Reel Reviews

Mr. Peabody and Sherman -- Here's a cautionary tale about all these nostalgia based remakes we've seen these past several years: if you don't get everything just right when you're competing with someone's memories, the memories win. So it goes with this film. A lot of what's here is good, but when the movie misses the mark--for example: the voice for Sherman is nowhere close to the original--the discrepancy takes the viewer right out of the moment. That's a tough tightrope to walk, and why most nostalgia movies don't succeed. On its own merits, this flick tends to be very clever--they seem to get all the historical facts right--but there's a lot of dumb sprinkled in, too. If not for its attachment to an already known property, I'm not sure this script would have been produced. Put it all together and the ultimate product merits the so-so mark--as much for unfulfilled potential as anything else.