Mr. Peabody & Sherman Fails to Succeed as Either an Educative Experience, an Enjoyable Comedy, or an Impressive Story with a Thoughtful Premise
I’m sorry, but did I just pay $14 to watch a crappy rip-off of 2007’s Meet The Robinsons? Rob Minkoff’s latest family-friendly 3-D animated film, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, provides ample entertainment, but never feels creative or original. Minkoff simply proves he can effectively stitch together elements of past successful animated films to create a somewhat coherent product. The younger members of the audience won’t mind in the least, but those with an always-active mind will spend the entire hour and a half searching for a glimpse of freshness in a mundane field of the same-old.
Mr. Peabody driving Sherman to school
First off, Mr. Peabody broke one of the cardinal rules of modern filmmaking: if you are going to play with time, you better know what you are doing. Evidently, Minkoff uses time travel only to exploit the entertaining and over-caricaturized eras of popular history, and neither to properly educate nor create a functional storyline. If you’re a stickler for factual accuracy, please don’t go to this film. Writer Craig Wright collects random tidbits from fifth grade history textbooks and blows then so far out of proportion, actual history has become unrecognizable. An example of this is where Marie Antoinette is depicted singularly as a radical aristocrat with an eating disorder, simply because of the famous expression, “Let them eat cake” (which we all know by now she never uttered). Basically, if you’re taking a child to this film with the hopes that he’ll learn more about history, you’ll be greatly disappointed.
Sherman showing Penny the “Wabac”
In addition to a basic knowledge of history, subtlety is not one of Minkoff’s strong suits either. I can’t blame him for following a formula for an animated film – I mean, it is Dreamworks after all. However, he doesn’t simply follow the formula; he beats you over the head with it. From the ridiculously persistent antagonist, to the preposterously fast character transformations, to the multiple fake-deaths and the contrived sentimentalities that ensue, Mr. Peabody’s commonplace recipe shines strongly through the superfluous fluff that layers the film.
Mr. Peabody fooling around in Da Vinci’s studio
If you were planning to see Mr. Peabody to laugh with your child for an hour and a half, I’d ask you to reconsider. The jokes are cheap, old, and flatter than then characters that articulate them. I must’ve laughed four times during the film. If you were planning to see Mr. Peabody to educate your child, like I mentioned before, strongly reconsider. If you were planning to see Mr. Peabody with high expectations to be entertained with an enjoyable and thoughtful story, I’d ask you to either lower your standards or reconsider. Basically, if you wanted to go see Mr. Peabody for any reason this weekend, I implore you to reconsider.
FINAL SCORE: 1½ out of 5 stars (raw score: 32.5, between “somewhat disappointing” and “pretty bad”)
Mr. Peabody & Sherman was released by Dreamworks Animation SKG on March 7, 2014
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