As soon as you hear about a movie that's going to feature a highly intelligent upper-middle-class dog, who adopts a baby that he finds in a card box, you pretty much know nothing can go too wrong.
Dreamwork's latest animation, Mr Peabody & Sherman, is based on a short American TV segment carried in the The Bullwinkle Show in the 60s. The time-travelling fun fest is directed by Rob Minkoff, the guy behind The Lion King.
Mr Peabody (Ty Burrell) is a highly educated beagle, who attended Harvard. With a kind heart, he adopted bespectacled Sherman (Max Charles) when he was little.
Everything is going smoothly until Sherman meets Penny Peterson (Ariel Winter), a snobbish girl, he has a fight with. This alarms the adoption agency, who threatens to reclaim Sherman if Peabody doesn't take action. To resolve the conflict, Peabody invites Penny to visit.
A whirlwind of chaos begins when Sherman accidentally tells Penny about their the time machine.
It's an upbeat plot and the heartfelt ending gives the film a real kick, making the whole time-travelling quest rather amazing.
Minkoff ran out of creative juice for a while after the Lion King, but Mr Peabody and Sherman is his strongest comeback so far.