Mr. Peabody and Sherman

Mr. Peabody & Sherman is a 2014 American computer-animated science-fiction comedy film based on characters from the Peabody's Improbable History segments of the animated television series The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The film was directed by Rob Minkoff from a script by Craig Wright, with Alex Schwartz and Denise Nolan Cascino serving as producers and Tiffany Ward, daughter of series co-creator Jay Ward, serving as executive producer.

Plot
Mr. Peabody (Ty Burrell), the most accomplished canine in the world, and his boy, Sherman (Max Charles), use a time machine called the Wabac to embark on outrageous adventures. However, when Sherman takes the Wabac without permission to impress his friend Penny (Ariel Winter), he accidentally rips a hole in the universe and causes havoc with world history. It's up to Mr. Peabody to mount a rescue and prevent the past, present and future from being permanently altered.

Why Mr. Peabody and Sherman Should Go Back In Time

 * 1) The film manages to make a concept of an animated movie involving time-traveling way better as the historical figures here are more faithful to their original counterparts (not all of them like King Tut), unlike mh:awfulmovies:Free Birds which got that wrong due to its poor grasp to the first Thanksgiving.
 * 2) Character development: Penny Peterson starts off being an extremely abusive asshole jerk and rival to Sherman because of Sherman's knowledge of the apocryphal nature of the George Washington cherry-tree anecdote until she becomes likable and being a friend to Sherman throughout the movie as the story progresses.
 * 3) The animation is amazingly well crafted, and stays true to the designs from the original source material by DreamWorks Animation standards for Pacific Data Images.
 * 4) To add more to the previous pointer, it has beautiful visuals that feel like they came from a Disney Pixar film, especially The Incredibles.
 * 5) In this movie, we explored backstory of how Mr. Peabody noticed baby Sherman lying around one day in the box, and was willing to adopt him, after getting it approved by a judge, than it was in the cartoon shows.
 * 6) Danny Elfman delivers a very well composed score, and yes, there are great songs, like "Kid" performed by Peter Andre, "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)" performed by John Lennon and "Way Back When" performed by Grizfolk.
 * 7) Mr. Peabody and Sherman are both likable protagonist, where it keeps accurate from their cartoon shows. Also Mr. Peabody is a nicer person in this film, than in the original cartoon its based on. Since this version sees Sherman as an actual son rather than his servant.
 * 8) Fantastic direction skill of Rob Minkoff, the same director behind 1994's The Lion King and the first two Stuart Little films.
 * 9) * On that topic, his directing in this movie is a huge improvement over 2003's The Haunted Mansion, 2008's The Forbidden Kingdom, and especially 2011's Flypaper.
 * 10) The action scenes are well-done.
 * 11) Excellent voice works, namely Ty Burrell, Max Charles, Ariel Winter and Stanley Tucci.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Some scenes are too intense for its target audiences, like how Mr. Peabody controls the animal mind and him nearly getting beheaded.
 * 2) Penny was unlikable at times, but at least she gets better as the story progresses.
 * 3) Although intentional, Ms. Grunion is an extremely unlikeable antagonist where she says one point, "It's normal for children to tease. It's not normal for them to bite!", which can be bad influence and not true, except it isn't okay to bite them.

Reception
Mr. Peabody & Sherman received generally positive reviews, who praised the humor, animation, soundtrack, voice acting, and action scenes. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 81% based on reviews from 135 critics, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Mr. Peabody & Sherman offers a surprisingly entertaining burst of colorful all-ages fun, despite its dated source material and rather convoluted plot.". Another review aggregation website, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, has calculated a score of 59 out of 100 based on reviews from 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.