Mini-Review: The Secret Life of Pets (2016)

19 Tuesday Jul 2016

Tags

Albert Brooks, Animal Control, Animals, Animation, Chris Renaud, Comedy, Duke, Eric Stonestreet, Gidget, Illumination Entertainment, Jenny Slate, Kevin Hart, Lake Bell, Louis C.K., Max, New York, Pets, Snowball, The Flushed Pets

D: Chris Renaud, Yarrow Cheney / 87m

Cast: Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart, Jenny Slate, Ellie Kemper, Albert Brooks, Lake Bell, Dana Carvey, Hannibal Buress, Bobby Moynihan, Chris Renaud, Steve Coogan, Michael Beattie

The latest from Illumination Entertainment, the creators of the Minions, The Secret Life of Pets asks that familiar-sounding but rarely asked question: what do our pets get up to when we’re away from home? And the answer seems to be: a lot more fun than we get up to while we’re away. In a multi-storey apartment block that seems built along the lines of the Flatiron Building, it seems that every resident has a pet or two. And each of these pets has their own thing they do each day. Max (Louis C.K.), a terrier, sits in front of the door waiting for his owner to come home again.

But his perfect life with his owner, Katie (Kemper) is destroyed by the arrival of Duke (Stonestreet), a big hairy stray that Katie brings home wth her one day. Soon Max and Duke are at loggerheads, until while out for a walk, they become separated from their dog walker, and end up victimised by a group of feral cats led by Ozone (Coogan). With their collars removed they’re soon picked up by Animal Control. Only a mission by Snowball (Hart) and his gang of “flushed pets” to rescue one of their own sets them free, but at a price that will see Max and Duke being chased by Snowball, and their animal neighbours – led by Pomeranian Gidget (Slate) – setting out on a rescue mission of their own: to bring back Max and Duke safe and sound.

The plot of The Secret Life of Pets is so slight as to be almost invisible. It’s one long chase movie bookended by convivial scenes of the animals’ home lives, and while there’s nothing ostensibly wrong with this approach, what it does mean is that if the jokes along the way don’t match up to the promises the movie has been making since around this time last year then the movie itself is going to fall flat on its face. Fortunately, the jokes do match up, and the movie contains enough laugh-out-loud-funny moments that the movie can’t help be rewarding – if only on a broad, superficial level. Animal lovers will enjoy this the most, and it’s true that some of the animals’ secret lives do involve some hilarious imagery, but anyone taking a closer look will be dismayed by the way in which the characters behave like stereotypes, and how little they develop over the course of the movie.

But this is mainly about two adversaries learning to let go of their differences and work together, and thus earn equal respect. If it’s a tried and trusted storyline, and it’s been done to death by now, the fact remains that it hasn’t been done by Illumination Entertainment, and they manage to bring a freshness to the tale that helps lift the often banal nature of the narrative. In the hands of directors Renaud and Cheney, the movie is a bright, garish, enjoyable fun ride with a plethora of great sight gags – Buddy the dachshund (Buress) climbing a fire escape is inspired – and a big heart. It’s perfect for children below a certain age (who will love it), but some adults may find it hard going. Nevertheless this is still a lot of fun, and features a performance by Kevin Hart that, for once, is easy on the ears.

Rating: 7/10 – not as engaging as expected but still enjoyable for the most part, The Secret Life of Pets tells its simple story with a great deal of verve but little in the way of imagination or invention; not exactly forgettable, but not exactly memorable either, a situation that could, and should, have been avoided.

Man Up (2015)

06 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Ben Palmer, Blind date, Bowling, Comedy, Lake Bell, Olivia Williams, Review, Romance, Romantic comedy, Rory Kinnear, Simon Pegg, Six Billion People and You, Waterloo Station

D: Ben Palmer / 88m

Cast: Simon Pegg, Lake Bell, Rory Kinnear, Sharon Horgan, Ken Stott, Harriet Walter, Ophelia Lovibond, Olivia Williams, Stephen Campbell Moore, Paul Thornley

Outside of his collaborations with Nick Frost and Edgar Wright, and his work on the Mission: Impossible and Star Trek franchises, Simon Pegg hasn’t had the kind of success on his own that you might have expected. Which is odd as Pegg has an agreeable, friendly persona that is instantly likeable. Perhaps the issue has been the choices he’s made over the years: a few mildly amusing comedies that haven’t really stretched his talents as a comic actor, or even been that funny. Movies such as Run, Fatboy, Run (2007) and A Fantastic Fear of Everything (2012). Otherwise there’s been a lot of voice overs, a couple of dramas, several shorts, and a role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).

Thankfully though, Pegg made a very good choice when he decided to take on the role of recently divorced Jack in Man Up. It’s a smart (and more importantly) funny romantic comedy that focuses on Nancy (Bell), a thirty-plus woman whose track record with the opposite sex has been less than stellar. Continually pushed to meet a man and settle down before it’s too late by her sister, Elaine (Horgan), Nancy isn’t so sure that she’ll ever meet Mr Right, and probably not even Mr Not-Quite-Right-But-Near-Enough. But things are about to change. On a train to London – travelling to make her parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary celebrations – Nancy meets Jessica (Lovibond), an ambitious young woman who is on her way to meet a blind date. Jessica swears by a self-help book called Six Billion People and You, and believes Nancy could benefit from its advice. By the journey’s end Nancy has fallen asleep, the train has arrived at Waterloo, Jessica is nowhere to be seen, and she’s left her copy of the book behind.

Nancy gets off the train, taking the book with her, and soon finds herself talking to Jack (who believes he’s talking to Jessica). With her sister’s pleas to “take a chance” popping up in her head, Nancy pretends to be Jessica, and so she and Jack embark on “their” date. And thanks to Tess Morris’s deft screenplay, what follows is engaging, funny and credible as Jack and Nancy get to know each other and find they have quite a lot in common, even down to an affection for the same pop culture references. But there’s a fly in the ointment, in the form of Sean (Kinnear), who works in the bowling alley they go to, and who has maintained a stalker-type crush on Nancy since they were at school. When he overhears her being referred to as Jessica he sees his chance to worm his away into her affections.

Nancy manages to avoid being exposed, but only just. Jack’s suspicions taken care of they find themselves in a bar where his ex, Hilary (Williams) and her new husband, Ed (Moore), turn up. The four share a table and soon each couple is trying to outdo the other in terms of how happy they are. Nancy and Jack agree to pretend to have been together for longer, and they soon make Hilary and Ed feel uncomfortable. Having exorcised some of his demons, Jack and Nancy agree that they should see each other again, but Nancy’s decision to be honest about her deception proves to be a deal breaker, and back where they started at Waterloo Station, their potential love story comes to a halt. Or does it…?

Long-time fans of romantic comedies will know the answer to that one. And what follows does tread a predictable path, but it’s the way in which Morris’s script allows Jack and Nancy to get to know each other that is the movie’s main strength. As mentioned above, as a couple they’re engaging, funny together and the chemistry they develop is entirely credible. So much effort seems to have gone into making their liking for each other so believable, that watching them spark and riff off each other becomes immensely rewarding. A big part of this, of course, is down to the playing of Pegg and Bell, both of whom take to their roles with undisguised glee and enthusiasm. As a result, their efforts make spending time with Jack and Nancy as infectiously enjoyable as it must have been to portray them. They’re exactly the kind of characters you’d want to spend time with in real life.

The supporting characters are generously drawn and brought to life, but with the exception of Sean, whose inappropriate comments and references are given life by Kinnear’s adoption of manic mannerisms and wild-eyed mugging. It’s an over-the-top performance in a movie that otherwise takes good care to ground its other characters and make them believable. If Kinnear is playing Sean as he’s written then it’s the script and the movie’s most obvious failing; if he’s not then someone should have taken Kinnear aside and pointed him in the right direction.

Palmer, whose experience is largely in TV, and whose previous big screen outing was The Inbetweeners Movie (2011), directs with an understanding that, despite Pegg’s top billing, this is Bell’s movie. Nancy is the main character and we see almost everything from her perspective. And Bell is terrific throughout: vulnerable, appealing, funny, exuberant, and self-aware. You can see the character grow in confidence as the movie progresses, and by the end you can’t help but want Nancy and Jack to be together; nothing else would be appropriate or meaningful enough. Pegg is equally impressive, and supports Bell all the way, and together the duo are generous with each other in their scenes, allowing each other to shine and giving themselves the space to do so. In these days of risqué, gross-out gag-ridden romantic comedies that constantly refrain from doing anything as challenging as just putting two people together and seeing how their relationship develops, Man Up is a pleasing, enjoyable antidote to all the cynicism that can be found pretty much everywhere else.

Rating: 8/10 – a wonderful romantic comedy that wears its heart on its sleeve, Man Up is a consistently amusing, and lively romantic comedy that features good performances from (almost) all concerned, and a script that never loses sight of what’s credible; one to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon, or with the one you love curled up on the sofa, this is a movie that rewards time after time after time.

No Escape (2015)

08 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Coup, Drama, John Erick Dowdle, Lake Bell, Owen Wilson, Pierce Brosnan, Rebels, Review, South-East Asia, Thriller, Uprising, Vietnam

D: John Erick Dowdle / 103m

Cast: Owen Wilson, Lake Bell, Pierce Brosnan, Sterling Jerins, Claire Geare, Thanawut Kasro, Chatchawan Kamonsakpitak, Sahajak Boonthanakit

Set in an unnamed country in South-East Asia, No Escape is one of those survivalist fantasies that puts a lot of effort into stacking the odds against the hero (and his family as well, in this case), but then makes it incredibly easy for him to overcome those odds. Once the viewer realises this, other flaws in the plot become clearer and the initial tension that screenwriters John Erick Dowdle and his brother Drew go to some lengths to arrange, soon decreases the longer the movie plays out. By the end, there have been too many contrivances and coincidences for the tension to be maintained effectively.

Part of the problem here is that it doesn’t take long for the viewer to realise that, the set up notwithstanding – nationalists stage a coup in anger against US investment in the water industry (don’t worry, it almost makes sense) – the script has no intention of being too hard on its hard luck family. Yes, it makes things difficult for them, and yes they’re pursued throughout by one hard-line rebel who’s intent on killing all of them, but as more and more ambushes and deadly encounters are survived, any idea that they’re not going to make it to Vietnam and safety is soon abandoned. Even when they find themselves captured by the rebels, there’s always a delay in executing them that allows the family to be rescued or save themselves.

With any real peril sidelined by the movie’s need to keep its nuclear family free from harm, No Escape becomes even more predictable in its approach. Brosnan’s lively hedonist is revealed to have a darker past than he originally lets on, and once the coup is in full swing, any chance the family has of reaching the American Embassy is always going to be doomed to failure, while random strangers will pop up to help them as and when necessary.

But though it’s entirely predictable, and Wilson’s Jack and Bell’s Annie lack any appreciable depth – Annie doesn’t want to be in South-East Asia, while Jack is making the best of a bad business setback… and that’s it – the movie gets by on its early scenes where the seriousness of the coup begins to sink in, and the targetting of Americans for execution becomes altogether clear (even if the reasoning is a little too pat). The pace is brisk and efficient, and Dowdle uses hand-held photography to good effect (though as a result, some of the framing is off, though this may be deliberate – it’s hard to tell).

On the performance side, Wilson is okay as the determined Jack, but his portrayal reveals a facet of his acting that seems to have gone unnoticed all these years: he doesn’t have a great repertoire of expressions. What this means is that unless he really scrunches up his features, alarm or fear look much the same as surprise or wonder, and panic looks like he’s trying to fathom a difficult math problem. Bell is required to look fearful and upset for most of the movie, and even before the coup takes place, so there’s no hope of a character arc there, and some viewers may be alarmed at the ease with which she exhorts her terrified daughters to stay hidden while she goes off and does something that usually heightens the risk they’re in.

With Wilson and Bell having no choice but to play their roles as earnestly as possible, it’s left to Brosnan’s chirpy Brit to inject a bit of spice into proceedings, but his character, Hammond, is so perilously close to cliché that although he’s a welcome sight when he appears, it’s equally good to see the back of him (to be fair, this is less Brosnan’s fault and more Dowdle’s). As Jack and Annie’s two young girls, Jerins and Geare are both adorable, while the majority of the rebels are just ruthless, nasty thugs hell bent on killing all and sundry. Only Boonthanakit’s taxi driver, who models himself on Kenny Rogers, stands out from the rest of the locals, but sadly it’s in a way that hints at casual racism.

Towards the end, the family’s escape route becomes clear, and they take their chances, but it’s here that the movie makes its biggest faux pas, as it tries to present the city they’ve arrived in as being half in the unnamed country that serves as the movie’s backdrop, and half in Vietnam. It’s a totally ridiculous moment, and completely ruins any verisimilitude that Dowdle has managed to create thus far, leaving the viewer to scratch his or her head and wonder WtF?

And one last issue: what kind of father tells his frightened daughter – when she’s being forced to point a gun at him – to shoot him and that it’s okay to do so? What kind of selfless, parental martyrdom is being expounded here? True, it’s intended to make an already tense situation all the more horrific (or potentially so), but it’s likely most viewers will be wondering, again, WtF?

For all its tense confrontations and attempts to make the rebels as thuggish and murderous as possible, No Escape is hampered too much by Dowdle’s uncomfortable mix of revolution and manhunt, and his mandate that no real harm shall come to the family. What this leaves the viewer with is a movie that looks like it’s going to be tough and uncompromising, but in reality only treats its secondary and minor characters as if they were expendable. Now if one of the children had died…

Rating: 5/10 – mostly efficient, but neutered by a squeamishness about hurting the family, No Escape at least stops short of making Wilson an action hero, but does ask him to play a character who seems to be wilfully putting his family in harms way; better in its opening half hour, and before Jack starts throwing his children off of a rooftop, the movie tries its best to be a hard-hitting thriller, but never hits the mark.

Mini-Review: Million Dollar Arm (2014)

24 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Aasif Mandvi, Baseball, Craig Gillespie, Drama, India, Jon Hamm, Lake Bell, Review, Sports agent, True story, TV show

D: Craig Gillespie / 124m

Cast: Jon Hamm, Aasif Mandvi, Lake Bell, Alan Arkin, Bill Paxton, Suraj Sharma, Madhur Mittal, Pitobash, Tzi Ma

Sports agent J.B. Bernstein (Hamm) is struggling to sign that one sports superstar that will make his agency a success, but when his best chance falls through, he’s on the verge of giving up. Then inspiration strikes from two unlikely sources: Susan Boyle’s appearance on Britain’s Got Talent and televised cricket. Creating the concept of a TV show that searches for potential baseball talent in India, particularly pitchers, J.B. eventually discovers Rinku Singh (Sharma) and Dinesh Patel (Mittal), two young men with no experience or understanding at all of baseball.

J.B. brings them to the US, where as part of winning the show they undergo training for a year under the auspices of veteran coaches Ray Poitevint (Arkin) and Tom House (Paxton), but things don’t go as smoothly as J.B. had hoped, and Rinku and Dinesh struggle to come to terms with playing baseball and adjusting to their new way of life. With their prospects of being signed to a major league baseball team slipping away from them, and J.B.’s business under threat too, it all hinges on a try-out designed to show just what Rinku and Dinesh can do.

Another true story of unlikely triumph over predictable adversity, Million Dollar Arm – the name of the show J.B. creates – takes one of the most surprising rags to riches stories of the last ten years and gives it a bland makeover that robs it of any appreciable drama while promoting the aspirational aspects at every opportunity. In short the movie is heavily Disney-fied, a by-the-numbers tale that treats the material with reverence but at the expense of any real emotion. It’s a shame as Rinku and Dinesh’s story has the scope and range to allow the exploration of several wider issues, not the least of which is racism, a subject that Million Dollar Arm engages with fitfully and with obvious reluctance.

Thankfully, the cast are on hand to guide the audience through, providing assured performances – Bell, as J.B.’s lodger and love interest, steals every scene she’s in – and in the director’s chair, Gillespie musters things with enthusiasm despite the restrictions inherent in the script. The movie is brightly lit and often gorgeous to look at – thanks to DoP Gyula Pados – and A.R. Rahman’s score is infectiously rousing and uplifting.

Rating: 5/10 – entertaining enough, though on a deliberately vapid level, Million Dollar Arm is an undemanding movie that sticks to a very rigid formula (and never lets the viewer forget it); with the outcome never in doubt, it’s left to the more than capable cast to raise this out of the doldrums it otherwise seems happy to inhabit.

In a World… (2013)

18 Sunday May 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Comedy, Don LaFontaine, Father/daughter rivalry, Fred Melamed, Lake Bell, Marital break-up, Movie trailers, Review, Rob Corddry, Romance, The Amazon Games, Voice over

D: Lake Bell / 93m

Cast: Lake Bell, Fred Melamed, Rob Corddry, Michaela Watkins, Alexandra Holden, Ken Marino, Demetri Martin, Nick Offerman, Tig Notaro, Stephanie Allynne, Geena Davis, Jason O’Mara

When King of the Voice Overs, Don LaFontaine dies, he leaves a vacuum within the voice over industry, one that veteran Sam Sotto (Melamed) would like to fill but he’s too aware of his own limitations to do so, and decides to support up and coming Gustav Warren (Marino) instead. His daughter, Carol (Bell) works as a dialect coach, and while she would like to break into voice over work, the industry’s male-dominated nature – as well as Sam’s dismissal of her chances to succeed – keeps her from trying. One day, while she’s teaching Eva Longoria to speak with a Cockney accent, Carol is asked by Heners (Offerman) to provide the voice over for the trailer for a children’s movie, one that Gustav was meant to do but which he hasn’t shown up for. Helped by Louis (Martin), a sound engineer at the studio, Carol nails the voice over and begins to gain further trailer work on other children’s movies.

Gustav is upset by this, but Sam regards this development as a flash in the pan (neither of them know it’s Carol at this point). When Gustav hosts a party for everyone in the industry, Carol attends with her father and sister, Dani (Watkins). Gustav seduces Carol, much to the disgust and disappointment of Louis who has a crush on her, and the bemusement of her co-workers at the sound mixing studio. When Carol is picked to voice the trailer for the upcoming futuristic fantasy movie The Amazon Games, and they plan to use the iconic phrase “in a world…” to begin the voice over, the news is greeted less than warmly by Sam. He forces the issue with the movie’s producers, making them commit to an audition process. Now facing competition from her father and Gustav, Carol almost throws in the towel, but Louis convinces her to go ahead with her audition tape. At the Golden Trailer Awards, where Sam is to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award, the trailer’s first showing will reveal the producers’ choice.

Riffing off the death of LaFontaine, a real-life voice over artist, In a World… at first appears uncomfortably opportunistic, but thanks to Bell’s sure hand on the tiller, this feeling is soon dispensed with. Writing as well as directing, Bell brings the audience into a world just as narcissistic and competitive as any other, but imbues it with enough good-natured characters and charm to offset the rampant ambition and casual backstabbing (Sam drops Gustav as soon as he knows Carol’s got the Amazon Games gig). Indeed it’s only Sam who’s truly horrible, and Bell handles Carol’s scenes with him with understated simplicity, painting a portrait of a fractured relationship that shows no sign of ever being repaired. Carol’s frustration with her father’s outdated sexist approach, as well as his lack of support for her and her career, are convincingly highlighted, and the way in which she deals with them completely plausible (it helps that Carol doesn’t have all the answers to the problems that beset her).

In her private life, Carol succumbs a little too easily to Gustav’s attentions, but there’s a lovely moment later when Louis declares his “liking” for her, and while this aspect of the script is less than persuasive, by the time it arrives the movie has built up so much good will it doesn’t matter. There’s a subplot involving Dani and a guest at the hotel where she works, and whether or not she cheats on husband Moe (Corddry), and while it provides some much needed drama, it’s easily and neatly resolved, as are pretty much all the conflicts Bell’s script creates for her characters. The movie relies on Carol’s placid nature throughout, and though there are plenty of laughs to be had, these are largely due to the activities and actions of the supporting cast – Notaro as deadpan lesbian Cher, Allynne as predatory receptionist Nancy, Offerman and Corddry. Bell is an appealing presence as Carol, and proves an unselfish actor in scene after scene. She draws good performances from her cast (Watkins and Corddry shine), and directs with an ease that some veteran directors never attain. If the movie suffers from anything, it’s a lightness of touch that could have been fatal in the hands of someone less committed to the material.

Rating: 7/10 – satisfying for the most part, In a World… is a treat, but one that might not bear repeated viewings; it’s a great “debut” for Bell to be sure, but a little too lightweight in its execution to be truly memorable.

Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014)

25 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Adoption, Agamemnon, Allison Janney, Ancient Egypt, Animation, Ariel Winter, French Revolution, King Tut, Lake Bell, Leonardo da Vinci, Marie Antoinette, Max Charles, Mona Lisa, Patrick Warburton, Review, Robespierre, Stanley Tucci, Time travel, Trojan Horse, Troy, Ty Burrell, WABAC

D: Rob Minkoff / 92m

Cast: Ty Burrell, Max Charles, Ariel Winter, Allison Janney, Stanley Tucci, Patrick Warburton, Stephen Colbert, Leslie Mann, Lake Bell, Stephen Tobolowsky, Mel Brooks, Dennis Haysbert

The last Dreamworks animated movie was the dire Turbo (2013), a frustrating exercise in high concept animation that forgot very early on that it needed to be entertaining. With that in mind, and with How to Train Your Dragon 2 waiting in the wings, this update of two supporting characters from the Rocky and His Friends TV show that ran from 1959 to 1964 was likely to appear a bit of a gamble. In recreating Mr. Peabody the dog (Burrell) and his adopted son, Sherman (Charles), writer Craig Wright and director Minkoff have fashioned a fairly straightforward tale and surrounded it with some great visual gags, and all the emotional heft a movie like this could ever wish for.

After an extended prologue that introduces us to the WABAC machine – a device that allows Mr. Peabody to travel through time – and which finds the pair on a trip to the French Revolution (necessitating a daring escape from the clutches of Citizen Robespierre), Mr. Peabody reminds Sherman that the next day will see him go to school for the first time. His eagerness in History class earns the enmity of Penny Peterson (Winter), and during their lunch break she bullies him to the point where he retaliates and bites her. Enter Miss Grunion (Janney) from Child Services. She informs Mr. Peabody in no uncertain terms that if her investigation finds he is not a fit parent, then Sherman will be removed from his care.

On the same evening Miss Grunion is due to visit, Mr. Peabody invites Penny and her parents (Colbert, Mann) over for dinner in an attempt to smooth things over. While he entertains the Petersons, Sherman finds himself tricked into showing Penny the WABAC. Penny ends up in Ancient Egypt where she is to be betrothed to King Tutankhamun; at first she’s intent on staying as she’s being treated like a princess. When she learns that if he dies, so will she, Penny changes her mind about staying and it’s up to Mr. Peabody and Sherman to rescue her.

Getting back proves difficult and the trio end up visiting Leonardo da Vinci (Tucci) who is having problems painting a less than cooperative Mona Lisa (Bell). While Mr. Peabody repairs the WABAC, Sherman and Penny take da Vinci’s prototype aeroplane for a spin; here Sherman’s perceived recklessness causes the beginning of a rift between the titular pair. When their attempts to avoid a black hole ends with them back at the siege of Troy, Mr. Peabody is faced with Sherman’s determination to fight with Agamemnon (Warburton) and the rest of the Greek soldiers hidden within the Trojan Horse. Things escalate from there, and with Mrs Grunion planning to take Sherman into care at the same time as a rip in the space/time continuum threatens to destroy everything, can the pair patch things up in time to save the world?

The good news is that, compared to Turbo, Mr. Peabody & Sherman is an absolute joy. There is so much to like about this movie. The relationship between Mr. Peabody and Sherman is played with obvious mutual affection, and Wright’s script tugs at the heartstrings on more than one occasion, highlighting the “deep respect” this odd parent and child have for each other. Burrell and Charles provide rich vocal performances, and while Robert Downey Jr was originally tipped to play Mr. Peabody, that interpretation may not have been the best idea because Burrell is terrific in a part that calls for him to relay more exposition than any other character in recent memory. Charles relays Sherman’s excitement and youthful insecurities with aplomb, and ends up almost stealing the show (although with Warburton in the cast, that’s nearly impossible).

The story has fun with its depictions of the past, taking a range of liberties but always with a sense of fun, and there’s an inspired shot that shows how the Greeks get out of the Trojan Horse. Historical figures are held up to gentle mockery but again there’s an obvious affection, even for Robespierre. There are cameos from Albert Einstein (Brooks), George Washington, and with a great one-liner, Bill Clinton. Of the present day characters, Mrs Grunion is a fearsome villain in the manner of Miss Trunchbull from Matilda, Penny is a mix of school bully and (eventual) best friend, and her parents are a winning combination of ditzy and clueless. The script juggles everyone to good effect, and rarely puts a foot wrong.

The movie is gorgeous to look at, the visuals popping off the screen – particularly in 3D – and the animation is packed with great sight gags and puns and there’s always something going on to overwhelm the attention. Minkoff keeps a sure hand on the tiller, making it look easy at times, and grounds the science fiction aspects through close attention to the relationship between Mr. Peabody and Sherman. The humour is infectious, and the general good-natured approach works tremendously, building up so much good will that by the movie’s end you’re prepared to forgive any missteps it might make on the way (there are a couple but they aren’t bad enough to hurt the movie or stop its momentum).

Rating: 9/10 – an early contender for best animated movie of 2014, Mr. Peabody & Sherman is a light-hearted romp that hits the mark with recurring ease; a treat for children and adults alike.