Mr. Peabody and Sherman
(2014)
Perhaps I've done DreamWorks Animation (SKG, Inc., etc.) a slight injustice.
The studio has been content to run an assembly line of pop culture raiding,
broad-brush properties and so-so sequels almost since its inception, but the cracks
in their method have begun to show more overtly in recent years. They’ve been
looking tired, and too many of their movies haven’t done the business they
would have liked. Yet both their 2014 deliveries, How to Train Your Dragon 2 and Mr.
Peabody & Sherman, take their standard approach but manage to add
something more. Dragon 2 has a lot of
heart, which one couldn’t really say about Peabody
(it’s more sincere elements feel grafted on, and largely unnecessary). Peabody, however, is witty, inventive
and pacey, abounding with sight gags and clever asides while offering a time
travel plotline that doesn’t talk down to its family audience.
I haven’t seen the The
Rocky & Bullwinkle Show, from which Mr.
Peabody & Sherman derives. I haven’t even seen the classic movie version
starring Robert De Niro as Fearless Leader (and hasn’t Bob just gone from
strength to strength in the 15 years since?) As such, I’m unable to avow that
that the spirit of the original has been desecrated and replaced with an
over-explained set-up and generic CG animation (well, I can testify to the
latter, but it has been ever thus of late). But the oddball premise is an
appealing one; a genius dog with an adopted seven-year-old son (it might have
been even odder if Sherman had been Peabody’s biological offspring; the picture
gets quite close to the knuckle on several occasions) is so fastidious about
his education that he takes Sherman for regular jaunts through history in a
time machine of his own design.
Making a feature requires baggage that would be unnecessary in
a short; there needs to be an arc of some kind, even if it’s as glib as that of
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
(to which this owes a debt; or maybe Bill
and Ted owe the original show a debt). As such, Peabody spends a little too much time establishing the conflict
that drives the plot; Sherman’s bullying classmate Penny Peterson gets Sherman
into trouble at school, so endangering Peabody’s custody. This involves a
slightly laboured subplot about Sherman being ashamed of his father being a dog
(although this pays off with an “I’m
Spartacus” finale).
On the other hand, the custody element incorporates a
readily identifiable subtext concerning same sex parenting. There can be little
doubt this was intentional, although it has attracted relatively little
attention. Certainly, not compared to the much-discussed lesbian anthem in Frozen (of course, Frozen was a zeitgeist-capturing picture; Peabody has barely been noticed). Child Protective Services’ Mrs
Grunion (Allison Janney) stands for strict intolerance of anything that
deviates from perceived societal norms (“In
my opinion a dog can never be a suitable parent to a boy”) and proceeds to
impugn Peabody’s parenting skills at every opportunity. It’s no great leap to
see the bullying of Sherman bullying (“Beg
like a dog”) as arising from having gay parents. One might even see
Peabody’s emotional reticence towards Sherman (“I have a deep regard for you as well, Sherman”; it’s only at the
end that he can say “I love you”)
resulting from concerns over the judgements of those around him.
But it’s the anarchic energy, hard to come by in big screen animations,
that sets Peabody apart. It reminds
me a little in tone of one Disney’s few forays into the more postmodern Warner
Bros style, the underappreciated The
Emperor’s New Groove (it may be no coincidence that both share the
inimitable vocal talents of Patrick Wharburton). As much as I think the
commentary mentioned above is by design, it’s undercut by such batty logic as
the custody judgement “Very well then, if
a boy can adopt a dog, I see no reason why a dog cannot adopt a boy”. Likewise,
this a family movie discussing daddy issues that cheerfully invokes the spectre
of Oedipus (“Let’s just say you do not
want to be at his house over the holidays, it’s awkward”).
As is usual for DreamWorks, there’s an abundance of mild bodily
function and naughty bits jokes. The most inventive of these involves Greek
soldiers plopping out of the tail of the Trojan horse in an excretory manner.
There are also gags that sail close to the wind; during the climax, where
figures form history are fetching up in present day New York (very Bill and Ted, complete with some very
obvious one-liners; “Hey, Einstein! It’s
a red light!”), Washington and Lincoln offer Peabody a presidential pardon.
At which Bill Clinton appears and admits, “I’ve
done worse”. The ructions of the climax result from a time
paradox, in which two Shermans and two Peabodys exist at the same time and in
approximate space. This leads to the Peabody exclaiming, “Sherman, I’ve got to get you out of here before you touch yourself!”).
Unsurprisingly, the Grunion exclaims “What?!”,
which was exactly my reaction.
Peabody: He is Ay.
Sherman: He is you?
Ay: I am Ay. The grand vizier.
Peabody: That’s his name.
Justice is not served on the Grunion, who seems to be rather
let off the hook when Wharburton’s Agamemnon makes off with her to ancient
Greece (“The Grunion is mine!”) Given
Agamemnon’s fate, this may be commentary in itself. There are four main ports
of call in the past, all of which deliver a breathless stream of both obvious
and clever verbal and visual gags (and a succession of bad Peabody puns, to
which Sherman’s response is “I don’t get
it”). The first of these is revolutionary France (“Marie Antoinette sure likes cake, Mr Sherman”), followed by a
sojourn in Ancient Egypt (“Oy, again with
the plagues. Why did I ever move to Egypt?”) This might have the best in a rum
lot of puns (“They get married too young
in Egypt.. Or perhaps I’m just some old Giza”).
Leonardo da Vinci:
The sunshine! The pasta! All the things
that make Italy such a popular tourist destination.
Then there’s a visit to Leonardo da Vinci, which appears to
have been at least partly inspired by Hudson
Hawk (encouraging the Mona Lisa to smile, making use of da Vinci’s flying
machine). It’s here that mean Penny is allowed redemptive qualities, with the
focus shifting to Peabody needing to slacken Sherman’s leash and granting him a
modicum of independent thought. The best recurring joke concerns da Vinci’s
robot child (“You ever see that child he
made? So creepy”) a freaky Pinocchio affair that resurfaces at the climax (“Papa! Momma!”)
Agamemnon: Smell my victory. Smell it!
The trip to Troy features a sublime Trojan horse within a Trojan
horse gag (“I did not see that coming”)
and the apparent demise of Peabody. The arch approach to narrative reaches its
zenith when Peabody resurfaces, having fashioned a makeshift WABAC (the time
machine) from “Bones, stones and yak fat”.
Anchoring all this is a tremendous vocal performance from Ty
Burrell as Peabody. Robert Downey Jr was originally attached, but I can’t
imagine he would have been as winning. Burrell was by far the best thing in Muppets Most Wanted and he ensures
Peabody is highly memorable. Peabody’s unflappable genius and endless skillsets
present that rare character who hasn’t been custom fitted to a demographic. His
many talents include attempting to entertain Penny’s parents, voiced by Stephen
Colbert and Leslie Mann, with his boundless musical talents; hypnotising them with
a trick he learned “from a swami at the
Begawan Giri in Ubud Bali”; winning Penny’s dad over with his chiropractic
skills). He laso has a nice line in assured pronouncements (“Mandarin Chinese should be learned as it’s the
language of the future”).
The show-stopping conclusion lacks the earlier inventiveness, but it’s to be expected of current "bigger is always better" approach to finales. Rob Minkoff, who
nursed the project for more than a decade and seems to have a thing for
anthropomorphic cross-species familial relationships (Stuart Little), generally satisfies the competing demands of story
and studio (he had the Bullwinkle
estate breathing over his shoulder). There are four credited writers, and it’s
only occasionally that the bombardment of elements becomes a little too
frenetic. He serves up the farce particularly well, as Peabody attempts to keep
multiple personas and disappearing daughters from his dinner guests.
Unfortunately, as it means DreamWorks will be further
encouraged to play it safe, Mr. Peabody
and Sherman was a financial disappointment. It didn’t do anything like the
box office the knuckle dragging The Croods
did the same time the year before, and the studio has taken a write-down (as
well as laying off staff). Did audiences just not want anything too taxing or
off-the-wall? Or was it too different in terms of character types? Peabody made less than the also
experimental (but not experimental enough) Rise
of the Guardians and generic turkey Turbo. It looks as if the inevitable The Croods 2 and Kung Fu Panda 3 will be the sad and desperate lifelines facing the
studio going forward.
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