"Mr. Peabody and Sherman" has a charming premise and some funny jokes, but it often tries too hard to get laughs.Just describing the story is pretty funny on its own. Mr. Peabody (Ty Burrell) is a very smart, talking dog who knows a little bit about everything. He is so intelligent that he convinced the courts to let him adopt a boy named Sherman (Max Charles). In order to educate his son, he built a time machine that they use to go on regular adventures to find out what really happened in history.
Of course having a dad who is a dog can be reason for humiliation at school, which is what happens when Sherman starts attending. When a girl named Penny (Ariel Winter) makes fun of him, he acts up, and Mr. Peabody wants to make amends with her family.
While the dog is entertaining Penny's parents (the father voiced by Stephen Colbert and the mother by Leslie Mann), Sherman gives into peer pressure and shows her the time machine. This sparks a series of events that leads Mr. Peabody to intervene in an adventure through various time periods including ancient Egypt, the Italian Renaissance and the battle at Troy.
There are some parts that had me laughing. My favorite scene involves the battle at Troy. Patrick Warburton -- best known as Kronk and David Puddy -- voices Agamemnon, a Greek king inside the Trojan horse. When they are about to go into the city of Troy, he gets the warriors pumped up like they are about to go play football. Odysseus also has a cameo, and he is not at all like the man from "The Odyssey."
This film is mostly made for children, and that is very obvious. While some jokes are funny for adults, there are a lot that are not. In some parts, the film tries too hard by adding one or two extra lines or having characters repeat each other in a desperate attempt for laughs. None of the jokes are blatantly offensive. They just fall flat.
There is also a section of this film that I felt was pretty slow. I have been pretty busy this week, so this review is several days late, and I do not remember what section it was exactly. It was probably about the second act. The introduction was pretty strong in introducing the characters, and the final act had some interesting concepts behind it, but the middle was a little sloppy if I remember right.
The characters are charming in this film. It is interesting to see the father-son relationship between Mr. Peabody and Sherman. The dog is very logical and scientific. He tries to have an objective, scholarly approach at the world even when it comes to love. It is obvious that he loves Sherman, and this film is very much about how he comes to the realization of this.
I was going to rate this movie pretty harshly at first. A lot of the jokes were pretty boring, and it honestly did not have my attention the whole way through. However, after thinking about it, it really is a charming show. It gets three out of five stars from me. I would not recommend seeing it in theatres, but it is one to see if you have children and you want to watch a good family-oriented show.
Content: Rated PG. This is honestly pretty safe for families. There are a few small innuendos that should go over kids heads. In one scene, a baby's buttocks is shown. There are some mild action scenes, but nothing extreme at all.
For more details on how I rate films, visit http://criticalchristopher.blogspot.com/2014/01/defining-rating-criteria.html
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