Publication Date: 09-07-2026

Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass (2026) review

Dir. Zhang Gang

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★

If you’re anything like me, and had no idea what Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass was until you encountered it online or saw it playing at your local theater over the long Labor Day weekend, I’ll give you a brief description of what exactly this is.

The film is a co-collaboration between Warner Bros. and China Film Co, which is owned by the Chinese government. WB leased the Tom and Jerry IP to the latter and Origin Animation, who both sought to merge the slapstick humor of the iconic Hanna-Barbera cat-and-mouse cartoon with a plot revolving around ancient Chinese mythology and folklore. The result is as preposterous as it is disastrous, with Tom and Jerry eventually relegated to the background in favor of a parade of odious looking cretins who don’t even look like they belong in a film featuring these decades-old characters, who are synonymous with animation itself. Don’t forget the same studio had no faith in releasing Coyote vs. Acme to the same American audiences who grew up on the shorts.

Forbidden Compass opens with Jerry racing to a big museum exhibit called “Traveling Exhibition of the Astral Compass: Journey to the Enigmatic East.” However, Tom is the attraction’s security guard, and won’t let Jerry pass — not until he turns the two-halves of Tom’s cat body into a pair of doors, at least. A chase ensues. This is the closest Zhang Gang’s misbegotten effort comes to emulating the spirit of the original shorts. From there, the commotion activates a mysterious compass, which has a connection to Heaven and higher powers, and in one fell swoop, transports Tom and Jerry to China’s “Golden City.”

It’s here where we meet Phoenix Master (voiced by Kyle McCarley, in the English dub) and Lil Feeney (Cory Yee) — who looks like a knockoff Big Bird plushie you’d find at a flea market — a couple of annoying blokes who are sent from the Gods to obtain the compass. Apparently, everyone wants this thing, even though it wasn’t even in their possession to start. It doesn’t matter if it’s some green-and-pink clown-looking urchin (Christopher W. Jones) or a unicorn-esque creature (Ryan Garcia) who can shoot long beams out of its horn. There’s also a giant rat, named “Mega-Rat” (Brent Mukai), who looks like a first concept rendering of a Flushed Away character, who really wants this compass and causes a lot of havoc in pursuit of it. Every single grab-bag of candy-colored rejects wants their grubby mitts on this compass, and because the movie cannot slow down for a few beats to explain why, we, the audience, just linger captive, at the mercy of slapdash visuals and headache-inducing noise. Seriously. The bathroom break I took about 40 minutes into the film was not because my bladder was full but due to needing a necessary moment of bliss.

At about the same point in the movie is when Tom and Jerry are cast aside, afterthoughts in a plot of incomprehensible motives and debilitating noise garbage. Not to mention, the few human characters that pop up in the story reminded me of the human characters we saw in the Sonic the Hedgehog video game in 2006. You remember — the one in which Sonic interacts with humans that don’t even look like they belong in his world. The presence of the humans here is not as prolific, but occasionally, a random China doll run amok from a street bazaar appears and triggers the uncanny valley lobe of your brain.

I wish I could say the backgrounds and visuals in Forbidden Compass were worth losing yourself in while the busy plot hurls its way forward into nowhere. Instead, it’s an ungainly hodgepodge of manga-inspired wallpapers unevenly merged with vaguely Hollywood backdrops, wildernesses, and other uninspired dreck. While it’s not the worst-looking animated movie on which my eyes have ever laid, it’s also bland, and the lack of world-building makes it so you couldn’t care less about where you are; if put on the spot, the animators couldn’t tell you where you are at any given moment either.

There’s precisely one moving moment in Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass. It comes when the titular furballs (remember them?) are stuck in a small, cubic cage with a hamster wheel. Jerry runs on the wheel and inadvertently wrangles Tom around it. Out of concern, Jerry stops running when he realizes what he’s done. Tom’s arm protrudes out, grabs the crank of the wheel, unspools himself, and then looks like a Fruit Roll-Up that’s fallen off the wax-paper. After all of this, Tom’s arm still works, so he grabs Jerry, and breaks free from the cage. Indeed, one of the only moments of inspiration from this film comes when the two perennial combatants work together, something they traditionally never do.

When it came to the maligned live-action/animation hybrid movie featuring the cat-and-mouse we got during the pandemic, I was one of the gentler critics. It’s not that I knew we could have it worse, but I appreciated the silliness and vaguely amusing set-pieces we did get it. That said, dear reader, this is much worse.

My review of Tom and Jerry: The Movie (1992)
My review of Tom & Jerry (2021)

Voiced by: John Shang, Ruan Yifei, Kyle McCarley, Cory Yee, Andrew Kishino, Christopher W. Jones, Ryan Garcia, Brent Mukai, and Andrew Kishino. Directed by: Zhang Gang.