Canines and criminals rule

“MR. PEABODY AND SHERMAN.” Looks at dogs in a bracingly new way

Our moviegoing adventures  begin with the animated feature, “Mr. Peabody and Sherman,” a film for dog lovers, if ever there was one.

Since we think the world of our nuclear family’s three resident pups who brighten our days with their loving wiggy-wagging, we made sure to catch the fun canine romp on its opening day—and, quite expectedly, had a good  time watching it.

The DreamWorks production disarms viewers with its “upside-down” view of reality, with its canine protagonist, Mr. Peabody, depicted as a furry genius who not only graduates from Harvard (woof, woof!), but has also distinguished himself as an inventor, techno-tycoon, linguist and artist! The Sherman in the movie’s title is the boy whom Peabody is legally permitted to adopt.

Thus does the movie tweak reality with even greater relish, resulting in delightfully unexpected scenes showing Sherman enjoying the unique privilege of witnessing important historical events by way of the time machine invented just for him by his Dad, the Dog!

Sherman seems to be living the best possible life—until he goes to school and gets on the bad side of a snitty girl who keeps taunting him about his canine adoptive parent.

The poor boy feels so stressed and harassed that—he bites her! Well, you can imagine how shocked people get by that, with Peabody’s critics accusing him of being incapable of responsibly bringing up a child.

To get away from it all, Peabody and his son escape in their time machine—unfortunately, with Sherman’s nasty little nemesis coming along for the unforgettable ride!

What happens next is that the little girl gets them into all sorts of “historical” scrapes, and Peabody has to use all of his creativity and brilliance to enable them to flee.

The historical dramatics and theatrics include the French Revolution, the Trojan Horse, Leonardo Da Vinci, and in “supporting” roles, George Washington and other US presidents!

At film’s end, despite Peabody’s most prodigious efforts, things appear to go from worse to worst—until young Sherman shows that he’s a chip off his adoptive father’s block by conjuring up his own solution to the huge crisis that they’ve put the entire world in. —Peabody’s training didn’t go for nothing, after all!

HEMSWORTH. Lousy choice of friends and accomplices

Truth to tell, the fleeing trio’s misadventures take too much of the production’s screen time, so snappier editing could have made for crisper storytelling. Also, Sherman’s little nemesis is given too much power, instead of sharing it with bigger and older villains.

All told, however, the movie’s droll cinematic trip succeeds in sustaining viewers’ attention and eager empathy. More importantly, it makes viewers look at their families’ resident canines in a bracingly new way, not just as silly, sappy pets, but as thinking and feeling creatures, who can be much more than what they initially seem to be!

Of course, our pets will never be able to graduate from Harvard, but in their own less fantasticating way, they have the instinctive ability to make us feel more loving and loved—man’s best friends, indeed!

‘Empire State’

The second film we watched this week, “Empire State,” stars Liam Hemsworth as an earnest young man who wants to become a cop, but ends up being “forced” or “seduced” to become a criminal instead. He’s a victim of his poor ethnic (Greek-American) background, and his lack of money and good work prospects weakens his moral spine.

When he works for an armored car firm, he sees how weak the company’s security system is, with millions of dollars practically just begging to be pilfered.

At first, he’s content just to steal thousands, but his flaky best buddy (Michael Angarano) tells some shady characters about it, and before our weakling of a protagonist knows it, he’s in way over his head, and the next heist nets millions!

In fact, the take is so huge that it exceeds what big time mafiosi themselves have netted. Even the cops don’t believe that this bunch of raw amateurs is responsible for the big-deal crime!

While we like the film’s textured, “lived-in” look and crustily colorful cast of shady characters, we eventually get ticked off by the criminals’ amateurish inability to keep secrets.

The protagonist himself rubs us the wrong way because of his horrendously lousy choice of friends and accomplices. It really serves him right to be caught red-handed in just a short time!

Now, we know that this raw and amateurish element is one of the film’s key thematic ironies, but the movie’s inept handling of that very ineptness (!) still rankles.

Being the film’s lead player, Hemsworth is supposed to keep the storytelling’s focus firmly on his performance. Unfortunately, the admittedly good-looking actor is too lightweight a thespian to measure up to that essential obligation.

In fact, he’s roundly upstaged by Angarano, who plays his best friend with a quirky sense of imminently impending doom—an accident just waiting to messily happen. This is great for Angarano, but lousy for Hemsworth, who is otherwise a promising comer, like his brother Chris.