Starring: Voiced by: Ty Burrell, Max Charles, Ariel Winter, Stephen Colbert, Leslie Mann, and Allison Janney.
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox
Runtime: 97 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2014
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This is an American computer-generated science fiction film that is based on segments of the 1960’s animated television comedy series, “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show”. It depicts the adventures of Mr Peabody (voiced by Ty Burrell), who is a talking dog with an adopted son called Sherman (voiced by Max Charles).
On the first day back at school, Sherman, who is only 7 years of age, gets into a fight with a fellow-pupil, Penny Peterson (voiced by Ariel Winter). A cranky school counsellor, Mrs Grunion (Allison Janney), who works for the Bureau of Child Safety and Protection, puts Mr Peabody on notice that Sherman may be taken away from him because of the incident.
The whole situation is a zany reversal of ordinary expectations. This film is about a caring dog who is father to an adopted boy, and the film explores the values of good parenthood by projecting them from dog to human, and human to dog. It is an intriguing device that works.
Mr Peabody is a dog of unusual achievements. He is a Captain of Industry, a Nobel Laureate scientist, an Olympic medalist, and a very clever inventor. His most ingenious invention is a time machine, called WABAC, which takes people back in time to experience events that changed the world. The machine also allows Mr Peabody to interact with people he finds in the past, and it can change what has happened to them.
Mr Peabody invites the Peterson family over to his house to try to mend the quarrel between Sherman and Penny. In the course of the evening, Sherman sneaks away from Penny’s parents (voiced by Stephen Colbert and Leslie Mann) to try and impress Penny with his father’s time machine. The machine goes back in time to visit a variety of well-known historical figures, such as Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington, Marie Antoinette, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, King Agamemnon, and King Tut. Mr Peabody goes in hot pursuit of the two escapees, and with Mr Peabody, Sherman and Penny on board the time machine, WABAC creates a tear in the time dimension of the Universe. As a result, the three of them get caught up in action events that play fast and loose with actual history.
This is a cartoon comedy that is much more than a film built simply around fantasy action-adventure. The comic sweep into history is inventive. The film’s choice of fictional figures in the time machine’s return to the past has appeal. Adults will have familiarity with the figures the film introduces, and there is some witty dialogue that older persons will enjoy, such as “you don’t want to be in Oedipus’s house over the holidays; it’s awkward.”
The movie fosters curiosity about the past by satirising history and historical figures in a comic way. Penny and Sherman go for a spin on Leonardo da Vinci’s famed flying machine, they get trapped in the Trojan Horse, and everyone puts their mind together (with special help from Sherman) to repair the tear in the time continuum that the machine has made. The movie also makes very effective use of 3D. The quality, sharpness and colour of its animation are excellent, and a talented cast voices its characters well. There is a fun element in the film’s choice of imagery, and there is some good guess-work involved in the time machine’s fictional trips to the past.
The movie is very positive in the family values it endorses, and it interestingly offers a good opportunity for children to be exposed to the historical past by viewing events that their parents would have learnt about at other times. Seeing the film together, just might stimulate useful and educational conversations between parent and child about what has happened in the past, and what is occurring entertainingly on the screen. And parents might be needed to explain the film’s many witty asides.
