“Mr. Peabody & Sherman”

Rated PG for mild action and some brief rude humor

My choice this weekend was between “300: Rise of an Empire” (which is a sequel to “300)” a blood and gore Greeks versus Persians epic based on a graphic novel.  I was not in the mood for beheadings and blood splashing on the screen, scenes obviously enhanced by CGI and with actors also enhanced with some form of “metabolic” to make men bulge and grunt — so manly. I chose, instead, to use the WABAC machine to travel back in time to my youth. Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I watched Peabody’s Improbable History, which was a segment on the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show. I loved anything about time travel (back in history, not into the future), inane or not.

Mr. Peabody — a beagle — knows everything and has the sartorial good taste to wear a bow tie. He has a constant companion, a boy named Sherman, who is a most willing student of Mr. Peabody’s history lessons. Together they would go back in time usually to fix a nutty problem to make history work out as we all know it.

“Mr. Peabody & Sherman” (the film) is pure nostalgia; when cartoons were loony, loaded with silly puns and gags that are just a little bit naughty. But the originals lasted a quick six or seven minutes; can it survive a feature length treatment?  Just barely, I think, unless you are an aficionado of Mr. Peabody, which I confess, I am indeed. According to Wikipedia, Mr. Peabody and Sherman met no fewer than 89 historical events or characters. I very well have met many of those characters, for the first time, watching that show. I believe I owe Mr. Peabody a debt.

In the film, we get a quick review of his back story. Mr. Peabody was never adopted as a pet so he read books and became expert in history and science and won a Nobel and is a gourmet, an inventor, and a very successful businessman. He was so special, the courts allowed him to adopt an abandoned boy. They lived in a penthouse straight out of the Jettisons. The cartoon series explains all of this and even evolves enhancing this and that, but in the movie, there was not enough time, so we get, instead, the streamlined story.

Sherman, the boy, is mocked at school for being the adopted son of a dog. The bully is a girl, and Sherman is so enraged by her cruel taunts, he bites her. This brings in a villain who threatens to take Sherman away from Mr. Peabody.  Mr. Peabody tries to get Sherman to make friends with his (Sherman’s) adversary, trying to teach the boy how to deal with interpersonal conflict.

Things go wrong, of course, and the WABAC machine gets switched on and Sherman, Mr. Peabody, and the bully (who, of course, becomes Sherman’s friend) go back into time (several eras) trying to fix things that went/go awry. (Writing about time travel messes with the tenses.)

“Mr. Peabody & Sherman” (the movie) seems like a very silly cartoon at first glance just a “blast” (pun intended) from the past, but there are some pretty smart life-lessons in this film. These worthy points probably will be missed be both child and adult who watch it, but it is actually packed with some old fashioned morality lessons and family values even if it is interspersed with plenty of poop jokes.

“Mr. Peabody & Sherman” is a film that will be appreciated by those of us who enjoyed the originals and that is probably just about the entire target audience. Rocky & His Friends was an intellectual cartoon series, filled with wit and themes that went beyond the silly form of entertainment, which it pretended. This is even more evident in this full-length film featuring one pair of friends of Rocky and Bullwinkle.

How do I rate a film that most of my readers would probably not enjoy because they are not nostalgically fond of these friends from my childhood? Now that is a puzzle only Mr. Sherman can solve successfully.

Not being able to confer with him at the moment, I shall, on behalf of my fond regard for Mr. Peabody, grant the movie three and a half bow ties (out of five) and no small bit of gratitude to him for helping (along with others in popular culture) to ignite the fire of curiosity about history in me, a fire that has yet to be extinguished. And that a canine can teach a boy a great deal about being humane.