Jerry, Jerry, Quite Contrary is a 1966 cartoon directed and produced by Chuck Jones. The title is a parody of the popular nursery rhyme "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary."
Plot
This cartoon is fairly simple, involving various antics that Jerry (while sleep walking) pulls on Tom during his sleep and Jerry's subsequent efforts to stop them by staying awake.
Tom is having his beauty sleep during the wee hours.
1:59 AM: Jerry sleepwalks out of his hole and pulls Tom's whiskers such that they align themselves on one side of his face. Tom wakes up in puzzlement and pushes his whiskers back to even lengths. He spots Jerry and holds him down with one finger and crouches angrily in front of the mouse. Jerry punches his jaw such that his lips cover Tom's face. Jerry laughs and walks away. Tom snaps his fingers and wakes Jerry up. Jerry turns around slowly in terror and Tom flips his head such that it twists incessantly like an exercise wheel. Tom then hits him into his hole with a pool cue. Jerry recovers from running into his own wall and cluelessly shrugs.
2:25 AM: Jerry walks out and pulls Tom's tail so that it transforms into an umbrella. Tom wakes up, folds his tail back up, and starts to chase after Jerry, but his tail unfolds back into umbrella-form. Jerry laughs in the same banal-sounding voice used earlier and is woken up a second time. Tom angrily picks him up and ties him up with string. Tom unwinds the string and Jerry is thrown around the room like a top, bouncing off legs of chairs and walls in a way similar to his previous humiliation, and then falls into his hole, completely exhausted from dizziness.
3:07 AM: Jerry walks out with a steak knife in order to stab the cat, but sneezes and wakes up. Jerry gasps and guiltily returns the knife to his hole.
3:26 AM: Following from the previous sleepwalk mishap, Jerry gulps 8 cups of coffee in an attempt to stay awake. Jerry sits on a spool and his features droop, but he shakes them off twice. Jerry tries to open his eyelids, but they close all by themselves. He shakes this off, then dozes off and gets back up again, but his features droop a third time and he cannot keep from entering the world of dreams.
Jerry then walks out and throws a brick at the cat, but sneezes and wakes up a second time. Jerry gasps in fear and opens the cat's eyes. Tom sees the brick coming straight at him, opens his mouth in panic, and thus swallows the red brick. Jerry waves at him and Tom throws him back into his hole and boards it up.
3:40 AM: Jerry pushes all 4 nails off the board covering his hole and opens it up. He is carrying a ball of yarn. Jerry ties one end to Tom's tail, spreads the yarn around the entire house and outside as well. Then, he ties the other end to an anvil and pushes it down the chimney. Tom is woken up with a start and is pulled around the house, squeezed through the tiniest gaps, and pulled up to the chimney before hitting his head on the anvil at the bottom of the chimney. The camera flips over. Finally broken, Tom cries and packs up.
He leaves for the desert, where he is sweating to the brim. Jerry is also there, but he is still sleepwalking.
Crew
- Co-Director: Maurice Noble
- Backgrounds: Philip DeGuard
- Vocal Effects: Mel Blanc
- Production Manager: Earl Jonas
- Production Supervised by: Les Goldman
- MPAA Certificate Number: 20839
Trivia
- the final gag at 3:40 AM is almost similar to the one of the gags used in the Warner Bros. cartoon Mouse Wreckers (1949).
- Unlike most Tom and Jerry cartoons which Jerry is the antagonist, here his antagonisms are unintentional as they all done when sleepwalking (and even Jerry realizes it as well).
Gallery
