Springtime for Thomas (1946) User Reviews

How Easily We Males Are Ruined By A Beautiful Female

[ccthemovieman-1 · 9/10 · 13 October 2007]

This cartoon might be the ultimate - and wildly exaggerated - example of how us men can make such fools of ourselves over beautiful women. We are just putty in their hands!

It's springtime and Tom is love, so much so they doesn't even pay attention when Jerry rips off a large the fur on his back. (This is why I usually root for Tom - and lose, of course.) The cat is staring out the window as the hot feline across the way, who is lounging in a chair reading "Har-Puss Bazaar." Tom is perched at the window just sighing at "Toodles."

Some of the sight gags of Tom being totally enraptured by this "woman" are very funny. Jerry doesn't think they are funny and when a little green devil pops out next to him, he hears "Hey, are you going to stand there and let a dame come between you and him?" The devil keeps urging Jerry to do something about the situation because "that dame has him eating out of her hand." Admittedly, Tom looks pretty silly and has lost all sense of dignity over this beautiful pussy with the long lashes.

Anyway, the devil's plan is to provide another cat instead of Tom for the woman, so a black alley cat, living in a garbage can, is recruited. This black cat turns out to be hilarious and the rest of the cartoon is the two males bashing the hell out of each other to try to get the female's affections. These guys pull out all the stops!

In the end, we get another surprise, and another example of what I mention in the first paragraph.

This was a solid Tom and Jerry cartoon and, to me, the year 1946 started ushering in a newer era of their material, more violent but also a lot funnier.

A spring in his step.

[CuriosityKilledShawn · 8/10 · 6 January 2007]

Jerry wakes and figures it's going to be another day of being chased by Tom. Thinking giving Tom a big kick in the ass will get the action started he's surprised to find Tom unresponsive. The reason? Tom is in love with Toodles, the girl cat across the street. He's too head over heels to care about chasing a mouse.

Jerry then thinks of a cunning plan to tear his attention away from Toodles by faking a love letter to local alley-cat Butch. It's turns out Butch is more adept at making Toodles swoon and Tom is soon out of the picture as far as dating is concerned.

With quite a few inventive moments and loads of visual gags and a nice twist ending, this is certainly one of the better T&J shorts.

Toodles is gorgeous!

[TheLittleSongbird · 9/10 · 25 May 2010]

I loved Springtime for Thomas, it was a very interesting change of pace as the chases between the legendary cat and mouse duo are not abundant here, instead Tom is head over heels in love with Toodles. Looking at Toodles, it is not hard to see why Tom AND Butch are smitten with her, she is gorgeous! The animation is nice enough if not quite up to scratch with other Tom and Jerry cartoons, and the story does have its predictabilities. But the characters are great and I was glad that there weren't many of them, that way the cartoon is more focused on what it should be focused on, the music is lovely and the visual gags still delight. Overall, a very nice cartoon and an interesting change of pace. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Jerry or Toodles?

[Antzy88 · 1 August 2001]

Jerry is disappointed to find that Tom has a crush on Toodles, a beautiful female cat that he can see from his window. Jerry, with the help of his evil side, tries to break them up by bringing in rival black cat (who later became known as Butch, after the dog's name changed from Butch to Spike).

Very amusing stuff!

A Tom & Jerry cartoon for Valentine's

[ja_kitty_71 · 10/10 · 31 August 2010]

Here is another great cartoon for Valentine's Day (or any other day), starring the dynamic duo of "toondom:" Tom and Jerry. This is my favorite Tom and Jerry cartoon from 1946, where Tom falls in love with a cute girl cat named Toodles. In this short, Jerry peered by the spirit of jealously forges a letter laced with perfume (supposedly from Toodles) to an alley-cat named Butch to break-up Tom's romance, so Jerry could selfishly have his "frenemy" back.

I don't have any particular scene that I like because I love this cartoon, and I love how Toodles is designed. So that is all I could say about this cartoon.

Jerry interferes with Tom's love life!

[Tweekums · 8/10 · 11 September 2012]

It is springtime; the flowers are in bloom and Thomas has fallen in love with Toodles, the cat sunbathing outside. Jerry is not pleased with this; he wants to have fun tormenting Tom but no matter what he does Tom just keeps on staring at Toodles. When Tom goes over to Toodles and starts to flirt, a little devil-mouse pops up next to Jerry and tells him to do something about the situation. What he does is write a letter to an alley cat, claiming to be from Toodles, inviting him round. Inevitably when the alley cat turns up and starts making advances towards Toodles a jealous fight starts and the two cats battle for her attention; eventually Tom is forced to concede defeat and it looks as though things will get back to usual with him and Jerry... till a lady mouse appears on the scene.

This was a fun short where Jerry is very much the antagonist for once. It is also notable because Jerry is only slightly involved in most of the action as the fight between Tom and the alley cat provides the vast majority of the violent gags. That is okay though as it is fun watching the two cats fighting. The gags are of the sort one would expect; both creative and violent; they also come thick and fast. Not all the gags are violent though; I particularly liked how the alley cat combed his hair with the bony remains of a fish before setting off to meet Toodles. The animation is up to the usual high standard of the era and Scott Bradley's musical soundtrack was great too.

"Puppy Love" may strike most viewers as being kind of . . .

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 23 September 2022]

. . . cute, but cat crushes are totally crushing, according to SPRINGTIME FOR THOMAS. The title character and his feline nemesis Butch both lose seven or eight of their lives in the battle for Toot's affection. Suddenly reconfigured as a blue-eye all-white Persian cat, Toot's transformation is quite jarring and off-putting right off the bat. Speaking of bats, Butch implausibly uses his cherished guitar as one to mash Thomas, totally destroying is serenade strings. Which sort of makes a person wonder, exactly how many musical instruments can an unemployed feral cat afford? However, it's unimaginable that any perceptive human woman would rate this misogynistic violence fest higher than a four.

Love is a many splendored thing.

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 16 November 2017]

"Springtime for Thomas" is a 7.5-minute cartoon from the Golden Age of Animation, from 1946 to be more precise and it means that this one is already over 70 years old. It is a Hanna Barbera production that is probably among their more known Tom and Jerry shorts these days. It is also one of the rare films where we have Tom being referenced as Thomas and we also hear him talk on one occasion. This one is all about love. Tom prefers drooling over the female cat next door over playing cat-and-mouse games with Jerry, an unacceptable situation for the little mouse though and this film in its entirety is really a great deal about the playfulness between the two and not at all about them being enemies. But in order to keep it from being too light, we have another male cat, a black one, being the antagonist to Tom as he clearly has his plans too with the attractive female cat. Luckily for Tom, these cartoons often have David defeat Goliath and as he is physically inferior to the other cat, this means that he manages to defeat him most of the time, something he rarely manages when going up against Jerry. And when eventually the status quo is restored, then things become difficult again quickly the way they were before and yet completely different. A funny little film with several entertaining interactions. Certainly a good watch if you love old cartoons. I give it a thumbs-up and think you should see it.

The Love Cats.

[BA_Harrison · 6/10 · 14 June 2008]

Spring has sprung, love is in the air, and Thomas has fallen for Toodles, the fancy rich feline next door. All gooey-eyed and completely under the posh pussy's spell, the once proud mouser no longer has time to chase poor old Jerry, preferring to wait hand and foot on the girl of his dreams.

Nose put out of joint, the rejected rodent plots to ruin Tom's chances: he sends a local alley cat a fake love-letter signed by Toodles, and sits back as the mangy bit of rough becomes Tom's bitter love rival.

After much mayhem, with the guys fighting furiously for temptress Toodles' attention, Tom admits defeat and returns to mouse-chasing duties, only to find Jerry cooing over a ravishing lady rodent. Oh, the irony!

Springtime for Thomas is another reasonable caper, with the usual quota of violence and laughs, but, once again, does not prove to be anything particularly special. Fans of the cat and mouse duo will undoubtedly have fun, but with the old 'devil on the shoulder' gag proving to be the most inspired moment, I felt a little disappointed.

Tom's Romance Is Jeopardized By Jerry

[StrictlyConfidential · 6/10 · 29 June 2021]

"Springtime For Thomas" was originally released in 1946.

Anyway - As the story goes - Tom's courtship of a new kitten is broken up by Jerry's plot to bring the cat's rival into the romance.