Peabody & Sherman borrows from another classic time-travel franchise. Perhaps due to the lean nature of the source material, it’s interesting how liberally Mr. Much like the film’s episodic structure, it’s light enough there there’ll always be something to enjoy in a few minutes. Peabody’s wordplay is delightfully cheesy ( “if at first you don’t succeed, try Troy again!”) but there’s also suitably diverse slapstick jokes, pop culture references, history in-jokes and even the occasional juvenile bodily-fuction gag. There’s a lot to like in the film’s gags. And those segments work very well – even if one drags (for me it was Renaissance Italy), there’ll be another along in about ten minutes. Peabody & Sherman is an excuse to take the two adventures to Revolutionary France, Ancient Egypt, Renaissance Italy and Troy for the purposes of having wacky adventures.

Befitting an adaptation of a five-minute segment of a larger show, the movie is structured as a series of extended action sequences that are only loosely connected by the most tenuous of plots. To be fair, the movie’s simplicity works quite well as a piece of light-hearted family entertainment. Given the simplicity of the movie itself – which is primarily composed of episodic run-arounds – the over-arcing plot connecting it all really needs to be a bit tighter, giving us a reason to care. These are familiar plot beats, and they are the most simplistic manner possible to mine dramatic tension from the relationship between Peabody and Sherman. We get a plot about child services plotting to take Sherman away from his adoptive father, and Sherman’s obligatory rebellion against his father’s rather heavy-handed style of parenting. The movie is less successful when trying to mine that relationship for dramatic tension.

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