Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Well Thank God for THAT: Mr. Peabody and Sherman headed to the big screen

So, what do you do with the two guys who wrote the screenplay for Yogi Bear, which was filmed in approximately three too many dimensions and made as much money as sense? Well, if you're Dreamworks, you pay them to make another fifty-year-old cartoon into a movie. Or rather, a cartoon that was part of another cartoon. And then you cast Robert Downey Jr. as a dog. Presumably because his complete lack of talent complements the complete lack of creativity at the studio.

Following similar logic, I assume that the soundtrack will be composed by feeding beans to a room full of monkeys.

The movie will be based on Peabody's Improbable History, which was a regular feature on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. In it, Mr. Peabody, a bespectacled dog-genius, and his sidekick, Sherman, a bespectacled boy-not-genius, use the WABAC machine to travel back in time and visit famous historical events.

The historical events in question unfold in humorous ways.

To be fair, this was the second best segment on the show, after Bullwinkle reading poetry. But still, why would Dreamworks do this? With real money that could have been better spent feeding the poor, or, if we're honest, teaching the poor Esperanto?

Here's the good news. Director Rob Minkoff says,
Mr. Peabody is this genetic anomaly. He does have brothers and sisters, all of them non-speaking, no[n] super-smart dogs. He's an outcast, but has overcome it by being so great at so many things.
So yay, genetics, presumably in the form of a mutation at FOXP2, or that X-Men locus. And overcoming the adversity of being a genius – through the "being so great at so many things."

The other good news? At the time of this writing, at least, Ed isn't in it.

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