As I waded through Tom and Jerry's Greatest Chases, a perfectly enjoyable DVD compilation of postwar-era "Tom and Jerry" cartoons, I began to wonder why the eternally backbiting cat and mouse have not endeared and endured over decades but any combination of bickering Looney Tooners has.

There are infinite explanations for this, starting with the way we remember Bugs, Daffy, et al as imitable--any attempt to quote "Tom and Jerry" would quickly turn into a game of charades, as their stories are often told in pantomime. Modern audiences, prone to dissecting all pop entertainment logically, are also frustrated by the notion that Jerry, miniscule compared to his foe, defeats Tom every single time. Derek Germano of The Cinema Laser believes creators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera have it backwards: we hate rodents, leave cheese-covered traps for them, so why are we continually asked to root for Jerry?

The answer has everything to do with Jerry being the smaller animal, and therefore the underdog--the food chain is material to the concept only insomuch as it gives Tom a reason to pursue Jerry. And pursue him. And pursue him...(Besides, didn't some suspender-wearin' fella named Mickey set the precedent for lovable cartoon mice long before Jerry came into being?) Frankly, I find Tweety Bird's repeated triumphs over Sylvester the Cat more worthy of dissension.

Admittedly, the animators weren't always successful at enabling Jerry in a convincing manner. In "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse", Tom concocts a poison that has quite the opposite of its intended effect: it causes Jerry's muscles to inflate until he dwarfs Tom. Yet when Tom samples the same mixture, he shrinks to a quarter of Jerry's size, for no discernible reason beyond the established politics of the series.

A few shorts do acknowledge the absurdity of Jerry's pint-size superiority by teaming him up with an equally agile or significantly more threatening partner. A lion contributes to Jerry's cause in the lazily christened "Jerry and the Lion", while "Kitty Foiled" adds a canary to the mix. The chase formula received its fare share of innovations, too: "Mouse in Manhattan" is a showcase for Jerry as he contends with traffic and other archetypal big city dangers, having abandoned country life (and Tom) for the bright lights of New York, while "Tee for Two" sees the contentious duo more or less playing a game of golf together; at one point, Jerry intimidates Tom into changing his strokes for a single hole from "3" to the more accurate "33."

I want to highlight a trio of gems from this collection, though all fourteen are worthy of at least one sitting: "The Cat Concerto", which won an Oscar, is brilliantly executed--the pair duke it out as Tom performs a concert, and the action manages to be vivid and graceful without ever leaving the piano. The similarly themed "Johann Mouse" is closer to a diamond in the rough, though its scene of Tom taking "six easy piano lessons" is comedy of the highest order--one could ape this routine in a stage play and bring the house down. Finally, "Zoot Cat" earns points for its Tex Avery-style sight gags, such as Tom twirling a yo-yo so that its string spells out "Hi babe" to the object of his affection.

"Tom and Jerry"'s violent reputation has inspired censorship groups to hypothesize the series' negative impact upon children. A greater cause for alarm is "Pokémon", today's most popular kid's show (at least it was fifteen minutes ago), which centres on a group of monsters who are predestined to fight one another--occasionally to the death, if Pokémon: The First Movie is any indication. (I've only seen that film.) Not only does "Pokémon" celebrate war, it's also animated without any grace--at the very least, the craft of Hanna-Barbera's work here has a shot at developing a youngin's appreciation for art.

"Tom and Jerry" is harmless fun even at its most sadistic; the duo's tendency to wind up in blackface is more potentially offensive than any of the head pounding and dynamite swallowing. (As I said before, it's pretty inimitable behaviour, unless one has caseloads of TNT at her disposal.) "Yankee Doodle Mouse" is less lovable for this reason, while "The Little Orphan" (another Oscar winner) rehashes the Hattie McDaniel maidservant stereotype that Toontown had been slower to abandon than the rest of Hollywood.

The various prints used for this single-disc collection are in need of proper restoration--the clarity of the format spotlights the celluloid wear-and-tear present in every single short. Black level is often very good, though colours appear washed-out at times, another sign of old age. I'm preparing you for the worst, of course--I think most people, T&J fans in particular, will be pleasantly surprised by the generally clean appearance of these classic cartoons. Unsurprisingly, the 1.0 DD soundtrack has a brittle and edgy quality. Warner offers up a special bonus: the justifiably famous sequence from Anchors Aweigh in which Gene Kelly and Jerry dance "The Worry Song" together.-Bill Chambers