It’s a wonder to me that the writers of Mr. Peabody and Sherman didn’t pull a muscle changing directions so often. The script jumps around so quickly and at such violent velocity that it would make for a great basketball player, if movie scripts could play basketball. Starting off with a high-paced caricature of the life and times of Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution (a hilarious moment from the past), the film jumps from too many puns about cake to a last moment escape from Peabody having his head chopped off. It all serves to punctuate how Mr. Peabody and Sherman plans to teach us history, one insensitive, watered down moment at a time. If anything, the 5 year olds will know that Marie Antoinette was a fat lady that liked cake. “What was that guillotine thing…. oh stop kids. Don’t ask such questions.”

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Movies like this make me wonder if I’m turning into my Dad, who only likes vanilla ice cream, unless he’s really stepping out and gets french vanilla.

Screenwriter Craig Wright, has Peabody, the talking genius dog, made famous by the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, up the ante until he’s become a super being, more capable than any human ever. He speaks every language, plays every instrument, knows all science, is a master of martial arts, a painter, can travel through time, and is a father of a human boy that he won in court and educates on world history via the time machine. Basically, there’s nothing remaining to do a sequel about, unless you invent a grasshopper villain with a better spinning tornado kick.

Guess who! One hint… cake!

By creating the uber being – we have to be diverted into the one story line with emotional import left: that of a genius unable to raise his son properly. Except that he does a pretty dang good job of this too. It’s just that hormones make his son, Sherman, incredibly stupid. Like how Sherman falls for Penny Peterson, the most mean-spirited, horrible girl at school. Boys dig bad girls it seems. She torments him, fights him, and causes child services baddie Ms. Grunion to come over trying to separate Boy from Dog forever. Yeah – this girl is a keeper.

In his bid to impress the wonderful keepsake that is Penny, our boy Sherman decides to show her the time machine. At which point they go diving into the past and she decides to stay in Egypt. When Peabody shows up trying to get her back, she basically lets her indifference send them to prison, in ancient Egypt. What a girl.

In getting her back home, the trio bounce through the Trojan War and the Renaissance interrupting the Mona Lisa being painted. There’s indications of Peabody’s death twice and a definite implication of him soon being killed once. All peppered with allusions, references, and puns to historical jokes that are punctuated by a rip in the space time continuum where all the famous EVERYTHING from history starts plummeting to Earth. That’s right, Penny’s evilness and Sherman’s stupidity has doomed the planet. And the dog and his boy must save the universe for all time (literally) by bonding over that parent/child moment we all wish we could have while raising a kid to be the savior of the universe he ruined.

Hey Penny, let’s break something.

It’s all very confusing. And dark. And the jokes are good for adults. But adults aren’t nearly as spastic as children. The spasming on screen is probably for the wee ones. So I sat there wondering if I’m just a fuddy duddy. When I was a kid I loved GI Joe, Inspector Gadget, M.A.S.K, etc. I was convinced they were smart cartoons for smart people. Re-watching, I know that’s not exactly the case. And yes, kid stuff is more overstimulated that I can handle anymore. But sitting amongst the audience I heard the adults giggling at a few of the puns but the kids remained mostly quiet. I’m not sure they understood what was going on. It’s all very flashy, colorful, but that’s not enough.

Babe is the best kids’ movie I’ve ever seen. It appeals to everyone. I mean everyone. It’s methodical. Kids understand it. It’s funny. Cute. Heartwarming. Wall*E ramps up at the end, but man it starts off slower and purposeful. Everyone can understand. It’s not sensory overload. Mr. Peabody and Sherman is blasters on full from the word go and it doesn’t relent. It’s overstuffed and awash with too many ideas. It’s hard to enjoy it because you’re not given enough time to really take it all in.

Have you ever watched Teletubbies? I mean really watched it. It’s kind of pleasant. And all they do is stand on a hill and gently dance. Mr. Peabody and Sherman could do with a lot less spaz and a lot more focus. Not that this movie is some terrible thing but wow is it filled to the brim with a million ideas for solo movies. It’s like eating cake with a cake frosting made of cake.

Son, I might be humanely euthanized soon.

Oh man – and Ms. Grunion. The quintessential villain, full of hate for no reason. Her only purpose is to be mean. Really mean. We don’t know why. She’s just a jerk face who never really learns a lesson about anything. But that’s okay. Why teach your villain a lesson in a kids’ movie when instead you can have her insinuating that genius dog Peabody will be put down. Don’t worry, instead of learning a lesson in getting along and forgiveness and teaching that to the kids in the audience, she gets kidnapped and thus is no longer a problem for our heroes. Hooray!

At 92 minutes it plays more like 104. Adding time for going back in history and making us do it again.
But it ages your body by 124. Because it’s just exhausting.

A solid meh.