Muscle Beach Tom (1956)

Muscle Beach Tom Review

Muscle Beach Tom is a 1956 animated short that is the 101st Tom and Jerry cartoon. It has some great gags, but is ultimately not as great.

Muscle Beach Tom benefits from some pretty good humor. The opening gag with the cats working out at the beach was phenomenal and visually brilliant. And some of the gags with Tom later on were also solid. I also really liked the plot here and, although stuffed with too many characters, I liked that it had a lot of different things happening in it.

But the problem continues to be the animation. I just don’t care for Cinemascope and here it definitely reduced the quality of the animation and it just looks odd to me. Also, the third act felt subpar when compared with the previous two acts and Tom and Jerry entries of this period continually struggle with focus and energy. This one definitely needed more of those two.

Muscle Beach Tom has some excellent gags and a fine use of all of its characters, but the animation is subpar as is the third act.

My Rating – 4