By Warren Gordon
Staff Writer
Dreamworks is undoubtably amongst the top animation studios in modern films. Unfortunately, for every standout movie like “Shrek” and “Kung Fu Panda,” there is a disaster like “Mr. Peabody and Sherman.”
While the animated film’s voice acting instills a sense of personality in the film’s characters, the screenplay is predictable and the animation is poor, making it a letdown overall.
The film follows Mr. Peabody (Ty Burrell), a hyper-intelligent dog that adopts a young boy, Sherman (Max Charles). In order to teach Sherman about history, Peabody builds a time machine, leading to the duo traveling back to historic times. The duo experiences events ranging from the Trojan War to Leonardo da Vinci’s workshop. However, their frequent travels create a time vortex that threatens the fate of the world.
While such conflict holds the potential to be somewhat intriguing, the execution proves entirely unremarkable. The film quickly becomes a generic race to save the world, without adding anything new to the overused plot formula. Rather, every event is completely predictable while the plot barely escalates beyond the exposition. The lack of any surprises hinders the already-bland narrative.
Even worse are the film’s visuals. The aesthetics of characters and environments are mediocre; they severely lack detail, making the entire picture a series of blurry moving blobs – a stray from the normally impressive visuals that Dreamworks is known for. While advancing technology continues to improve the field of animation, “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” feels as though the industry has taken a step back.
The film’s only redeeming factor is Burrell’s lead performance as Mr. Peabody. Burrell has quickly gained fame for his quirky role in ABC’s television series “Modern Family” as Phil Dunphy, and such personality is evident throughout “Mr. Peabody and Sherman.” Burrell has an overly scholarly tone in playing the genius dog that not only fits his character, but is so over the top that it is hard not to laugh.
It is a shame that the talent Burrell demonstrates is dampened by the rest of the basic, predictable animated flick. The film’s visual style and story are so unremarkable that even the worthwhile aspects of “Mr Peabody and Sherman” are unjustly overshadowed.
“Mr. Peabody and Sherman” is rated PG and is now playing in theaters nationwide.
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