Mr. Peabody and Sherman

Indy and Wood Sprite have wanted to see Mr. Peabody and Sherman for months. While I wasn’t nearly as excited as they were, I was excited to go see a movie! We used to go together around once a month, but with so many awful children’s movies lately, we’ve only seen three or four in theaters throughout the past year or so.

The movie was funny and clever. I loved Mr. Peabody’s quips, and I thought Sherman was pretty adorable. Their relationship was the real backbone of the film, and I thought it was moving and well done. The nods to various cultures as the pair used the Wayback Machine were also enjoyable, if not annoying. The female historical figures, for example, were used as props or personality-free gluttons while the males at least had small arcs of storylines.

I had already heard some things about the misogynistic content of the movie that had me wary, but they weren’t as bad as I had expected. Yes, there was an imbalance between male and female characters (as usual), and yes, the main female character had to be rescued several times (again, as usual), but they weren’t glaringly worse from any other movie we’ve seen. They obviously weren’t better, either.

The worst thing about the movie was that the villain was kidnapped by a warrior who wanted to marry her. Even though we later see that she falls in love with him, she wasn’t in love at first, and this only reinforces the same horrible dubious consent content that our culture loves, like that awful “Blurred Lines” song. While I could roll my eyes at the rest of the film, this single instance ruined it for me. Why not help the villain learn and grow in the movie, like the villain in Lego Movie did? That’s lazy movie making, Hollywood.

Without that brief but horrible scene, the movie would have been fantastic. Overall it was very enjoyable, but we had to have a long conversation about those few seconds afterward as a family.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia