Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass Gets a 0% Critics Slam

2 Minutes

It’s startling when a franchise that’s been part of childhoods for generations suddenly feels lost. Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass arrives as the series’ first fully computer-animated feature, written and directed by Zhang Gang, and yet critics have largely been unforgiving.

Rotten Tomatoes lists 10 critic reviews and a striking 0 percent score. Metacritic is scarcely kinder: four reviews average out to 24 out of 100. Numbers like that don’t just sting—they demand a closer look.

The Guardian’s Leslie Felperin lands on 40 out of 100, describing the film as a spectacle of flying dragons and noisy set pieces that prioritizes excitement over coherent storytelling. Bright colors and constant din, she argues, substitute for narrative logic.

Tara Brady at The Irish Times also gives 40 out of 100. Her take is that the film shows technical improvement over the 2022 entry, but that triumph is hollow when Tom and Jerry themselves become side characters—relegated by a parade of weak new figures who dominate the runtime.

Empire’s Helen O’Hara is harsher, scoring it 20 out of 100 and calling the movie an unrelenting mess. The complaint: it feels like stitched-together shorts rather than a properly developed feature, and even younger viewers would need low expectations to get enjoyment from it.

Variety echoes that sentiment with another 20 out of 100. Its critic compares the film’s tone and texture to low-quality, disposable cereal—bright and attention-seizing, but lacking in substance and cohesion.

So what went wrong? The technical leap to full CGI is notable and, for some sequences, visually accomplished. But spectacle alone can’t carry a movie. Characters should matter. Stakes should register. Pacing and emotional throughlines should be present—here, many reviewers found those elements faint or missing.

Critics seem to agree: Forbidden Compass favors surface-level dazzle over the mischievous charm that made the originals timeless.

Will audiences disagree? That’s the question cinemas will answer once families and longtime fans weigh in for themselves.