Modern Family’s Ty Burrell voices one half of the titular duo in this good-hearted yet forgettable animated adventure about a very smart dog and his mischievous adoptive son, Sherman (Max Charles), based on characters first found in the ‘60s Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon.
When Sherman and his friend Penny (Ariel Winter) use Mr. Peabody’s time machine known as the WABAC (pronounced way-back), it threatens to have disastrous results for the history of mankind. The gang then must travel back to do a bit of course-correcting, encountering some of history’s most famous individuals along the way.
This episodic, silly and rather hyperactive animation just about gets by on the likeability factor, mainly down to some great voice work from the likes of Burrell, Stephen Colbert, Leslie Mann, Mel Brooks and Stanley Tucci, amongst others, and the surprisingly touching father-son story at the centre of it all. Even if that aspect comes far too late in the game to truly hit home as intended, it nevertheless has a tinge of human connection so often absent from big-budget Hollywood animations.
The problem is that the film feels all too shambolic, manically traveling from era to era with jokes mainly in the form of science-related puns, relayed by a bow tie-wearing, high IQ character that’s a cross between Brian from Family Guy and Niles from Frasier. While those jokes come at you with a consistency only comedians like Tim Vine and Stewart Francis will truly understand, most of them can be seen coming a mile off.
It all functions like a playschool mixture of Time Bandits and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, poking fun at everything from Leonardo da Vinci struggling to get the real life Mona Lisa to smile in a certain way to the Greeks falling for another Trojan Horse trick just as they’re setting up their own. The adults, who will most likely have been dragged along to see it by their kids, will be waiting patiently for every obvious joke to finally land while those very same jokes will likely go over the heads of the younger viewers out there, of whom the film is primarily aimed. There’s even a repeated gag involving Sherman saying “I don’t get it,” every time Mr. Peabody delivers one his scientific jokes, as if that somehow excuses misjudged level of humour.
As a sort of adolescent history lesson it kind of works – there’s something to be said for a glossy Hollywood animation at least trying to give a dose of education to its target demographic alongside the usual silly slapstick humour, although it’s nothing Horrible Histories doesn’t provide in better spades. Good-natured and visually appealing as it may be, this tale of a dog and his boy is merely a brightly coloured, thoroughly silly diversion for its target audience rather than anything that will truly stick in their hearts and minds.
