Mr. Peabody & Sherman Review

With two big animated hits from two major studios making waves at the box office, Dreamworks Animation responds with “Mr. Peabody & Sherman,” a time-traveling adventure based on the “Peabody’s Improbable History” segments of “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” Unfortunately, with the bar set pretty high for animated family movies in the past few months, “Mr. Peabody & Sherman” ultimately comes up short in comparison.

            Mr. Peabody (Ty Burrell of “Modern Family”) is the smartest and most accomplished dog in the world, as shown in the movie’s opening. Rather than have his adopted son Sherman (Max Charles) learn history from a book, Peabody takes him to the history through the use of his time machine called the WABAC (pronounced way-back).

Sherman starts attending school and gets into a fight with his classmate Penny (Ariel Winters), who is jealous of Sherman’s knowledge and makes fun of him for being raised by a dog. Peabody invites Penny and her parents (Leslie Mann and Stephen Colbert) to their home to settle the issue, but it doesn’t take long for Penny and Sherman to use the WABAC, resulting in Sherman losing Penny in ancient Egypt. From there, Peabody and Sherman must rescue Penny and travel through history to get back to their own time period before their time-travelling threatens to destroy the space-time continuum.

So those are the basics of the plot, but I didn’t mention how Peabody’s custody of Sherman is put in jeopardy, or how there’s a subplot involving Sherman dealing with issues of identity from being raised by a dog. There’s simply too much going on in “Mr. Peabody & Sherman,” and it never has time to breathe. The emotional moments in the story are a nice addition, but they’re few and far between and never have enough time to sink in.

For having a voice cast with a lot of comedic talent, “Mr. Peabody & Sherman” is surprisingly unfunny, at least for my tastes. However, it’s worth noting that a theater full of families with young kids was eerily silent for the vast majority of the jokes said throughout the movie. I can count on one hand the number of times this movie got a solid laugh out of me.

While “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” has no problem appealing to younger kids, it tries way too hard to appeal to the adults in the audience. Peabody’s extensive vocabulary and history knowledge drives most of his jokes, but they’re mostly used for obvious puns. Kids don’t laugh because they either don’t get the reference or understand the words being said, and adults don’t laugh simply because the joke isn’t funny.

There are tons of jokes that are meant to fly over the heads of kids, but sometimes the jokes push the boundaries of what they can get away with in a family movie, and again they’re often not funny.

For all of these issues, “Mr. Peabody & Sherman” isn’t a total waste. The animation is great, as expected, although don’t expect the more detailed look of other Dreamworks offerings like “How to Train Your Dragon” or “The Croods.”  The movie goes for a design more akin to the original cartoon, and it works to the movie’s advantage. It’s bright, vivid and often a lot of fun to look at.

The voice cast also does a fine job, despite the fact that they are given very little to work with. Ty Burrell does an especially good job as Mr. Peabody, keeping the movie energized even in its duller moments. While there are some more stereotypical accents and mannerisms from the historical characters, again it’s trying to be more like the original cartoon and it didn’t really bother me.

Although “Mr. Peabody & Sherman” amounts to little more than some fun sequences stitched together by tired jokes and half-baked emotional moments, it’s pretty harmless, and it often does a good job of staying true to the essence of its source material. With all of these issues, it never gets to the point where it’s saying anything bad or promoting any bad messages or morals. Considering other adaptations of classic cartoons that have tried too hard and failed to appeal to everyone, “Mr. Peabody & Sherman” could have been so much worse than this.

“Mr. Peabody & Sherman” no doubt has its moments, but it lacks the involving and nuanced story and characters of “Frozen” or the consistently sharp humor of “The Lego Movie” to amount to little more than an afternoon time-waster.

3/5 Stars