Note to screenwriters: if, when you are writing an 11-year-old character, it becomes necessary to remind the audience repeatedly that “he’s a child”, you may have an issue with the authenticity of the voice. In fact, it’s easier to imagine some of the dialogue in Mr Peabody & Sherman genuinely coming out of the mouth of a dog than it is to believe that a pre-teen would drawl Henry’s world-weary bons mots. That, however, is a minor quibble in this toxic swamp of cynicism and manipulation. You start to wonder if director Colin Trevorrow grew an extra set of arms for this project, just to cope with all the emotional button pushing.
Henry (Jaeden Lieberher) runs his family’s finances, drops phrases like “existential crisis” into his class presentation and engineers Rube Goldberg machines in his spare time. He also dispenses pithy nuggets of wisdom and gently chastises his single mum (Naomi Watts) for drinking and playing computer games. The design team goes completely overboard on genius signifiers: toys are of the artisanal educational variety and the walls are adorned with hand-drawn blueprints. The plot combines child cancer death and pre-teen sexual abuse with such syrupy superficiality that it makes your teeth hurt.
