This is related to classics....sort of.
My father and I are children at heart, so we found ourselves in an otherwise empty theater on a Thursday night watching Mr. Peabody and Sherman. My dad had liked the cartoon when he was younger and I love movies about time travel and history, and I had heard they visited Troy so of course I had to go. And I wasn't disappointed.
While this is an animated movie with a few crude jokes and slapstick aimed towards smaller children, this definitely wasn't your average kid's movie. It's enjoyable for kids to watch, for sure, but a lot of the history and jokes are better received if you know your history or appreciate a good pun (Mr. Peabody is full of them, and good ones at that). The jokes in general are all really top notch, I found myself laughing during a lot of the movie. For instance, it's funny to see Sherman and Mr. Peabody running away from nameless French revolutionaries, it's even funnier when you realize it's actually Robespierre in his nice striped outfit. Even the slapstick was pretty tasteful and sparse.
And the filmmakers very obviously played on people's previous knowledge of history and even other movies. For example, while Agamemnon is giving a speech to the Achaians while hiding inside the Trojan Horse he says, "Don't just rush into things! Remember what happened to Achilles!" Now unless kids these days are still reading those Magic Tree House books and are keeping up with their greek historical mythology, they probably don't remember what happened to Achilles. There's even a hilarious (to me at least) 1960's
Spartacus reference at the end: everybody is standing up to defend Mr. Peabody with cries of "If that's how dogs act then I'm a dog too!" "Me, too!" "Me, too!" and a very Kirk Douglas-y looking Spartacus shouts "
I am Spartacus!". Little shout-outs like this are all throughout the film and I really appreciated them.
I went to see this movie with my dad because I heard it was a good father-child film and it was. I almost cried at parts, especially the flashback scene. But this movie wasn't just about a normal father son relationship,
and as other reviewers of the film mentioned, this film could be seen as an allegory for gay adoption. Nobody seemed to be surprise that Mr. Peabody is a talking dog with a degree from Harvard and a Nobel Prize, but the main conflict comes from some people thinking that "dogs" shouldn't raise children because what if the "dog" raised the child to be like a "dog"? After all, this whole conflict arose after Sherman bit Penny during a fight, "proof" that Mr. Peabody was incompetent as a parent and "training" Sherman to be a dog. The fight started because Penny bullied Sherman for having a "dog" for a parent and saying "if your dad's a 'dog' then you're a 'dog' too". Need I continue? If you want to keep going along with that metaphor, then this movie ended very positive with all of the characters coming together at the end in support of Mr. Peabody's right (which he won in a court of law) to keep his adopted son.
I can't thing of a good segue into a conclusion, but yeah, this movie was so much fun to watch with my dad and I highly suggest everybody go see it if you like history, time travel, father-child movies, and puns.
