Tom and Jerry's Giant Adventure features Tom and Jerry as petting zoo animals at a fairy-tale-themed theme park that has seen better days. The owner's son Jack takes them to sell the park's performing cow to save the park from foreclosure. A mysterious farmer persuades them to sell the cow for some magic beans, which end up taking them into a land in the sky where fairy tales are real, and a Card-Carrying Villain giant is terrorizing the land.
The film contains the following tropes:
- Abandoned Pet in a Box: Tom puts himself in a box for adoption after Mr. Bigley buys the park's mortgage and gives Jack and his mother little time to pay off it.
- Adaptational Badass: Red, the nightclub singer, becomes a magical fairy who actively (albeit futilely) resists and defies the giant at every opportunity.
- Adaptational Jerkass: Since the original Jack and the Beanstalk story received some criticism for making Jack seem like a thief, the movie makes the giant an outright Card-Carrying Villain who terrorizes innocent fairy tale characters and steals their valuables (including the goose that lays golden eggs, who in this story belongs to the farmer who gave Jack the magic beans), thereby making the heroes look sympathetic.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Unlike in the original story, Jack's mother isn't so hard on her son for selling their cow for magic beans (or on Tom and Jerry for not convincing him out of it). While she does somewhat yell at him, she is more disappointed than angry, but she quickly forgives him and blames herself for leaving a man's work to a young boy. She even lets him keep the beans to plant them, and later gives him a goodnight kiss as he, Tom, and Jerry are sleeping on a park bench.
- All Myths Are True: Jack is startled to find out that fairy tale characters exist outside of the story books and that he's The Chosen One who is destined to slay the giant.
- Blatant Lies: King Cole is wearing a fancy crown and carrying a jeweled scepter when he tells Ginormous that the locals don't have any more valuables to give him.
- Casting Gag: Garrison Keillor as the Narrator.
- Comically Small Bribe: The giant is furious when the fairy-tale characters offer their pumpkin harvest as protection money, as he only eats people, and he (correctly) suspects that there's still some treasure that they're holding out on him.
- Fairy Sexy: Red, who looks like Tinkerbell's far more developed cousin squeezed into a racy yet classy showgirl outfit, complimented by Grey DeLisle's breathy, sexy voice.
- Heroic Seductress: Red puts on a sexy song and dance number to hold Ginormous attention while Tom, Jerry and Jack attempt to knock him out from behind.
- Homage: Almost every MGM character created by Tex Avery appears as the inhabitants of the fairy tale land in the sky, and the password into the Giant's castle is, "Tex sent me."
- Human-Focused Adaptation: The plot recreates the Jack and the Beanstalk narrative that happens to feature Tom and Jerry as animals of a petting zoo owned by Jack.
- Literal Metaphor: Screwy Squirrel defends the sleazy way he runs his pie stand by saying that his overhead is ginormous. A second later, the ground starts thundering as a Protection Racket running giant whose name is Ginormous arrives.Jack: What's that?Screwy: My overhead! Matter of fact he's over everyone's head.
- Parent Service: One of Red's roles in this film.
- Revisiting the Roots: After getting some Adaptational Personality Change and wardrobe Adaptational Modesty in previous films, Red is featured back to her original "Red Hot Riding Hood" persona and image.
- Rodents of Unusual Size: In this film, Tuffy is a mouse who is bigger than a cat, much to Tom's horror.
- Shout-Out:
- Tuffy being much bigger than Tom due to simply being proportional of a giant mouse to the giant human, is the same gag from "Tweety and the Beanstalk" where Sylvester finds Tweety and a mouse at the top of a beanstalk who are both much bigger than him.
- Nods are made to two Mickey Mouse cartoons in which Mickey contends with giants. A wagon full of pumpkins also briefly figures in "Brave Little Tailor", and recovering a magic harp is also important in "Mickey and the Beanstalk".
- The password reference, "Tex sent me," recycles the password gag, "Walt sent me," from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Jack's father is a loving husband and father who loves making visitors to his park happy, but he dies during the opening montage.Narrator: But life has a way of moving on. And sometimes the dreamers leave us all too soon.
- Villain Song: Tom and Jerry's Giant Adventure has the giant sing, "I'm Ginormous
", a song where he brags about the protection racket he has going, and about how rude, greedy, brutal and mean he is in general. It also doubles as a "The Villain Sucks" Song, as a few verses show the giant's victims disgustedly singing about his crimes or reminding him about a prophecy discussing his upcoming defeat. - Villainous Crush: The giant has an unrequited crush on the heroic fairy Red, flirting as they fight and going gaga while watching her cabaret performance.
