I don’t have a distinct memory or nostalgia for Mr. Peabody and Sherman from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon… I imagine I saw it way back when (it seems inevitable) but it didn’t make an impact on me… and I’m familiar with the Wayback Machine as a pop culture thing. But that’s about it. I don’t have a dog in the hunt (so to speak) with the new animated movie. I can’t say if it’s accurate to the spirit, story, or sense of humor from the old show.

So, this is a movie about a super-intelligent (and sarcastic, as the first joke I laughed at pointed out) dog who knows everything and invents everything (including the fist bump and zoomba), his adopted boy, and their adventures in time travel. The movie is very charming and very cute. It certainly had a lot of jokes that kind of fell flat or aren’t half as funny as the movie insists they are… but it’s all done with a sense of whimsy and fun so I forgive it when its LOL reach exceeds its comedy grasp. Of course, humor is subjective and the target audience will no doubt love it and find it all creative and original (though if I don’t have any feelings for a 60s era cartoon short, Dreamworks has an uphill climb to get kids interested, especially with Lego Movie and Frozen still making ALL the money).

The film’s animation and art style looks, on the surface, kind of low-budget and rushed… but that first impressive turned out to be a disservice to the movie and the craft put into it. Yeah, it’s a bit stylized but there’s definitely time and effort put into making it look the way it does. Some animation takes the simple route to save money and some to give the movie a simpler look and feel (artistically) and this movie went for the later approach.

The voice cast is really very good without any particular Name Brand Hollywood Megawatt Star Power – which is good in that I wasn’t overly distracted (except for a couple of voices that I couldn’t place and it bugged me as to to their familiarity… turns out it was Steve Carell and Leslie Mann).  Overall, the voice talent was very good and helped propel the emotional beats of the movie that might have otherwise turned out maudlin and trite. There’s a theme of fathers and sons and adopted / non-traditional families running through the movie and the voice cast pulls it all off admirably (in fact, the movie plays with non-traditional families in a way that some have suggested introduces a gay adoption theme which might be the case on a stretch, but it’s in no way on the surface of the movie and, if there’s any kind of lecture intended, it’s kept off-screen).

There’s also a theme of bullying that feels very believable but does temper my feelings about the female lead (she’s the bully). I ultimately came around to liking her as a character but they really paint her as a huge jerk early on. It’s believable (as far as it can be believable that she bullies a boy over the fact his dad is a dog) and it works to make her bad and the movie manages, in my opinion, to turn her around but I would believe not everyone would be so swayed. I did find it a bit of a thematic missed opportunity that they didn’t have a follow-through on bullying as part of the story… unless it’s that bullies and the bullied can become pals. I guess.

Science fiction-wise, this is also a fairly clever movie. It’s time travel is free-wheeling and silly – it’s a goofy, doofy comedy – but they do play very well with paradoxes and meeting oneself and the like. It’s not deep but it’s about 100% more clever than I thought it was going to be. It actually had a bit of the Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure feel to it… less Bill S. Preston, Esquire and Ted Theodore Logan. I mean, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington high-five, Robespierre shows up, Marie Antoinette, etc. It’s cute and fun even if all the jokes don’t land (and there’s an off-color joke from Bill Clinton that only the adults will get… but which is weird since he’s not exactly a candidate for time travel unlike the rest of the historical dudes).

Similarly, and maybe this was the tactic of the original show, there does seem to be a certain admiration for intelligence, science, and a desire (on some level) to impart history to the viewer. I repeatedly noted specific moments where the film seemed like it was trying to tell me something about Egyptian history or about Leonardo Da Vinci and so on. Whether this was an actual attempt at teaching moments, I can’t say but it’s more than a lot of kids movies will do. Though I should note – in a classic “he’s thinking about it too hard” way, the movie make it a point to note that Washington cutting down the cherry tree was an apocryphal story… which is cool that the movie with a focus on history lets us know that all of the stories we are told are not all true. But then it repeats the “Let them eat cake” line from Marie Antoinette (which was very likely apocryphal) and it gives us Ben Franklin and the kite (also quite unlikely to have happened in the version depicted). So, yeah, shame on them? Tsk tsk? I guess.

Overall, this was a MUCH better movie than I expected it to be… though one must temper this opinion with my lack of familiarity and knowledge of the source material. Mr. Peabody fanboys (if there is such a thing) might hate it for spoiling or ruining whatever made the original Rocky and Bullwinkle shorts classics. I wouldn’t know. I just know that I smiled my way through a fun, clever, and sweet movie… and I laughed out loud a few times as well. Not always a comedy success but clever and inventive as a bit of puffery sci-fi and full of some genuine family bonding warmth.

Score: 85