Mr Peabody and Sherman **** (2014, voices of Ty Burrell, Max Charles, Stephen Colbert) – Movie Review

Mr Peabody and Sherman is not only the first film based on the 1959-64 TV series Rocky and His Friends since 2000, but the first fully-animated film ever based on Rocky and Bullwinkle. I expect you remember the live action in Dudley Do-Right (1999) and The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000). Maybe not, both movies were forgettable. And quite bad too.

But, this time, they’ve got it right, and big time, thanks to all the inventive, caring work at DreamWorks Animation. This animated adventure comedy is a charming delight for youngsters and grownups alike.

Dog makes headlines legally adopting boy. The Judge says about Mr Peabody raising a child that ‘if a human can adopt a dog, then there’s no reason a dog can’t adopt a human.’

Mr Peabody’s a brilliantly inventor who brings up his young son Sherman as a well-behaved brainiac. This of course unfortunately makes him ultra-unpopular at school, where a bitchy but cute classmate, Penny Peterson, taunts him as a dog.

Unfortunately this leads Sherman to bite Penny, and that ends up with the school principal bringing in the social services and the dreaded Mrs. Grunion (Allison Janney). Mr Peabody tries to make it all better by inviting Mr and Mrs Peterson (Leslie Mann, Stephen Colbert) to the Peabody apartment for dinner, along with Penny, so that everyone can patch it up. He cooks quail with truffle and a juniper berry reduction sauce and shakes a mean cocktail. But Sherman takes flight, literally.

Luckily, Mr Peabody (Ty Burrell) has invented the WABAC machine, so he and Sherman (Max Charles) can whiz off in their spaceball to have various adventures in history. In revolutionary France they meet Marie Antoinette, in renaissance Florence they meet the Mona Lisa (Lake Bell) and Leonardo da Vinci (Stanley Tucci), in Egypt they meet King Tut (Zach Callison) and in Troy they get inside the Trojan horse and meet Agamemnon (Patrick Warburton).

They’re all a hoot but the Florence section, where Sherman and Penny take off in da Vinci’s flying machine over the River Arno and the Ponte Vecchio, should do wonders for tourism in the town. Anyone want to rent an apartment a few metres down from the Duomo? And I never though I’d see a flying Duomo in a movie, or anywhere else for that matter, because it’s BIG! But here it is.

Mr Peabody’s rule is, they can time travel to any time as long as they weren’t there originally, which would result in two Shermans. Guess what’s going to happen. Somehow all the characters in time end up in present-day America, along with Albert Einstein (Mel Brooks) too. Now Mr Peabody and Sherman have to repair history and save the future.

Director Rob Minkoff is a big fan of the Peabody’s Improbable History segment on Rocky and Bullwinkle and had been dreaming to make a feature-film adaptation for years. And here it is. and what a lovely job he and everyone else has made of it at DreamWorks Animation.

With a script that as packed with as many daft puns as facts, ideas and things to learn, Mr Peabody and Sherman is witty, funny, imaginative and just generally good-spirited, with plenty of fun for grown-ups as well as kids. The characters and perfectly matched voices are a total treat. Everything about it shouts see me!

Craig Wright wrote the ideal screenplay based on the series produced by Jay Ward.

© Derek Winnert 2014 derekwinnert.com