Better Living Through Chemistry, written and directed by Geoff Moore & David Posamentier, opening at Cinemapolis on Friday; Mr. Peabody & Sherman, directed by Rob Minkoff, playing at Ithaca Stadium 14.

My friend Beth Saulnier slipped me the Better Living Through Chemistry DVD. “You’ll like it,” she said. “Sam Rockwell’s in it.” She mentioned a bunch of other actors, but she had me at Sam Rockwell.

Rockwell rocks the house again here as a hen-pecked pharmacist whose torrid affair with the town trophy wife leads him to get high on his own supply and consider dumping his horrible wife and son for the first time in his hen-pecked life. Directed and scripted by Geoff Moore & David Posamentier, Better Living Through Chemistry plays like a live-action Disney comedy at first, until the movie spikes its own punch bowl, in a sense. Rockwell’s desperate positivity gives way to a kind of hyper, druggy clarity and black humor.

I wouldn’t want to spoil any of the film’s loopy, woozy plot twists or its inspired casting aside from Rockwell; if you’re a fan of his performance as Chuck Barris, you know there comes a time when Rockwell’s repressed souls finally loosen up and dance. So does the movie. From its opening titles featuring pop-up miniature versions of the movie’s small town streets to its well-earned final fade, Better Living Through Chemistry feels like the first real movie of the year for actual adults.

***

My motto has always been “better living through time travel.” I’ve seen every time travel yarn worth seeing, and whether it’s Marty McFly’s DeLorean or Bill and Ted’s phone booth, the genre rarely lets me down.

On the heels of The Lego Movie and now Mr. Peabody & Sherman, geek nostalgia has rarely had it so good. Based on the “Peabody’s Improbable History” segments from Jay Ward’s Rocky and Bullwinkle TV series, this new CGI version does two things that most family films fumble: it adds a lot of story to a slim series of historical gags, and adds real heart that’s not schmaltzy. 

On television the titular professorial pooch and his adopted boy ran around like Gilliam’s Time Bandits, “correcting” an already anachronistic tapestry of historical moments and indulging in painfully elaborate puns; we get five or six Ward-worthy zingers throughout the movie. The film introduces Penny (Ariel Winter), Sherman’s (Max Charles) classmate who starts out as his adversary and becomes his companion through a crazy series of historical visits, with and without Peabody (very well voiced by Ty Burrell). The expanded gang journeys back to the past for adventures with King Tut, DaVinci and a textbook full of other notable figures. (A cosmic pile-up lands Washington and the rest in modern times, so I can only surmise that the filmmakers are also big fans of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.)

Whoever worked on this adaptation cared more than they had to; the writers and animators careen between Jay Ward shenanigans and sequences that illustrate the real bond of love between dog and boy. There’s a terrific montage of the two cavorting throughout key moments of the centuries from Moses to Jackie Robinson, set to John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy”, that brought me to tears. I’d be a liar if I said the movie didn’t make me cry in at least three other scenes.

Like The Lego Movie, bringing a kid to Mr. Peabody & Sherman is optional. • 

Read Bryan’s reviews of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Knights of Badassdom at our website. Follow him on Twitter @bryanvancampen.