Pop stuff: Mr. Peabody & Sherman

Mr. Peabody & Sherman
I got a bigger kick than expected from this big screen adaptation of the "Peabody's Improbable History" segments from the Rocky and Bullwinkle shows. Generally, when you take something so short and sweet, and blow it up into full-length feature, you lose the charm of the original, but that's not the case here.

The film moves along at a fast clip, with Mr. Peabody, the dog, and Sherman, his boy, time traveling by Wayback Machine right from the get-go. But, despite being fast-moving, this film is much less frantic and loud than many of today's movies for kids. The tone of the adventures is much like that of the original cartoons, complete with bad puns that make you laugh despite yourself.

Since this is a feature, and since the source material wasn't, we need some back story on these characters to round them out and invest them with some emotional weight. This is done on the fly  with a light -- not heavy -- hand. We learn who Peabody is and how he came to adopt a boy, but it's quickly handled so we can do some more time traveling, which is the whole point.

The time travel sequences remind me a bit of Asterix adventures in the way different cultures and historical figures are gently satirized. Plus all the puns. There's some genuinely funny stuff here.

The voice cast is excellent, too. Ty Burrell, the dad on "Modern Family" does a fair job imitating Bill Scott's erudite and elongated speech patterns as Peabody, while his TV daughter Ariel Winter provides the voice of Sherman's initially snotty schoolmate Penny Peterson. Sherman is voiced by Max Charles.

Other voices that pop up include Stephen Colbert as Penny's dad, who looks just like Stephen Colbert, and Leslie Mann plays Penny's mom. Mel Brooks provides the voice of Einstein, Lake Bell is the Mona Lisa, and Patrick Warburton brings his manly tones to the hilariously macho Agamemnon.

Children won't learn much accurate history here and the seemingly obligatory take-home message about family loyalty and acceptance will likely zip right by them, but they'll be amused and entertained by the adventure, and parents will likely get a nostalgic buzz and chuckle, too.