‘Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass’ Just Scored a Brutal Score on Rotten Tomatoes

Tom and Jerry have survived decades of reinventions, from classic theatrical shorts to a live-action hybrid that hit theaters back in 2021. The beloved cat-and-mouse duo has weathered plenty of experiments over the years, some more successful than others, as Warner Bros. keeps searching for new ways to bring the franchise to modern audiences.

Their latest outing takes the characters somewhere entirely new, both narratively and geographically. ‘Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass’ sends the pair through time to a distant era after a scuffle over a mysterious artifact accidentally opens a portal, forcing them to team up and find their way back home.

That premise hasn’t been enough to win over critics. The film has landed a brutal 0 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 10 reviews, making it one of the worst-reviewed entries the franchise has ever produced.

Unlike previous American-made Tom and Jerry projects, ‘Forbidden Compass’ was produced primarily for the Chinese market through a partnership between China Film Co., Warner Bros. Pictures, and Origin Animation, and exported to international theaters afterward. It marks the franchise’s first fully computer-animated feature, a notable shift from the traditional 2D style longtime fans grew up with.

The film had already premiered in China back in 2025 and played in the United Kingdom earlier this year before finally arriving in American theaters, giving it plenty of time to accumulate reviews before US audiences got a chance to weigh in. According to Metacritic, the movie currently holds a score of 24 out of 100, landing it in “generally unfavorable” territory.

The most consistent complaint among reviewers isn’t really about animation quality or plot logic, but rather how little screen time the title characters actually get. Several critics noted that once Tom and Jerry land in their new setting, they largely become supporting players in a story dominated by an entirely different cast of characters drawn from Chinese mythology and folklore.

One review from Variety described the visual style as an incoherent mashup of traditional Chinese landscape painting, manga-style action, and classic Hollywood slapstick, resulting in a chaotic viewing experience rather than a cohesive one. Another critic writing for Film Obsessive called the film a narrative disaster, arguing it’s significantly worse than even the widely panned 1992 theatrical film ‘Tom and Jerry: The Movie.’

For context, that 1992 film sits at 14 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, a score that had long stood as something of a low bar for the franchise. ‘Forbidden Compass’ has now dropped well below that mark, joining a growing pile of reviews describing the film as overstimulating, tonally confused, and disconnected from what made the original cartoons work in the first place.

Warner’s 2021 live-action hybrid ‘Tom & Jerry’ also drew weak reviews at the time of its release but still managed solid box office returns, while a follow-up hybrid film went straight to video without a theatrical run at all. ‘Forbidden Compass’ represents a fundamentally different strategy for the studio, leaning into an international co-production model rather than the hybrid live-action approach Warner had previously relied on.

While critics have been almost uniformly negative, audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes tell a slightly more divided story, currently sitting at 38 percent on the Popcornmeter. Some viewers have pushed back against the criticism, expressing nostalgia for the characters regardless of the surrounding story, while others have echoed the same frustration that Tom and Jerry feel sidelined in their own franchise entry.

With a 0 percent critic score now attached to its name, ‘Forbidden Compass’ is likely to be remembered as a cautionary tale about how far a beloved franchise can stray from its roots before fans start pushing back.

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