How They Get There

Scrat tries to finish his rather large collection of acorns when things start going nutty.

At Thanksgiving, a tramp arrives in a homeless-hostile town.

A young man in New York has exasperated his father because of his constant carousing and irresponsibility, so his father sends him to his uncle's ranch in the west. The young man arrives in the town of Piute Pass, which is being terrorized by Tiger Lip Tompkins and his gang, the Masked Angels. The Easterner befriends a young woman whose father is being held captive by Tompkins, and he decides to help her.

Butch convinces Tom and Jerry that there's no reason to fight and they should all sign a peace treaty. Tom and Butch even rescue their pals from a fellow cat and dog. But then a steak falls off a truck and the boys can't decide how to divvy it up, ultimately losing it completely, and the truce is off.

Tom calls the exterminators, but they send a cat, who despite his various tools, doesn't fare much better than Tom usually does.

Tom subjects Jerry to his usual harassment; but the cat finds a new enemy, and the mouse finds a new friend, in the canary of the house.

Mammy Two-Shoes replaces Tom with a younger cat who is a lightning-quick mouser. Tom and Jerry form an alliance in order to get rid of this dangerous newcomer.

Tom is given the task of guarding the fridge during the night by Mammy-Two-Shoes, but as soon as he has started he is tricked by Jerry into falling into the basement, where he lands in a barrel of cider. Now drunk, Tom staggers around in the house getting up to no good with Jerry.

Jasper is given an ultimatum by his master: break one more thing and you're out. Rodent Jerry does his best to make sure that his tormentor "gets the boot".

Jerry finds himself in charge of a foundling mouse called Nibbles, who is eager to steal milk from Tom's bowl and oblivious to the danger.

Tom's advances on a young jive-talking girl cat get nowhere; nowhere, that is, until Tom gets a zoot suit. Armed with his miles of fabric and a new cool lingo, Tom still has to deal with the tricks of his nemesis, Jerry.

The Easter bunny brings an egg for Tom and Jerry that hatches into the little duckling. He keeps getting into water he shouldn't: the aquarium, water cooler, bathtub, sink, as the boys keep rescuing it. They try to give the duck back to the Easter bunny - no go. They leave it in the pond at the park and think they're home free, until the duckling brings his friends home.

Tom is shipwrecked on an island, which is inhabited by at least one mouse - Jerry. To thwart the hungry cat, Jerry disguises himself as a cannibal.

Mammy Two-Shoes tells Tom and Butch that the cat who gets rid of the icebox-raiding, breadbox-invading mouse (Jerry) is the one who can stay.

The seven short films making up GENIUS PARTY couldn’t be more diverse, linked only by a high standard of quality and inspiration. Atsuko Fukushima’s intro piece is a fantastic abstraction to soak up with the eyes. Masaaki Yuasa, of MIND GAME and CAT SOUP fame, brings his distinctive and deceptively simple graphic style and dream-state logic to the table with “Happy Machine,” his spin on a child’s earliest year. Shinji Kimura’s spookier “Deathtic 4,” meanwhile, seems to tap into the creepier corners of a child’s imagination and open up a toybox full of dark delights. Hideki Futamura’s “Limit Cycle” conjures up a vision of virtual reality, while Yuji Fukuyama’s "Doorbell" and "Baby Blue" by Shinichiro Watanabe use understated realism for very surreal purposes. And Shoji Kawamori, with “Shanghai Dragon,” takes the tropes and conventions of traditional anime out for very fun joyride.

Tom's new book on "how to catch a mouse" doesn't prove too helpful against Jerry; actually, Jerry seems to make better use of it than Tom.