Movie Thoughts: Mr. Peabody and Sherman (2014)

• Released: 7 March 2014
• Directed by: Rob Minkoff
  
• Running time: 1 h 32 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

The time-traveling story of Sherman, a boy who just so happens to have been adopted by the smartest dog in the world. The duo has to restore balance to the world after their time-traveling antics have ripped a hole in the space-time continuum. 

My Thoughts

Yet another one of those Dreamworks movies I missed out on as my interest in the company started to wane, sans some of their franchises (How to Train Your Dragon, Kung Fu Panda). This movie just never really looked that appealing to me, so I can see why I missed out on it (though less so than Boss Baby). But let's give is a view.

The first thing that stood out to me (even back when) about the movie is the character design. It...doesn't really appeal to me. Okay, most humans look decent, but it's not a style that looks rather appealing to me, either. 

My main gripe is Mr. Peabody's design, though. He...does not look like a dog. His anatomy and body language may as well just make him a particularly odd-shaped person that happens to have droopy ears and a tail rather than an actual dog. The L-shaped head, unemotive ears, lack of a lower jaw...it just looks rough and it's genuinely a design I don't like looking at, especially if it's trying to get me to buy that this is a dog. At one point Mr. Peabody even bites someone, which is never shown on screen for a reason that I guess is that his mouth anatomy makes it look really weird for him to bite someone, as his mouth is much more human-shaped. If one of your main characters is a dog, one of the animals with the widest variation appearance-white, why make him this boring as fuck geneneric white vaguely human-shaped blob with droopy ears and a tail that don't even emote like a dog's would 90% of the time? There's so many breeds and colorations to choose from, and you chose the blandest, most un-doglike design of them all. This is basically an anthro version of what my dogs looked like when I drew them at age 6. No markings or interesting features, just pure white with droopy ears. 

The rest of the movie was decent, however. I liked the jokes (sans some potty ones, of course) and it did have some fun commentary on different time periods of history. I honestly kind of wished we would've gotten more of that, just Peabody and Sherman dicking around in different historical periods and fucking shit up. 

But for the plot as it is, it's pretty good. We have some moments like that, just not as many as I'd have liked. We get to see Mr. Peabody and Sherman struggle and eventually come to terms with their father-son relationship, a trope I always love (parent-child and found family relationships are my fave).

One thing I once more didn't like, however, was Penny. She was such a bully to Sherman at first, yet Peabody already suggests that Sherman likes her before Penny even remotely shows any signs towards caring for Sherman. She also just felt like a boring character. She of course makes that heel-face turn where she becomes Sherman's best friend and potential love interest. But, seriously, that's just weird. These kids are 7 years old, that's way too early to start implying serious romance like that. I'd get it if they were (early) teenagers maybe, but damn, this is too soon.

So overall this was just a cute family movie. It's got some good points, it's mainly the character design of Peabody and Penny's character that holds it back for me.