Nit-Witty Kitty (1951)

An absolute waste of money

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Mammy Two Shoes clocks Tom on the head with her broom, scrambling his brain, making him think that he is a mouse.A very silly but also very amusing short, Nit-Witty Kitty sees the usually cunning cat believing that he is a huge rodent: he becomes buck-toothed, squeaks, and hops around the house in the search for cheese. He also crams himself into Jerry's mouse hole (ooeerr!), which makes the mouse extremely fed up, especially when Tom breaks his bed. Reading up on the subject, Jerry discovers that another bang on the bonce might set Tom straight and reaches for his baseball bat. Unfortunately, Mammy also has the same idea…What follows is a series of attempts by Jerry to knock some sense into Tom using such items as a baseball bat, a flat iron, and a bowling ball, but to no avail; the one time he is successful at reverting Tom to his feline ways, Mammy enters and bashes Tom back into his mouse persona. It's all very daft, but also very funny.

Well, I have to give the writers credit for "originality" in this one, which plays better than it probably sounds in my review. When I read on the IMDb notes that Tom gets hit on the head and then thinks he's a mouse, it sounded kind of stupid. Maybe the premise was silly, but it turned out to be very funny.I saw sights in here I would never find in any other Tom and Jerry cartoon, such as Tom squeezing into Jerry's mouse-hole and trying to sleep on his bed! Tom's squeaks are funny and it was fun to see him turn the tables on the maid, who was always giving him a hard time. It also was satisfying to see Jerry frustrated, for once, instead of the poor cat being flustered unable to get Jerry.Overall, a more-than-solid Tom and Jerry effort.

I believe it was Thoreau who said, "If I knew that a man were coming to my home with the fixed intention of doing me good, I would flee for my very life." Tom develops amnesia and Jerry and Mammy try to "help" him recover his memory. While Jerry's efforts are not entirely altruistic (Tom's rather irritating behaving like a rather large mouse) Tom is better off as a cat. But the best laid plans of mice and men don't go very well here, with painfully obvious and hilarious results. Lots of great sight gags and semi-vocal effects for Tom. Well worth looking for and most recommended.

In a frantic chase between Tom and Jerry around the black maid's feet, she gets a broom, but hits Tom instead of Jerry. Tom then suffers from amnesia and starts to think and act like a mouse. Jerry learns from a home treatment book that a possible cure is to give Tom a sharp blow on the head. Getting this to happen proves to be a problem...Very amusing cartoon!