WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Tom and Jerry, now available on HBO Max.
Warner Bros.' Tom and Jerry hybrid movie is full of head-scratching creative choices, from the opening credits sequence where a group of pigeons lip-sync A Tribe Called Quest's "Can I Kick It?” while flying over New York City to all the non-human animals in the film's live-action universe being animated. (For reasons that are never explained, some of them can talk while others can't.) Still, the strangest aspect might be the movie's plot, which is curiously in perfect thematic opposition to, of all things, Bong Joon-ho's Best Picture Oscar-winner Parasite.
Tom and Jerry revolves around Kayla (Chloë Grace Moretz), a young woman who's been struggling to find steady employment since she made the move from her small hometown to New York City. Taking advantage of a misunderstanding, Kayla cons her way into a job overseeing the ritzy wedding for celebrity couple Ben (Colin Jost) and Preeta (Pallavi Sharda) at the Royal Gate Hotel, just as Jerry decides to take up residence there with Tom in hot pursuit. Over the course of the movie, both Kayla and the hotel's event manager Terence (Michael Peña) end up throwing one another under the proverbial bus to benefit their careers. Meanwhile, Tom and Jerry get up to their usual slapstick mayhem, wreaking havoc on Ben and Preeta's nuptials along the way.
Eventually, Kayla comes clean about her deception and convinces Terence to work together with her to save the wedding, in the process giving Tom and Jerry a chance to put aside their differences (for a little while, anyway) and make up for all the trouble they've caused. On the surface level, the movie teaches kids about the importance of not fighting and collaborating to make a positive impact instead. However, upon closer inspection, Tom and Jerry's storyline appears to subscribe to the philosophy that 1) Everyone thrives in a capitalistic system when working-class people like Kayla and Terence cooperate in service of the upper-class and 2) All you need to do to climb the corporate ladder is work hard and play fair.
This is the antithesis of not only Parasite's social commentary but Bong Joon-ho's perspective on capitalism across his films (see also: Snowpiercer). Like Kayla in Tom and Jerry, Parasite's protagonists go from barely making ends meet working odd jobs to being employed by wealthy individuals by scheming and pretending to be more highly-qualified than they really are. In doing so, they also end up screwing over other people who, like Terence, have spent years in servitude to the upper-class (in this case, the same rich family) and are desperate to hold onto what little they have to show for all their efforts. Except, in Parasite, the film's working-class characters don't magically find a way to win a rigged game where the entire point is for them to compete and one-up their peers, all while the wealthy remain comfortably on top.
Obviously, Tom and Jerry isn't necessarily meant to be read as a defense of capitalism the way Parasite is overtly intended to be interpreted as the exact opposite. Still, it's not shocking that a calculated, studio-backed reboot of a beloved property would have a fairly corporate-friendly mentality. This outlook even manifests itself in other parts of the film, like the way Ben and Preeta are portrayed as being unquestionably decent people in spite of their luxurious lifestyle and Ben, in a throwaway line played for laughs, admits he served some prison time for a white-collar crime. In a movie full of questionable artistic choices, using the rivalry between a cartoon cat and mouse as the basis for a parable in favor of capitalism is probably the most ill-advised one.
Directed by Tim Story and produced by Chris DeFaria, Tom and Jerry stars Chloë Grace Moretz, Michael Peña, Colin Jost, Rob Delaney, Pallavi Sharda, Patsy Ferran, Bobby Cannavale, Lil Rel Howery and Ken Jeong. The film is in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.