Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass

Tom and Jerry were meant to hit each other over their heads with frying pans. They aren’t superheroes, even though they often display super healing powers. Yet, somehow, they agree to work together to defeat a demonic entity and restore the celestial balance. That is a lot for two rivals who can barely stop fighting each other, but their latest adventure was intended to appeal to the Chinese market. The enduringly popular cat and mouse just happen to find the powerful artifact sought by Chinese demigods in Zhang Gang’s Chinese co-production Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass, which finally opens today in theaters, one year after its Chinese release.

Jerry is excited to visit a new exhibit of Chinese art, but Tom, the museum guard, is determined to enforce its no-vermin policy. In the resulting scuffle, they unknowingly activate the Astral Compass, which whisks them away to Golden City, the fantastical, pseudo-Ming Era mortal settlement under the protection of the Phoenix Master.

The fallen god was once a resident of Heaven. However, when he lost the Astral Compass, Phoenix and his squawking sidekick, Lil’ Feeney were banished to the human realm. They were given 300 years to find the Compass and attain enlightenment or their banishment becomes permanent. Their time is almost up when Tom and Jerry burst through the clouds, with the Compass clutched in Tom’s hot little paw.

Through various ploys, Phoenix and Feeney try to trick Tom into relinquishing the Compass. Feeling abused and neglected, Jerry throws in with Mega Rat, a steampunk-ish demon, who holds a grudge against Phoenix.

Forbidden Compass probably sounds like Tom and Jerry were just randomly plopped into a Chinese fantasy like Monkey King or Ne Zha, because that is exactly what they did. It is an odd marriage that lacks any sense of cohesion. The slapstick action is rather tame by the Hanna Barbera duo’s standard, while the original Chinese characters are a dull, selfish, and annoying lot.

Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold, on Cartoon Network

Batman has many nicknames: the Caped Crusader, Dark Knight, and World’s Greatest Detective. Mystery Incorporated also has a few: the Scooby Gang and those “meddling kids.” Frankly, Batman kind of likes the last one. They get along fairly well—maybe because this isn’t their first meeting. The characters had crossover team-ups in “The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair” and “The Caped Crusader Caper,” two installments of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, which was really just another Scooby TV series, even though it pretended its episodes were movies. Their most recent on-screen collaboration really is a movie—that even had a theatrical premiere before releasing direct-to-DVD. Having laid the groundwork for the Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries comic book that launched in 2021 (and still regularly revives with special issues), Jake Castorna’s Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold airs this coming Saturday on the Cartoon Network.

Mystery Incorporated’s unmasking successes finally convinced Batman to recruit them for the Mystery Analysts of Gotham City. They simply had to pass a test he arranged with the help of Martian Manhunter and Detective Chimp. Honestly, the real mystery is why Warner Animation hasn’t used Detective Chimp more often. (His guest appearance in Wonder Woman #16 was a delight.) Then, they gang also must sleuth their way to the meeting, where they also meet the Question, Plastic Man, and Black Canary. As it happens, Fred Jones is totally gob smacked by her, which should put to rest a lot of rumors. For the record, the ascot does not help his cause.

Naturally, they want to help solve Batman’s only unsolved case, which coincidentally might be related to Gotham’s latest break-in. It seems the spectral Crimson Cloak’s theft of radioactive isotopes might be related to the unstable teleportation device from Batman’s notoriously open case. It turns out he saved the wrong lab assistant. The innocent one remains missing in the ether, but the other has been remanded to Arkham Asylum, under the name The Riddler. So off to Arkham they go, even though bad things always happen there.

Obviously, there are a lot of jokes in Scooby: The Brave and the Bold. It is a Scooby-Doo movie. However, it features the voices of Diedrich Bader and horror legend Jeffrey Combs as Batman and the Question, neither of whom get the credit they deserve for their DC animated work. Indeed, Bader’s Batman hits the right sardonic notes, indicating he is in on the jokes, at least to the extent he is constitutionally capable of acknowledging humor.

Arguably, the one character who suffers from Paul Giacoppo’s screenplay treatment is Aquaman, who comes off looking and sounding like a clumsy, obtuse meathead. Plastic Man is the same Plastic Man from the 1979 Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show. On the other hand, Black Canary and the Question should have seen their fandom stock rise from their appearances in this film.

Valley of the Dinosaurs: Forbidden Fruit

Zeitgeisty media often come in twos. Usually, it is similarly themed films that release around the same time, like Armageddon and Deep Impact or Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down. We’ve had dueling Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent movies. It happens in TV too. Literally fifty years ago today, two animated children’s series about modern-day families transported back to prehistory debuted. One was the hybrid-stop-motion Land of the Lost. The other was a traditional cell-animated adventure from Hanna-Barbera. Although it was not a huge hit, there was probably enough early-1980s syndication and licensing for Valley of the Dinosaurs to make an impression with some Gen X’ers, even though we probably missed the initial episode, “Forbidden Fruit” when it premiered on this day in 1974.

Logically, professor John Butler and his wife Kim took their entire family on his Amazonia research trip, including their dog Digger. Frankly, we can accept Digger, because he causes far less trouble than his bratty son Greg, who is the one they should have left behind. He will be quite a burden for his older teen sister Katie, who is often the one who must corral him. Nevertheless, they were all together in the raft that was swept up into a vortex and sucked into a “world that time forgot.”

Fortunately, Gorok’s neanderthal family befriends the Butlers, teaching them how to survive in their extreme new environment. They match up pretty well, since Gorok and Gara have a teen son, Lok and a younger daughter Tana. They even have a baby stegosaurus, Glump, who becomes Digger’s playmate.

In fact, Digger and Glump are all kinds of likably cute. Dogs and dinosaurs are definitely sure-fire, evergreen animation subjects, which were in Hanna-Barbera’s wheel house. Nineteen years before Jurassic Park, animation was still the best way to present humans and dinosaurs in the same frame. However, Valley probably did not earn many paleontologists’ endorsements, especially when “Forbidden Fruit” portrays a rampaging brontosaurus.

However, it evokes all kinds of archetypes when he Butlers mistakenly harvest the “forbidden fruit” reserved for Maligue, the giant (vegetarian) brontosaurus. Of course, most of the Butlers heed Gorok’s warning, but not Greg, who was a proto-Gen Z’er, refusing to listen to his Boomer parents, way back in 1974. Of course, Maligue smells his fruit, so he comes looking for Greg’s stash.

Shrewdly, Hanna-Barbera did not waste time with a long, drawn-out origin story. They give viewers the essentials every week in the opening credit sequence. Instead, they jump right into the adventures. Obviously, this series follows a formula, in which the Butlers’ ignorance (most often Greg’s) land them in trouble, but the scientific knowledge of Prof. John (who resembles a white-haired George Peppard) helps save the day. Perhaps when they are rescued, he will bring back some dinosaur DNA, just for the sake of science.