MR PEABODY & SHERMAN
Voices of: Ty Burrell, Max Charles, Allison Janney, Ariel Winter, Stephen Colbert (English language version)
Director: Rob Minkoff
Category: I (in English & Cantonese)
Just as cartoon dog Mr Peabody can tunnel into history, Hollywood’s animated-film producers continue to plumb the annals for earlier characters to remake.
The latest property to get the 3-D digital treatment is a supporting segment from The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends. The obscure Peabody’s Improbable History shorts featured a genius canine and his adopted son travelling through time and visiting historical figures.
Director Rob Minkoff (Stuart Little; The Lion King) brings the theme of family longing – evident in his previous works – to this big screen take on the beagle and boy adventure.
Voiced by Modern Family’s Ty Burrell, Mr Peabody is wry and laconic, but also professorial and paternal. In short, he’s like Project Runway’s Tim Gunn as a cartoon dog. He’s a Nobel Prize-winner, famous inventor and generally the smartest creature in every room he enters, but most of all, Peabody just wants to be a good father figure. But despite an impressive vocabulary, he has trouble expressing affection: when the boy says, “I love you, Mr Peabody”, he replies, “I have a deep regard for you as well.”
At school though, Sherman is bullied due to his untraditional, extra-species guardian. “If your dad is a dog, you must be a dog,” a fellow student jeers.