duo Hubie and Bertie (right down to their fur color), and Tom is a stand-in for beleaguered Claude Cat. In fact, much of The Year of the Mouse's plot is similar to that of Jones' 1948 Warner Bros. cartoon Mouse Wreckers.

External links

*imdb title|0059818