Movie Review: Mr. Peabody and Sherman

I’m a fan of animated movies.  I think they’re fun, and if done right, they can engage on all levels.  I don’t have a favourite between Dreamworks, Pixar or Disney, to me they all can be both good and bad.  Lately, I’ve loved the Despicable series.  Those movies have a little something of everything.  In this movie, brought to you by Dreamworks, the studio pulls from a known commodity, a sub-series of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Mr. Peabody and Sherman.

I can honestly say I didn’t remember anything about the original, so as I watched the movie, I assumed they were being true to the series.  After seeing the movie, I can’t bring myself to care enough to even look it up online.  The animation was decent, but it wasn’t any more impressive than anything else you might see nowadays.  I understand that most people who saw it in 3D raved about it.  If a movie is only good in 3D, then there is something wrong with the picture.

The story was not coherent from beginning to end.  The idea was that Mr. Peabody, a brilliant dog, has adopted a boy who he found abandoned and the boy is just now going to school, at age seven.  That alone had me questioning what was going on in the story.  Once he gets there, he shows off how much he knows and some other girl gets jealous and the two get into a fight and Sherman bites her.  Of course this isn’t okay and the parents get involved.  Mr. Peabody decides to try to smooth things over by inviting the girl and her parents over and the story gets more bloated from there.

For kids, this movie is probably perfect.  It doesn’t have to make sense and there’s a dog wearing glasses.  Done. For adults expecting a throwback to when you watched this as a child, like me, you might be wondering what the deuce is going on.  From the first interaction between Mr. Peabody and Sherman I was turned off.  I am usually okay with kids, especially in animated movies, but this kid, Sherman, was exceptionally annoying.  And when you meet the girl who he bites, it doesn’t get better.  Almost all of the characters are caricatures of anything and everything and it was tedious.  I could not wait for the movie to be over.