The Mouse Comes to Dinner (1945)*** (out of 4)Tom gets a cute cat to come over to dinner so he obviously wants to impress her so he makes Jerry serve the food, which of course ends up with one fight after another. THE MOUSE COMES TO DINNER is certainly an entertaining film that manages to go at a very fast pace and of course there are plenty of laughs as well. This film offers up some rather creative fights and especially the sequence where Tom keeps biting his own tail. Another highlight is the scene where the poor cat is too stupid to realize that he's on fire and not in a good way. As you'd expect the animation is top-notch as are the sound effects, which certainly add a few nice laughs.

Mammy Two Shoes has laid the table for a banquet, so Tom seizes the opportunity and invites his girlfriend over for a spot of dinner. Jerry is Tom's reluctant servant, but it's not long before the little mouse is free and causing trouble for the cat and his gal.This episode of T&J is pretty par for the course as far as the comedy goes: there is plenty of unremarkable slapstick, with the contents of the table used as weapons. What makes this one a little more memorable, however, is the degree of pain dished out by the characters. The arch-enemies always take a severe clobbering, but this time around both get hurt a little worse than usual, with Jerry being sat in a spoon and heated slowly over a candle, and Tom having his rear set on fire. Yowch!

How you could have an exquisitely laid out dinner table, even with the food out, and have Tom, a girlfriend and Jerry all creating havoc at the table with nobody noticing is beyond me....but that's the setup here. No one is ever home in this house but the maid, "Mammy Two Shoes." This dinner table is set for about 12 but where are the humans? We never see them, except in the '50s episodes when the maid is no longer in the cartoons.At any rate, the basic premise of the jokes is little Jerry spoiling the dinner for Tom and the feline is trying to impress. At first Tom has the upper hand, outfitting Jerry is tiny chef's hat and having him wait on the two of them. You know that arrangement isn't going to last, and it doesn't as poor Tom gets abuse by not only his mouse foe but by the girl he invited to dinner! This cat can't win!After almost demolishing almost everything in the room, setting some fires, crashing through a ceiling, etc., there was still no sign of a human being. Oh, well....it's a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Mammy-Two-Shoes (who was actually NOT dubbed in the version I watched, would you believe) has set up a huge banquet for guests of some kind, who will be arriving soon. Tom sneaks into the dining room and calls his girlfriend Toots, inviting her over.Using Jerry as a reluctant butler Tom tries numerous times to impress Toots and fails again and again. What was surprising about this cartoon is that it's a bit crueler than usual. The violence and pain were on level with an episode of Itchy and Scratchy. There is even one moment of torture in which Tom holds Jerry, in a teaspoon, over a candle.Hey, I'm not complaining. I'm not some nut who is against cartoon violence. I actually thought that this one was damn funny.