User Reviews

After Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were given the ax on the Tom and Jerry shorts in the late 50's, MGM made a massive blunder in hiring Gene Deitch and William Snyder from the Soviet Prague to take their place when the studio wanted to make a new batch of T and J cartoons. The animation in Deitch's cartoons lacked any of the mannered and balanced feel of the Hanna-Barbara efforts or the timing of later Chuck Jones efforts, plus Deitch had all those irritating echoing sound effects that seemed out-of-place.

The one thing I always really hated about Deitch and his version of T and J was the disrespectful way he treated Tom. I have always liked Tom more than Jerry and some my favorite T and J shorts has Tom as the victor. Deitch never once showed Tom any of the dignity that Hanna and Barbera showed him or the way that Chuck Jones would later show him after Deitch was fired from the series. The character is ALWAYS making a fool of himself, getting beaten up for no reason, and is continuously getting one-upped by Jerry, usually with the mouse mean-spiritedly dancing and laughing in celebration nearby. Jerry was the winner in all 13 of Deitch's shorts, even at times when the little jerk clearly didn't deserve to win. However of all of the 13 pieces of crap that Deitch and Snyder put out,"Buddies...Thicker Than Water" was one of the only two decent cartoons that they made (the other being "Calypso Cat" with "Buddies" being the better of the two).

Here Deitch really did capture the feel of the H-B shorts and all of the tics that made those cartoons so great - Jerry can be generous at times and Tom can be selfish at times (and vice-versa), they get along for a few moments. As much as I dislike Jerry I will say that this was the only - and I do mean ONLY - Deitch short where I felt Jerry deserved to win and Tom to lose. The plot, as it goes, finds Tom in the freezing cold asking his chum Jerry for a warm place to sleep and eat. Jerry lives in a N.Y.C. penthouse and kindly lets Tom in. But then Tom double-crosses Jerry and gets the mouse thrown out in the cold so he can stay in the place instead. Jerry then enacts his "ghostly" revenge on the cat.

The one thing Deitch does well here is give this cartoon a real feel of horror as Jerry stalks Tom as a "ghoul". The echoing sound effects, blaring horns, and xylophones - the same crap that Deitch put in all of his "work" - doesn't get on your nerves like before. Instead here they work to the effect of the feel of the cartoon's weirdness (the scene where Tom and Jerry are giggling while getting drunk on a bottle of champagne sounds truly bizarre).

"Buddies...Thicker Than Water" truly stands out as one of the most weirdest and - if I can say this - freakiest of any the Tom and Jerry cartoons, a nice example of animated horror, and as I said above only one of two good cartoons by the worst director of the entire series.(Deitch even pompously believes his version of Tom and Jerry is better that the later Chuck Jones version. Yeah, like hell it is!) However I will say this, when they get around to putting out future volumes of Tom and Jerry on DVD I do hope that Warner Bros. and MGM puts a couple of Deitch cartoons in there. I don't really think that they should omit him completely because, like it or not, he IS a part of the T and J series as a whole. But I'll be really miffed if this cartoon isn't one of them.

The story for this one actually is better than the other abysmal gene deitch cartoons.

Of friends taking advantage. Good scenes but far from Tom & Jerry at there best.

If you're like me and 'Buddies... Thicker Than Water (1962)' is the first non-'Hanna-Barbera' 'Tom and Jerry' toon you've seen, the first thing you'll probably notice is its relative sub-par visual quality. The piece is filled with garish colours, simplified character designs and fast-moving, clearly pose-to-pose animation. It doesn't look terrible but it seems like it's missing a couple of corners, if you know what I mean. Aside from the outsourced visuals, however, the film is far from a bad effort. It sees its two stars as unlikely allies once again, though it plays around with this dynamic throughout - quite surprisingly, I'll add. Despite a fairly slow pace in the first act, the flick finds its footing as a decently enjoyable romp with a couple of chucklesome sight-gags and a nice narrative arc. It's enjoyable enough, although I have heard that it's one of the best shorts of 'Deitch era'. 6/10

Sure I haven't seen Gene Deitch's good cartoons, but definitely I hope they're not like these Tom and Jerry shorts he directed.

You can't blame MGM for changing from Gene Deitch to the minds of Chuck Jones and Abe Lebtivow, which were definitely better than Deitch.

I really don't get the strange synthesized sound that is used in the Deitch shorts, but it makes them very creepy, and not very funny, such as the scene when Jerry disguises himself as a ghost.

If you are just starting with this franchise, stick to the Hanna-Barbara cartoons for MGM. They're the best. The Chuck Jones ones are also worth watching.

In the early 1960s, some evil trolls at MGM decided to revive the Tom and Jerry series but wanted it done with practically no budget at all. So, the cartoons were farmed out to be done in Czechoslovakia by people that had hardly any notion of who the characters were. As a result, they didn't look all that much like Tom and Jerry and they acted nothing like the originals. Apparently, the staff hadn't really seen the cartoons before but that didn't stop them! While I have so far rated every other Czech Tom and Jerry a 1, this one gets a 2 because it is marginally better. However, considering how rotten the animation, sound and writing is of ALL these cartoons, this isn't saying much. Tom is out in the cold and Jerry, living it up in a penthouse apartment, invites up Tom--who then betrays Jerry's generosity. The idea originally came from several Warner Brothers' cartoons and this version does NOTHING to improve the original idea.

The penultimate Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry cartoon sees Tom exposed to the bitter cold of winter while Jerry is warm, safe and cosy in a penthouse mouse hole. Desperate, Tom writes Jerry a note for help and the kindhearted mouse obliges, dragging the frozen cat indoors to thaw him out. Tom betrays Jerry's kindness, however, when the owner of the apartment arrives home and sees the mouse: Tom grabs Jerry and throws him outside. To get revenge, Jerry sneaks back indoors, powders himself white, and pretends to be a ghost to scare the cat.

Buddies... Thicker Than Water features the same diabolical standard of animation and bizarre electronic sound effects that blighted all of Deitch's T&J shorts; that said, it is one of the least painful, the story and character dynamics coming fairly close to capturing the essence of the earlier Hanna-Barbera/Fred Quimby cartoons, if not the quality.

I love Tom and Jerry but with exception of three the ones that Gene Dietch made are abominations. Buddies...Thicker Than Water is not as bad as Switchin' Kitten, Sorry Safari and Dicky Moe, but it is down there with Mouse in Space and High Steaks as very painful to watch. The only redeeming quality is that it is not as creepy as the ones I listed as bad, but in all honesty is that saying much? Not really. The animation is still static and flat, the story is non-existent, the synthesised music sets a really uncomfortable atmosphere that you don't find in the Hanna Barbera or Chuck Jones cartoons, the violence and gags are sickening and the sound effects are bizarre at best. Also this is pretty much the only cartoon that I didn't care for either Tom or Jerry. All in all, painful. 2/10 Bethany Cox

This is it , the episode of tom and jerry that had my pre-school innocent years traumatized for ever. I remember having that episode in VHS along with some H.B. ones, I just cant forget the very first time that I heard all these scary sound effects and ultra-creepy music. After 19 years I watched that episode again on boomerang and I realized that there was much more horror in that episode except music and sfx. The gags are horrible and so as the animation, It's like the stinky, alcoholic and pedophile cousin of the "Fraidy cat" episode, creepy and disturbing. If you want your child to live a normal life without mental meta-traumatic issues later on his life avoid this abomination.