Peabody and Sherman is a likable, surreal and often funny animated feature written by Craig Wright and directed by Rob Minkoff, director of the “Stuart Little” films and co-helmer for “The Lion King”. The movie concept is inspired from a recurring segment of the old 1960s US TV show Rocky and Bullwinkle. The characters from the beloved Rocky and Bullwinkle shows of the 1960s mixed arch intelligence with kid confusion to the delight of the Saturday-morning cartoon crowd a generation ago. Mr Peabody is a super-intelligent beagle resident in a spectacular New York apartment who has been granted the right to adopt a human boy, a seven-year-old Sherman. Mr Peabody is a finicky and precise but very caring foster parent, with a slight resemblance to Dr Niles Crane in the 90s TV show Frasier, as played by David Hyde Pierce. He wants to complete young Sherman’s historical education with a time-machine he has invented, allowing them both to visit various important eras

The story is “Modern Family”-friendly in other ways. Mr. Peabody is reimagined as an actual rather than implied father to the young boy Sherman (Max Charles). It’s an adoption situation, one that is suddenly in jeopardy, a theme that drives the film. The explanation of why a canine could adopt a boy in the first place is none too subtle in suggesting contemporary dilemmas.

We get the back story of Sherman found as an abandoned baby by the brilliant beagle along with a laundry list of Mr. Peabody’s many accomplishments: Harvard degree, inventor, business titan, mixologist… Though maybe that last talent is saved for later. It serves as a setup for anyone unfamiliar with the basic conceit — the dog is the superior being — and a mechanism to explain the changes made in moving from short TV segment to main big-screen attraction.

It is the first DreamWorks animated feature to feature characters from the Classic Media library since DreamWorks Animation’s 2012 acquisition of Classic Media, the first animated adaptation of a Jay Ward property, and Minkoff’s first animated film after having co-directed The Lion King for Disney in 1994. The film premiered on February 7, 2014 in the United Kingdom, and was released theatrically on March 7, 2014 in the United States. Grossing a worldwide total of 275 million USD on its 145 million USD budget.