When Mr Peabody & Sherman came out last year, I was torn. On the one hand, I am still a huge Jay Ward fan. And when I was a kid, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show was my favorite thing on television, and “Peabody’s Improbable History” was my favorite part of it. But on the other hand, I now find “Peabody” the most annoying part of the show. What’s more, there was 2000’s The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle — a film I can’t criticize too much because the first half hour was so bad that I stopped watching it.

Mr Peabody & Sherman is not a bad film. But why do people claim that it “stayed true” to the original cartoon? It did not. For one thing, the film is sentimental and the shorts were most definitely not. The ending where Peabody finally says he loves Sherman made me want to vomit. Peabody himself comes off more like Snoopy as “Joe Cool” than the original Nobel Prize winning dog. But most of all, there were the puns. I can hardly blame the writers for coming up with really good puns as opposed to the horrible puns in the show. But Sherman doesn’t get the puns in the movie, whereas Sherman getting the puns is absolutely critical to the show.

There is a fundamental problem with turning something like “Peabody’s Improbable History” into a feature length film. The episodes are meant to be at least somewhat annoying. This is why Sherman’s understanding of the puns is so important. He acts as a surrogate for the audience. The puns are coming. The puns are bad. And we need an ally — someone who shares the groan with us. And remember: many “Peabody” episodes are nothing but setups for Peabody’s final pun. He didn’t build the WABAC machine to entertain Sherman, but just as an outlet for his nasty pun habit.

Another problem is that these films almost always get too involved with being action films. That’s fine. But why use such pure characters as Peabody and Sherman? Well, we know the reason. Hollywood wanted to use the brand and then apply its usual boring storytelling approach to it. In this case, the film would have been better off doing something along the lines Time Bandits, because at least it doesn’t take itself seriously enough to force a prolonged third act action sequence.

Ultimately, Mr Peabody & Sherman works on its own terms. But it manages to destroy everything that the original was. It was most definitely not “true” to the original. I’m not sure that a feature length film could be true to the original. But strangely, the live-action films Dudley Do-Right and George of the Jungle work surprisingly well. Maybe it is because they are by definition different. They don’t try to compete with the originals on their own terms. Because frankly, that’s impossible.

Really:

I am a huge fan of Bob’s Burgers. It’s probably because the main characters are so well rendered. I feel a connection to each of them. That’s especially true of Bob, who is brave and a natural leader. His only problem is that he is totally lacking in charisma. He’s like Dan Hollins in The Twilight Zone episode “It’s a Good Life.” Bob’s the kind of guy who says, “Follow me! Our cause is just!” It doesn’t matter how obviously right Bob is, when he looks back, no one is following him. They are standing there as he rushes to what would be certain death if he weren’t a character in a successful television series.

Bob is very lucky to have found Linda. I know that people focus on her looniness. And it is true that like everyone else in the show, she is insane. But would a woman who wasn’t at least partially insane marry Bob? She needs to see herself in the middle of a big budget musical. For most women, life with Bob would be a sad ending to her life. But to her, she is in the middle of an exciting adventure. And as such, she is Bob’s rock. Because let’s face, Bob is even more crazy than she is. He’s just too insecure to show it often.

Tina is a hero of mine. There is no deception in her. She is entirely comfortable in who she is with her obsession with butts and zombie love. She seems like she is insecure, but it is just that she’s introverted and methodical. The world is alien and it goes by so fast. She isn’t able to engage with it in real time. So it seems awkward. And it is! For the world. But she’s used to it running ahead and she’s fine with it.

She is, of course, at that awkward age. She hasn’t figured out her sexuality. That’s what makes her earnestness all the more inspiring. But it needs to be said: she will never end up with Jimmy Jr. For one thing, he’s a jerk. And he’s everything she isn’t. He’s style, and she’s substance. Anyway, Jimmy Jr is, like so many of the characters in the show, gay. And the show’s been pretty open about this. In “Lobsterfest,” Tina creates a list of people she “can mate with to repopulate the Earth.” Gene comments, “Here, let me see that: gay; gay; mythical creature; gay mythical creature; in your dreams!”

Tina, of course, will end up with Zeke. When he first showed up on “The Belchies,” he wasn’t very likable. He was just a typical guy who was on the wrestling team. But in that time, we’ve gotten to see a lot of the softer side of him — especially in “Midday Run.” And most recently, in “The Oeder Games,” when he tells Tina that he’s interested in her, I believe it. And Tina reciprocates. Their chemistry is obvious. I wish Jimmy Jr well in his own sexual awakening.

Gene is the oddest character in the family. He is also the most feminine. Louise spoke the truth when she told Linda, “It’s time to focus on your good daughter: Gene.” He definitely takes after Linda — but without having ever developed a serious side. He has the most pure id of all the characters. He also tends to get the best lines, because he has the most clear view of reality. In “Bob Day Afternoon,” Bob is planning to tell the banker, “What does ‘past due’ even mean?” Gene responds, “It’s brilliant! There is no such thing as time!”

Louise is the most misunderstood character in the series. At first, she was the reason I watched it. She is the “puppet” character: the one who can get away with saying the most outrageous things because she is nonthreatening. But like all the characters in the series, she has been given a lot of time to deepen. And we find that she is, ultimately, a fragile little girl. She seems like she doesn’t care about anyone else, but it is just the world outside her family that she doesn’t care about. She is fiercely protective of and dependent upon her family. But I feel that I can see the future, and that eventually, she will marry Logan from the “Ear-sy Rider” episode.

Now all of these thoughts are subject to change without notice. Ultimately, Bob’s Burgers is so great because these characters continue to develop and grow. And that makes it stand out compared to other modern situation comedies. Increasingly, everything is about laughs without a lot of thought to the characters and the audience’s relationships with them.

None of my wives or girlfriends have been big fans of samurai films. It is probably wrong to conclude from this that women just aren’t that into these kinds of films. After all, pretty much no one I know likes them. But I do think that women will tend not to like samurai films in general, because the films are very male — usually with almost exclusively male casts. But I think I have found a samurai film that would appeal more to women, and might be the first step in a long life of samurai film enjoyment.

Last month, I wrote, The Best Theoretical Action Film Ever. It was about the Bob’s Burgers episode “Hawk and Chick.” In it, we learn about a series of Japanese Samurai films that feature Hawk, as a wandering barber, and his young daughter, Chick. Everywhere they go, they run into monsters that disturb their simple lives. I believe that because of this, I started searching for Samurai films that might involve daughters. I knew about Samurai Rebellion, of course. But that wasn’t really the same thing. And of course, there is nothing similar to “Hawk and Chick.” But I was led to an amazingly good film, The Twilight Samurai.

Released in 2002, it was something of a big deal — being nominated for a the Best Foreign Language Feature Academy Award. But I had never even heard of it. And I should have, because it is a wonderful film — and in its way, a great substitute for “Hawk and Chick.” It isn’t silly and it doesn’t have any supernatural monsters. But it is about a widowed samurai who has two young daughters. And all he really wants to do is lead a simple life and enjoy watching his daughters grow. But events will not cooperate.

What most Americans do not know about samurai is that it is just a caste. Most samurai were bureaucrats, not warriors. And so samurai films often involve this fact. The protagonist of The Twilight Samurai is Iguchi — a very low level bureaucratic samurai who happens to have been a great fighter in his youth. That is all past him, however. But one day, he ends up saving his friend in a duel, and the word gets out that he’s a great fighter, so Iguchi’s clan leaders force him to go and assassinate an unreasonable samurai who refuses to commit seppuku as he was ordered. So the film features two stunning fight sequences.

But that’s not the core of the film. The main thing is that Iguchi really doesn’t have the money to take care of his girls. This gets him in some trouble. But eventually, his childhood sweetheart shows up — recently divorced from an abusive husband. All of these story threads — fighting, daughters, and sweetheart — interlink for a wonderful synergy. The result is a very special samurai film — the kind of film that works as a substitute for a romantic comedy starring Meg Ryan. And it just might be the key to samurai film love.

The setup sounded too perfect: at the end of World War II, the Nazis relocated to the far side of moon, developing their war machinery for a future invasion of earth. Add in a hot German school teacher who thinks that The Great Dictator is a laudatory 10-minute short about Adolf Hitler, and an African American astronaut who the Germans “improve” by changing his skin tone white, and you have the makings of comedy genius. It even features Udo Kier as the current Führer, and as everyone who knows anything about film knows: no film with Kier can be all bad. But the question remains: how did Iron Sky, a comedy about Nazis on the moon, not elicit one laugh from me?

The film is not bad. It looks good. Julia Dietze and Christopher Kirby as the protagonists really do light up the screen when they are together. And there are amusing moments. I especially liked when the US president (a very awkward parody of Sarah Palin) found out that all the other countries had lied about not putting weapons in space. She said, “You’re all liars, just like my ex-ex-husband!” When they complain, noting that the US also broke its word, she responds, “We always breaks ours, that’s just what we do.” Also: Finland is the only country that stood by the treaty. It truly is the country where I want to be!

But all of that material is the exception in being modestly sharp satire. Overall, the satire is incredibly blunt, because the writers clearly don’t care much about geopolitics. All the major powers in the film are narcissistic and so much more the silly for it. The president is thrilled that her assistant has started a war because all presidents who start wars in their first terms get re-elected. I’m not saying that there aren’t some politicians who are every bit this self-serving. (Most are far more self-deluded.) But as a target for satire, it would have been tired in 1812, much less 2012.

The bigger problem is that the film doesn’t really even try to be funny. The filmmakers seem to think that the concept is so great that it creates its own laughs. And that might have been the case if the film took the time to get the viewer vested in the concept. But it doesn’t. It is just: Nazis on the moon. They’ve created all kinds of new war technology, but they still drive around in cars from Hogan’s Heroes and have computers the size of small towns. Oh, and they have to go to earth to get a cell phone, because they can’t possibly figure out who to charge the one they have.

In addition, there are far too many special effects in the film. They are well done, of course. But who cares? It’s just filler. The whole film could be easily rewritten as a play. There is a great battle between the earth and the moon Nazis. Yet we are only introduced to the people in one of the spaceships. So it serves no narrative function. There is more than enough hand-to-hand combat that does. So what is the point of all this other than to make Iron Sky look like a “real” film? I doubt there is another reason.

And then what are we are supposed to take away from Iron Sky? I guess it is that the Nazis were bad, but that the rest of the world isn’t all that great either. And the future of humanity is the Nazis, but only after they’ve seen all eleven reels of The Great Dictator, because once the Führer has been mocked, well, those Nazis just melt. But that’s all giving the filmmakers a good too much credit. I don’t think they want the viewer to take anything away from this film. And that is a real problem when you are creating satire.

Ultimately, it all would have been fine if there had been some jokes.

The first time I saw Arthur Penn’s 1975 film Night Moves, it boggled my mind. I don’t mean that in a methaphorical way, as in, “I didn’t know how such a great film could be made.” I mean that I had no idea what I had just seen. What’s more, I saw it with a bunch of my friends — all really smart people. And no one knew what took place in the film. So about a decade ago, I watched it again. And I got it: it’s about this big criminal conspiracy to import art treasures, and how it all goes to hell. Well, I watched it again over the weekend.

Having seen it twice, I was clear on the plot. This allowed me to get into what the film is really all about: the futility — even the tragedy — of the search for the truth. But that’s “truth” writ large. The film is downright sentimental when it comes to two people with a personal relationship who get past their nonsense and start being truthful with each other. And themselves! And that’s how this movie works so brilliantly as a modern tragedy. The main character, Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), thinks there is a big truth “out there” that will explain the world. There isn’t.

A classic trope of drama is the character who must learn the truth. In real life, such a character is insane. But there really is no easier way to get the reader or viewer to the end than this character. Otherwise, the character needs to be motivated every step of the way. If the character has a compulsion, however, it all makes sense. But in the cinematic world of the late 1960s and early 1970s, it does not make sense, because the world itself doesn’t make sense. The world is just a muddle, and we get snapshots of the truth from various angles.

A total of seven people die in Night Moves. And only two of them would have died, had Moseby just left it alone. And the film doesn’t explain if the two other deaths were murders or just unfortunate accidents. I choose to see them as accidents, because it heightens the tragedy of it all. But I think for screenwriter Alan Sharp, it is meant to be both unknown and unknowable. So Moseby is left having picked up a few snapshots of the truth: he knows these stunt people are involved with illegal imports of ancient Mexican artifacts, and he knows that Paula had ulterior motives when she slept him. And that’s about it.

At the end, Moseby doesn’t know the truth about the two deaths that he isn’t culpable in, and he doesn’t know what Paula’s true feelings towards him are. His search for the truth reveals the most unfulfilling facts. And even worse, these facts only lead to deeper questions. Even at the end, the great reveal — the mastermind who would be to blame for everything in a normal film — shows him slipping away, yelling to Moseby, but unheard. What was he saying? Was he explaining The Truth — the great narrative of the world that Moseby desperately wants to hear? Certainly not. But as The Truth slips away, Moseby wants to hear it. Because after an hour and a half and all those deaths and the breakthrough with his wife, Moseby hasn’t learned a thing.