Mr. Peabody and Sherman – Movie Review

Mr. Peabody & Sherman – PG
Release Date: Fri 07 Mar 2014

Dreamworks has taken the classic characters from The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show and turned them into modern feature stars. The historical humor is in great form true to the source material with the visuals dialed up to meet the expectations of modern audiences to compete head-to-head with other computer generated 3D animation. That this property can stand alongside Frozen and The Lego Movie is high praise, and while it’s not the instant classic of the latter it may be for Dreamworks a similar wake-up for the studio that Frozen was for Disney.

Mr. Peabody and Sherman manages to take a plot you expect and inject it with enough fresh ideas an humor that you don’t want to change the channel. The plot of characters from the present witnessing and influencing historical events as well as notable figures from the past getting warped into the present was a cliche when Bill and Ted took their excellent adventure. The movie never gets heavy-handed with rules of its science fiction or try to push some kind of moral objective at us. Everything is a setup to another joke, and frequent callbacks to some extremely subtle references make it worth paying extra attention to.

The movie is a winner for children and adults alike, with Dreamworks finally striking a balance between giving adults as many laughs as the kids without going to raunchy, a serious issue with the Shrek franchise. Here, kids will feel challenged by the fact that adults understand the movie’s humor better than they do but will appreciate the lack of condescension with Sherman acting as their surrogate often saying “I don’t get it” to a pun that younger kids truly may miss. It’s a movie I can see kids watching at a young age and getting more out of as they get older and come back to it.

While we weren’t able to see it in 3D, the visual effects of the Wayback Machine were certainly designed to make the theater feel like a ride, and if given the choice I would highly recommend seeing it in 3D. The animation is wonderful, Ty Burrell does a great job as Mr. Peabody and the entire production is packed with humor and fun for all ages.

Zak and I saw it in the theater together and recorded a discussion in the car afterward: