Sorry Safari (1962) User Reviews (12)

Yeesh, what is this?

[Rusty-34 · 3/10 · 22 August 2001]

You can't blame MGM switching to Chuck Jones and company to do Tom and Jerry. I never saw his award winning cartoons, but Gene Deitch made Tom and Jerry rather nauseating and creepy.

Here we see them on a safari, with one macho mad man who gets p***ed at Tom for every little bad thing he does, especially when he attempts to get Jerry the mouse. The mad man is EXTREMELY bitter towards Tom (you feel sorry for the poor feline).

The music and scenery is far from relaxing and the music seems to get to your head like nausea. This is true of some of the other Gene Deitch T&J shorts.

The jungle safari man is so one-dimensional and cold that he isn't funny. Some of the dog foes of Tom, most noteably Spike, had a personality and audiences could laugh every time Tom caught him, but this guy...

This particularly falls with the rest of the Gene Deitch T&J ones...his directing style did NOT fit Tom and Jerry. It's like putting a round peg into a square hole.

That awful owner that abuses his cat

[mforsting · 3/10 · 20 January 2021]

Worst Tom and Jerry cartoon I have ever seen well the ones that show the abusing cat owner are the worst I didn't even laugh a bit at these ones they are cruel and you have to feel sorry for Tom. The creators called Tom and Jerry bad and they thought this was better.

A sorry safari indeed.

[BA_Harrison · 1/10 · 12 May 2017]

An obnoxious fat man with an uncontrollable rage goes on safari in Nairobi, accompanied by his cat Tom, and stowaway mouse Jerry. Chaos ensues, but laughter doesn't.

A jungle-bound Tom and Jerry cartoon offers so much scope for decent gags—quicksand, man-eating plants, snakes, monkeys, crocodiles, lost civilisations—and yet director Gene Deitch limits Sorry Safari to having Tom and his owner fall off the back of an elephant and get chased by a purple rhinocerous. Excruciatingly bad animation and horrible sound effects abound, making this yet another stinker to be avoided by all but the bravest of animation adventurers.

Blech!

[overtheedge27 · 1/10 · 27 February 2004]

Let me say first and foremost, I can only take so much of the Tom and Jerry cartoons (with the exceptions of the classic ones from the early years) and I absolutely despised the ones from the Gene Deitch era, but this has to be the worse. When ever I see this cartoon come on Cartoon Network, I try to change the channel. This cartoon ultimately lacks what makes a charming Tom and Jerry cartoon. The drawings look like they were done by a kid, the music was awful, and I have to agree with the earlier comment about Tom's owner. A guy like that would be asking for a charge for animal cruelty and therapy for anger management. There is nothing likable about the guy and so your sympathy goes more towards Tom rather than Jerry like it should. In all advice, I would suggest avoiding this cartoon at all cost.

Can you describe anything this bad?.

[Hannesz · 1/10 · 3 February 2006]

Okay, where should i start?. In this short Tom and his owner is on a safari. Jerry the mouse hides in a basket and when Tom notices that he starts to chase the mouse. Jerry do everything he can so Tom's mean owner can beat the poor cat. This doesn't sounds funny at all and of course it is not fun at all. Like all the other Gene Deitch shorts it's bad animated, bad drawn, bad music and the usual unpleasant sound effects. The music in this one is particularly awful and the drawings always remember me of a nightmare. When I was a little child I was frightened of cartoons with this special 60's look. What more can I tell about this horrible short? Jerry is like in the other Gene Deitch shorts- pure evil. Tom's owner is as usual cold and repulsive so yo don't think it's funny when he get angry at Tom and beat him. I wish that Tom had beaten that awful man and Jerry instead. Overall i give this an 0/10 if that is enough for this extremely bad short

Sure is sorry...

[bobrandt · 2/10 · 23 July 2003]

The title says it all - this is a sorry cartoon. Story and animation match each other, they're equally bad.

The style of the 1960's cartoons does not please me in general. However this is one of the worst.

scraping the bottom of the barrel with this franchise

[planktonrules · 1/10 · 13 June 2006]

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! This film is about a safari. But, who really cares?! This is a boring, horribly animated pile of manure posing as a Tom and Jerry cartoon. I loved the originals, but cringed at seeing this film.

Call me a Weirdo But I love These Type Tom and Jerry's!

[verbusen · 6/10 · 12 June 2008]

I admit that the animation is less costly in these Tom and Jerry's from the early 60's then the not as cheap looking (but still slightly cheaper then the 40's0 1950's T&J, but there is something about these that I always enjoyed! And let's look at the "cheap" issue, are they just cheap, or are they trying to be more modern? This is the 1960's and maybe they were trying to rebrand Tom and Jerry to give it more life! Look at the bigger picture sometimes folks, after this the franchise had better quality animation so maybe it inspired fans to miss their T&J? I don't know but I am in the minority as I always actually liked these crazy Tom and Jerry's and their quirky animation and weirder sound effects. They are also more violent but because of the animation can get away with it. Was there anything in "Sorry Safari" that greatly inspired me compare to other Tom and Jerry's? Naw not this time, but it was fun to watch, how anyone can give this a one star is beyond me considering all the smeg in cartoon land. I give it a 6 for it's fun quirkiness and being different from Tom and Jerry standard fare. It's not that cheap people it's just different!

O Gene Dietch, what have you forsaken us?

[TheLittleSongbird · 1/10 · 3 September 2010]

As I have said before, I adore Tom and Jerry. But I well and truly dislike the Gene Dietch cartoons, as I consider them disgraces to the Tom and Jerry name. Why? How about the terrible animation, stomach-churning sound effects and sickening and predictable sight gags? While Switchin' Kitten is the worst offender of these unforgivable flaws, Sorry Safari is no exception. In fact, this is the Gene Dietch Tom and Jerry cartoon that is on the same truly sorry level of Switchin' Kitten. Where to start criticising Sorry Safari? The animation was absolutely awful, none of the characters are well drawn and the colours and backgrounds are murder to the eyes. The music is forgettable and marred by the sound effects which to be honest made my ears bleed. The sight gags are neither funny or original, in fact they are unfunny and downright disturbing(ie. the opening, with one of the most frightening roars you will ever hear in your life and not in a good way). And the characters? None of them have any of the likability that they had in the classic 40s and 50s cartoons. Like in Switchin' Kitten, you actually feel sorry for Tom here. Overall, truly awful and for fans of Tom and Jerry is much better avoided. 1/10 Bethany Cox

A lady in a tattered green jacket just handed me . . .

[tadpole-596-918256 · 9/10 · 23 November 2022]

. . . a one-page review in about a 167-point type font on SORRY SAFARI. Because the printing was so large, I was able to read this under a streetlight, even though it was pretty breezy in the Loop. It's not hard to see why the information that this reviewer has dug up about SORRY SAFARI was been squelched, censored, eradicated, stymied and erased from this website. She really knows how to connect all the dots, and prove why SORRY SAFARI is so much more than the slapdash mediocrity it might appear to an uninitiated viewer. This savvy analyst has terrific insight into the geopolitics of the 1900's, explicating all the why's and wherefore's in what made the world a ticking time bomb back then. The tattered jacket lady reveals a stunningly widespread web of deceit, snaring two of Hollywood's biggest stars, as well as a doomed U. S. President and a leading presidential candidate. She's not afraid to name names, unlike some of the more notoriously pusillanimous websites around Today.

So close but yet Safari - A Splarshy Review

[jacobstaggs · 7/10 · 3 February 2020]

This 11th episode of the Gene Deitch era of Tom and Jerry falls somewhere between good and bad but it's more good than bad so it's enjoyable. The drawings of the characters are at their ugliest but the cartoon moves along at a quick pace. Using the same format as Down and Outing and High Steaks, it is the weakest of the three but voice actor Allen Swift gives his best performance as the foul tempered, grouchy semi- Clint Clobber. The music and coloring are also effective. There is also an interesting Jacob's Ladder gag. Despite some flaws, I recommend checking this out. 7/10.

A mixed bag.

[richard0595 · 6/10 · 18 July 2014]

There are pros and cons for this Deitch entry.

The main con is that, once again, we got the brutish master from "Down and Outing" and "High Steaks" beating up on Tom, who's only trying to help (Though I do admit that the scene where Tom goes deaf forum the loud gun was pretty funny).

The pros are few, but good. The jungle music sets the mood for the setting and I kinda like the design on that elephant. The violence, while still mean at times, is a little more downplayed this time around. Some of the jokes are pretty clever (like the hunter choosing a gun by swinging them like baseball bats, plus the aforementioned deaf scene), plus I did like it when the elephant freaked out when he saw Jerry. Finally, it's a bit nice to see the thug get some violence onto him (being scratched up by a lion and tied to a stick at the end).

Overall, it's not the best of Deitch's efforts, but I find it the most tolerable of the three "fat man" shorts in this bunch.