Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass (2025)

I actually had quite high hopes for this as "Jerry" tries to steal his way into a museum crammed full of ancient Chinese artefacts while "Tom", the trainee security guard, tries to keep him out! After some quite entertaining dicing and slicing, the chaos causes an ornate and mysterious compass to start glowing and next thing our dynamic duo are transported to the ancient "Golden City" in faraway China. It's now that we see that potential disappear quite suddenly as we meet a disgraced god and his would-be phoenix helper who have been banished from heaven for losing that self same gadget. It's taken them nigh on three centuries to track it down so at last their hopes of a return home look good. Unfortunately for them, though, they are not the only folks after it - and "Mega Rat" and his henchmen are also aware of it's magical powers and so will go to extreme lengths to secure it, too. It's this latter beastie who convinces "Jerry" to help him obtain it whilst getting one over on "Tom" at the same time, but when he turns out to be quite a violent character it looks like old enmities are going to have to be forgotten if they are to repatriate the compass and make it out in one piece. Barring the very occasional inclusion of some of the theme tune from the original cartoon, this hasn't really got very much to do with "T&J" at all. It's much more of an over-scripted and generally quite loud sequence of CGI on steroids scenarios that are often so busy it is impossible to know (or hear) what is going on or who is saying what to whom. Ordinarily I like my oriental fantasy animations with their mystical powers and dragons, but this does little to build on that mythology and presents us with the barest of bones for the story and some principal characters that I just found to be annoying - clearly the rat had been taking some tips from Alfred Molina's efforts in "Spiderman 2" (2004). There just isn't any soul to this; nothing at all of the original comedy that made these features stand out and made us smile, and by the end I left thinking what a seriously missed opportunity this was.