Warner Bros continues its tradition of “upgrading” its intellectual property with strange tonal choices in order to appeal to a new audience.

From DC Superhero movies with all the color and wonder leached out of them to a Godzilla movie where the giant monsters were literally in the background in favor of stories about the human characters, Warner Bros seems to be deliberately screwing with their movie franchises hoping some of their choices will resonate with an audience.

Tom & Jerry: The Movie is no exception. Part live-action, part animated and almost all violent, it opened on both HBO Max and in theaters Friday.

In this movie too, the cartoon combatants must equally share the screen time with their human co-stars; in fact Tom (as Tom) and Jerry (as Jerry) get third and fourth billing, respectively. The real star is Chloë Grace Moretz as Kayla, who swindles her way into a job as a hotel event manager to coordinate the high society wedding of a wealthy society couple (Colin Jost and Pallavi Sharda.)

In the world of this film, all animals are animated, from butterflies to giant dinosaur skeletons, and there are an awful lot of creatures at this Central Park-adjacent luxury hotel. Jerry, followed closely by Tom, decide that the hotel would make a cozy new home, much to the chagrin of Moretz’s character, because wherever Tom and Jerry go, chaos reigns.

Not just a few pieces of furniture, either – this is full-scale devastation, to a distracting degree. Kayla has to find a way to keep the natural enemies from ruining the wedding, but that’s an impossible dream, what with Tom being Tom and Jerry being Jerry (not to mention the dozen other animals in the nuptial menagerie.)

Tom and Jerry may be each other’s nemeses, but in this movie the villain is the hotel events coordinator Terence, played by Michael Peña. Peña, who was such a delight in the Ant-Man movies, is just a one-note jerk here, an officious busybody who just wants to tank Kayla’s career, even at the cost of his own.

Rob Delaney, who was hilariously dead-pan in Catastrophe is similarly wasted here as Kayla and Terence’s boss, who blandly hovers around the edge of the havoc wrought by everyone else. Ken Jeong rounds out the cast as the prima donna chef who has little to do but make a doomed wedding cake.

It’s not that the movie is bad – there are a few good laughs and sweet moments, the soundtrack slaps, and it’s nice to welcome back our old friends Tom and Jerry. But for all that, the movie feels off somehow. With subplots about pre-marital strife and career woes, it’s not quite a kids movie. But the updated setting means there’s not much of a nostalgia factor here, so neither will it hold much appeal for adults.

Tom & Jerry: The Movie is in theaters now and will stream on HBO Max for the next month.