'Mr. Peabody & Sherman'

When it comes to the animation game, DreamWorks Animation doesn’t hold a candle to the House of Mouse. “Monsters vs. Aliens” is no “WALL-E.” “Shark Tale” is no “Finding Nemo,” and “Mr. Peabody & Sherman” is no “Frozen.”

Though director Rob Minkoff cut his teeth directing the animated Disney smash “The Lion King,” he wasn’t able to bring that same sense of fascination and imagination to “Mr. Peabody & Sherman,” the feature film adaptation of characters used during the 1960s in “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.”

The first of our titular characters, Mr. Peabody, is a talking dog and the smartest being in the world. Never adopted by a loving family, Peabody devotes his life to a number of careers and accomplishments. When he finds an abandoned baby in alley with a note bearing the name Sherman, Peabody legally adopts the boy. It’s a cute role reversal, but the creative juices stop with this promising exposition.

The adventure of the film is Mr. Peabody and Sherman’s journey in a time machine to multiple eras in history, with the expected amount of hijinks ensuing. They eat cake with a hedonistic Marie Antoinette, they invent with Leonardo Di Vinci and they learn American history with George Washington.

Now, I’m not saying that animation aimed at a children’s’ audience needs to be strictly informative. It obviously needs to entertain, too. But “Mr. Peabody & Sherman” misses the boat by playing history like an overindulgent parody. The writer is too busy trying to make us laugh at ancient Egyptian culture to teach us anything worthwhile.

None of this is helped by the fact that it’s all just so visually uninspired. It normally wouldn’t be an insult to call an animated film cartoonish, but in this case the dig is intended. Gigantic heads on scrawny bodies is hardly novel when it comes to animating humans, but the characters in “Mr. Peabody & Sherman” are grossly unbelievable. So are talking dogs, but if the film has managed to conjure up a bit of magic, it all may be forgiven.

One of the film’s saving graces is the inspired voice work. Though he’s better known as the affable Phil Dunphy on ABC’s “Modern Family,” Ty Burrell does some phenomenal voice acting as Mr. Peabody. He’s haughty yet endearingly affectionate and almost unrecognizable. Same goes for Max Charles voicing the adorable 7-year-old Sherman. Charles incidentally is also a mainstay on the ABC network, playing Max Weaver on “The Neighbors.”

There’s a really hilarious and heart-warming film somewhere inside “Mr. Peabody & Sherman.” Unfortunately, this is just not that movie.