Did you know that Mr. Peabody, the genius pooch and trailblazing time traveler from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon series, was once known as “The Woof of Wall Street?”
That moniker was invented for the opening segment of “Peabody’s Improbable History.” And that would have been a timely pun for the initial scenes of “Mr. Peabody & Sherman,” which trots through the first chapters of this billionaire canine’s life. But the movie isn’t nimble enough to include much topical humor, and it isn’t relaxed enough for casual visual riffs. The movie feels as if its spontaneity has been test-screened out.
Peabody’s original exploits, available on disc and streaming video, are composed entirely of comic throwaways. They churn with bits of verbal slapstick, like, “Surely you’ve heard of the Amos and Andes mountains?” Wild-man sight gags abound. In one segment, Columbus’ ships do nearly tumble off the earth because his wicked navigator steers him toward Victoria Falls. And offhand anachronisms add to their absurdist charm: Johannes Gutenberg gets a tip about a fire over an old-fashioned wall phone as he tries to print the world’s first newspaper.
But “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” centers, wrongheadedly, on the hyper-literate hound’s soaring love for his adopted son, Sherman. The film’s maudlin climaxes squelch director Rob (“Lion King”) Minkoff’s bloated efforts to reproduce the vintage recipes.
Minkoff and his main writer, Craig Wright, stay true to Mr. Peabody’s drollery and Sherman’s piping eagerness. They indulge in a barrage of wordplay (mixing “mais oui” and “may we,” “the Nile” and “Denial”). And they do come up with one magical shot: The barge of the Egyptian sun god Ra shoots out from the tail end of the Sphinx.
Their destinations for Mr. Peabody’s “WABAC” machine would fit nicely into “Peabody’s Improbable History”: Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution, Troy about to open the gates to a certain man-made horse, Leonardo da Vinci’s studio when he’s trying to get a female subject to smile, and King Tut’s Egypt on the verge of a royal child wedding.
Too often, though, the jokes don’t mesh with the mechanical spectacle. Worse, the gravity of Mr. Peabody’s doggie-daddy issues, and Sherman’s own puppy love for a female frenemy named Penny, defang what should be anything-goes humor.
“Mr. Peabody and Sherman” frames its picaresque saga with the crusade of a child-services tyrant to cancel Mr. Peabody’s right to parent Sherman after the boy bites a goading, jealous girl for calling him a dog. (That bite victim is Penny, who – incredibly – becomes his boon companion.) After Mr. Peabody wins over Penny’s parents with anecdotes and songs and his famous “Einstein on the Beach” cocktail, he decides that he’s been wrong to maintain his distance as a dad. He must say the words fans never thought he’d utter: “I love you, Sherman!”
Gag me with a chew toy.
Why do moviemakers presume that every 90-minute entertainment calls for emotional depth? As a child, I loved the way “Peabody’s Improbable History” avoided any mushy stuff, even within its offbeat family unit. The up-front silliness of a polymath dog expanding a boy’s horizons with his WABAC machine does not call for insight into motives or character.
Mr. Peabody, cut from the same quasi-albino beagle strain as Snoopy, in the TV show is a light, frolicsome figure, drawn in an urbane Sunday-funnies style. The digital 3D animation makes him more ungainly – his leathery black nose, the texture of a catcher’s mitt, is always in your face. Characters like Mr. Peabody and Sherman demand something more flexible and airy: a genuine, hand-drawn, comic artist’s line. Today’s other cartoon-feature opening, “Ernest & Celestine,” proves how charming and expressive old-fashioned rendering can be.
The set pieces establish Mr. Peabody as an unflappable Sherlock Hound-like paragon of deduction and daring. Most of the vocal performers are promising, from Ty Burrell and Max Charles as Mr. Peabody and Sherman to Stephen Colbert and Leslie Mann as Penny’s parents. Colbert gets off a characteristic idiotic quip when he refers to a double image of Sherman as “Dos Shermanos.”
I say “promising” because we hold out hope for a sequel that will shed the weightiness and schmaltz. To borrow this movie’s best pun, “If at first you don’t succeed, Troy, Troy again.”
Contact the writer: msragow@ocregister.com
