O-Solar Meow
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| O-Solar Meow
Tom and Jerry series |
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|---|---|
 The title card of O-Solar Meow |
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| Directed by | Abe Levitow |
| Produced by | Chuck Jones |
| Story by | John Dunn |
| Music by | Eugene Poddany |
| Animation by | Ken Harris Don Towsley Tom Ray Dick Thompson Ben Washam |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
| Release date(s) | 1967 |
| Color process | Metrocolor |
| Running time | 6 minutes 46 seconds |
| Preceded by | Cat and Dupli-cat |
| Followed by | Guided Mouse-ille |
| IMDb profile | |
O-Solar Meow is a 1967 cartoon featuring Tom and Jerry. It was the first of three space-related shorts to be released in the Chuck Jones era (though, confusingly, the second of the three to be produced). The cartoon was produced by Chuck Jones and directed by Abe Levitow. The animation was supplied by Ken Harris, Don Towsley, Tom Ray, Dick Thompson and Ben Washam. The title of the cartoon is a play-on-words of the popular Italian song 'O Sole Mio.
Its Japanese title is Tom and Jerry Wars (トムとジェリーウォーズ Tom to Jieri Uozu?).
[edit] Plot
A (comparatively) small white ball labeled Supply Satellite No.1 is hit with a very strong spring and thrown into the stratosphere. The title cards are shown as the satellite ascends hundreds of miles into the air. It falls into Space Station No.1 and moves around like a ball in a roulette wheel until it comes to rest on number 36. Immediately, "baggage" is deposited out of a machine and one of the packages is a large hunk of cheese, which attracts Jerry. He gets in his space-age vehicle and goes after what he saw on his data screen, but soon breaks a beam without even noticing. This beam sets off a rocket, which then sets off a Rube Goldberg contraption in order to alert the resident cat on duty - Tom. Tom is thrown into his work chair in front of his data screen and woken up with a stream of water. Tom wakes up, and seeing Jerry in his cheese-vehicle, signals his robot cat to go after it.
The robot cat chases Jerry and attempts to chomp on Jerry's vehicle, but Jerry leaves a stream of exhaust in the robot's mouth causing it to cough repeatedly. Jerry speeds past Tom and Tom moves his chair to the left, but is soon dragged along on the chase by his robot. Tom remotely stops the robot and cruises along the floor without even paying any attention to what is in front of him. He runs into a nearby wall and is temporarily knocked out. Tom then runs up to his robot, turns it around, and kicks it. Kicking metal, however, is not a good idea. All three of Tom's right toes swell red and Tom is left to clutch his foot and hop around in pain.
Tom is then shown testing out a new incisive laser machine. He tests it out on a safe and a glass water container, which both slice cleanly in half. Tom then cuts out a large portion of the wall containing Jerry's hole, causing the mouse to walk out in bewilderment. He suffers a near miss from the laser and Jerry puts on his jetpack and blinds the cat with its smoke. Tom then chases Jerry and is cut with the laser beam. Jerry is hovering in the air and Tom jumps at the mouse, with no success, until he realizes he's in two pieces and then, embarrassed, checks himself into first aid.
Tom then puts on an Ajax Flying Belt (according to the package), but it repeatedly backfires on him: It slips to his feet and drags him by the feet, and then flips over and carries him through the air as if he was being hung by the feet. Tom runs into another wall and then is shown being dragged across the ground by his ankles and then returning to being hung by the feet. Tom blocks the air flow, but soon suffers under gravity. The cat points the jet stream down and floats in the air next to Jerry, who starts laughing at him. Tom bites at the mouse and then starts chasing him, but instead of biting the mouse on the second try, he bites a pipe and spins around akin to an exercise wheel. Jerry stops the spinning with a rod and the cat falls.
Jerry is then shown cruising through the air, and then spots Tom behind him. He continues on his course, but pulls up just in front of a fast-rotating fan, leaving Tom to fall into the duct and be shredded. Tom falls out of the duct and has a striped appearance. The belt starts flying by itself in the air until Tom squirts it with gas and stops the belt from working again.
The wheel of cheese is then shown being Jerry-propelled through the air. Jerry is inside, about to dine on a tiny bit of cheese, when Tom shoots a giant arrow into the wheel and it runs into a wall. Jerry finds himself looking down the barrel of a space gun and is forced to surrender. Tom places him inside a large, powerful cannon and fires Jerry into the moon. Tom celebrates by shooting off his gun everywhere; it is revealed to create holes in anything it hits as the space station is punctured.
Tom is then shown pressed into patching up the holes he has made and re-inflating the space station under pain of being obliterated by a larger model of the gun he used, while Jerry is enjoying the high life on the moon, because it contains cheese of every type imaginable.
[edit] Goofs
- In the scenes before Jerry feints Tom into falling into the fan, the hood of his outfit rapidly alternates between yellow (the color of the rest of the outfit) and a shade of grey matching his fur.
