It’s like a remake of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure! If Bill were a talking dog… and Ted were his adopted human son… but other than that..
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“Mr. Peabody & Sherman”, is a new film based on the old segments that originally aired on The Rocky and Bullwinkle show in the 60s. It stars Ty Burrell as the voice of Mr. Peabody, a hyper intelligent canine who just wants what’s best for his adopted son. Together they travel in time using the WABAC machine to learn about important events in history. But when Sherman takes a classmate for a joyride things start to go terribly wrong. Wait, didn’t we just see this plot in a CG kids movie around Thanksgiving, with Talking Turkeys? Yeah, we did. So does this time traveling caper fare any better than Free Birds? Why yes it does, though not by as much as I would have hoped.
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The truth is there are some things to really like about it. First off, the design is really beautiful. The graphics are crisp and fluid and the kinetic nature of the storyline shows off some really great art style. Plus Ty Burrell is perfect as Mr. Peabody, even if it’s hard to shake that you are listening to Phil Dunphy speak through a dog. But the best thing for me was the punny sense of humor. I love it when a movie is willing to embrace the groans that come along with great pun after great pun, and the wit and intelligence behind some of the word play involved here really made me smile.
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And yet overall, honestly, I came away from this one disappointed. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think kids are likely going to eat this up, but I felt it slightly missed the mark in so many ways. First of all, other than Ty, the voice acting in this sounds forced and unnatural. Maybe it’s just my familiarity with some of these voices, but I found myself often envisioning them standing in the studio rather than the voice being a natural part of the character. The animation is a bit off as well, just never quite looking finished or smooth. Plus the humor (other than those lovely puns) seemed to fall flat for me quite often, as it tried too hard to slip in adult jokes (a few of which actually bordered on inappropriate) along with the kid jokes with very little humor that both audiences could enjoy together. But the worst thing for me has to be the complete disregard for time travel coherence or even basic logic. Now I get it, ok, it’s a kid’s movie, not a dissertation on quantum physics, but at least put a little bit of effort into making the plot mechanics worth buying into. It’s as if the writer’s were doing lazy parenting. Just yelling back “because I said so” anytime your brain wanted an ask to a question. I mean maybe I should have just turned my brain off a bit more, but for a movie that seemed to be about intelligence and education that seemed like a contradiction. Listen, you can only distract me with the pretty colors and whirring graphics so long. But again, for my ADHD kids, the movie would likely hit it out of the park.
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Overall, Mr. Peabody and Sherman is a visually engaging movie with some great puns that the kids in your life will probably adore. But if you can’t get past the plot disparities and many mediocre parts you’ll likely land with me around a C-
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Thanks for checking out this Your Movie Friend review, stay tuned for this review’s “Best Ever” challenge here in bit but first, I’m going to put up some stuff you can click over in this area. If you’d like to subscribe, which I would much appreciate, you can do so by clicking the big gray subscribe button. Want to see more? You can click here to see a review for the only other new movie out this week “300:Rise of an Empire”, or click the eyes to check out a new live show I and some friends have been doing, called “The Critic, the Geek, and the Girl”. You can also Click the logo up here to go to yourmoviefriend.com where you can search by title for reviews. And finally this review’s “Best Ever” Challenge, where you name the best movie ever in a particular category and also try to identify my choice. What is the “the best talking dog movie ever”? Mine included one of the very first animations that John Lasseter ever did in an animal battle on a log. Drop your own answer and a guess at mine in the comments and first person to guess mine gets a point! Thanks and don’t forget to subscribe!