The opening scenes put us in Marie Antoinette’s France where the queen is addicted to cake. Cake! Cake! Cake! Ah, ok, it’s the comic exaggeration “let them eat cake” Marie we’ve come to accept through mock or misinterpreted history. Next, Sherman (voice of Max Charles) is in school –modern day, Mr. Peabody & Sherman are time travelers, doncha know? And Mr. Peabody is a dog. A hyper-intelligent sophisticated talking dog who has adopted a human child. We good? —and the boy embarrasses a classmate by pointing out aberrations between accepted history and reality vis-à-vis George Washington and the cherry tree.
So which is it? You can’t have it both ways, Peabody – you can have your comic book version of history, but don’t lecture us on how we’re misunderstanding it when you’ve got Agamemnon speaking American English.
The old Mr. Peabody & Sherman segment on the Rocky & Bullwinkle show made no pretense of time travel. “Today, Sherman, we are going to Guyana in November 18, 1978 to meet a cult leader called Jim Jones…” “That sounds great, Mr. Peabody!” This movie, however, felt a most unnecessary need to add pretext and plot and a number of other ill-advised screenplay gambits. In short, Sherman develops a rivalry with a spiteful girl (Ariel Winter) and Mr. Peabody (Ty Burrell) has to play nice by inviting the girls’ parents to dinner. This is all an excuse so Sherman and Penny and Peabody can go have time travel adventures together – despite his genius aptitudes, Mr. Peabody has no idea what a prepubescent boy and girl have in 
common. Sherman himself is a classic nerd – all books, no balls. Hence, how do you get a girl to give you the time of day? Give her any time of any day.
Mr. Peabody’s talents are not limited to science – there’s a cute sequence in which he, like a vaudevillian circus freak, runs an impressive gamut of personal talents in order to impress Penny’s parents. Dad’s a hard sell. The evening is interrupted because of Penny’s engagement to King Tut. Yeah. OK. It’s fun to play with history, or sort-of history. While chasing time paradoxes, the girl, the boy and the genius dog find Tut’s Egypt, the Trojan War, the French revolution and Mona Lisa herself. Of course, the latter brings up the weird truth of modern cinematic fantasy – you can set it anywhere at any time in any place and the money shot will continue to be flying over water, be it riding a Hippogriff, a trained dragon or medieval aircraft designed by Leonardo da Vinci.
The tale is sold around a concept of Mr. Peabody’s adoption of Sherman. While the dog has many talents, he doesn’t make a great nurturer – the desire to fill Sherman’s head with knowledge constantly outweighs all other aspects of parenthood. But we’re supposed to see past the repeated child endangerment, from failing to signal for a left turn in the present to introducing his boy firsthand to the French Revolution in progress, and find Mr. Peabody a loving caretaker. Yeah, um, just show us the da Vinci hang glider again, ok? If you don’t take it seriously, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, much like its original pre-historic animated forefather, is mindless fun. Enjoy the hyperbole and the terrible puns. The explorers get to a few places we know, but I suppose there’s still plenty left for the inevitable set of sequels. Maybe by then the professor will learn how to signal for a left hand turn. Bad dog!
♪I remember to this day
The bright Egyptian clay
And how Tut hit on Penny
Geez, what royal pain
‘Course Penny didn’t want to go
Though the Way Back told her so
Oh how I wish
We were in our century again.
Me and you and my dog Dad, too
Travellin’ through time with glee
Me and you and this way back fu
Constantly resetting history♫
Rated PG, 92 Minutes
D: Rob Minkoff
W: Craig Wright
Genre: “History”
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Your uncritical child
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: “I thought this was The Lego Movie.”
♪ Parody inspired by “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo”
