Review of Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014) by Jacob — 21 May 2015

Mr. Peabody and Sherman does its best to work as a film. There is a clear passion behind the film as the writers struggle to make this 5-10 minute cartoon work as an 1 hour and 20 minute film. The solution was to make a mildly entertaining time travel movie similar to Back to the Future Part II full of lots of running around and crazy time travel antics that stays as true as it can to the classic cartoon. Thankfully Dreamworks doesn’t throw in their usual trade of pop culture references and the characters are at their core the characters from the film. Unfortunately, the writer’s solution to stretch the short cartoon into a feature length film that is nothing special. The story while told nicely is quite familiar with a lot of the heartfelt moments while touching cause films like Finding Nemo to come to mind, the new character Penny isn’t interesting being there to give the film somewhere to go, and the film at times, similar to Back to the Future Part II, is so caught up in the running around that it doesn’t take enough time to slow down and have heartfelt moments and the emotion core of the story pops in and out frequently taking a back seat to the action. Despite the comments I don’t hate the movie in fact I thought it was going to be atrocious and destroy a classic cartoon characters. To my surprise the film is charming with its energy, humor, and good animation. There is clear passion behind the film but this duo works better in short cartoons. Children will enjoy and it could serve as an introduction to the superior cartoon it is based off of, which parents if they haven’t seen it please show it to them. I’d probably be more annoyed if I was more attached to the original cartoon but on its own its fine the bummer just comes from knowing that the cartoon is 10x better. Nonetheless, when I look at the pop culture referencing, constantly puns, and pop songs that have dominated a lot of Dreamworks films lately its nice to have something that can make me smile every now and then.

Nonetheless, Dreamworks can make great films and this film while entertaining isn’t great but hopefully How to Train Your Dragon 2 will give Dreamworks the hit they’ve been lacking for years.