FRIDAY, MARCH 7

As a child, I was raised on the delightfully slapdash cartoons of old, via VHS and LaserDisc. Stuff like Beany and Cecil, Popeye, Gumby, and Rocky & Bullwinkle were huge foundational entertainments for me. Sandwiched in the middle of my Rocky & Bullwinkle tapes were these odd little shorts about a genius dog and his boy Sherman. Peabody's Improbable History followed the titular dog and his companion as they traversed through time and space in the WABAC machine.

Now, sadly, we've come to the point where Hollywood shrugs and says, "I dunno, what if Mr. Peabody planks and plays Dance Dance Revolution? Is that anything?"

Mr. Peabody and Sherman is now a Dreamworks 3D animated film, coming 14 years after its flagship program, The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, came limping onto the big screen. Playing Mr. Peabody, without the nasally know-it-all bite of the original, is Ty Burrell of Modern Family. There is autotune, there is skateboarding, there are numerous fart jokes. This is all a way of saying that Mr. Peabody is the coolest dog this side of Poochie. Think he'll die on the way to his home planet?

Really, who is this for? Are there children who grew up on DVDs of Peabody's Improbably History? Are there any baby boomers with kids young enough to take to see this movie? I'd like to get in the WABAC machine and go back a few years to convince some producers to finally make the Beany and Cecil movie. The live-action story of a sock-puppet sea serpent and his child-in-peril best friend would be straight-up terrifying.

>>> The Visitor

ON DVD AND BLU-RAY

Speaking of psychedelic mind-fucks, this week sees the release of a long-lost bit of Italian batshit insanity called The Visitor. Released in 1979, the film now finds its re-release thanks to the geniuses at Drafthouse Films, those cinematic dumpster-divers. Starring an utterly bizarre assembly of celebrities such as filmmakers John Huston and Sam Peckinpah (!), Lance Henriksen, Shelly Winters, Glenn Ford and Libertarian talk show host Neal Boortz, The Visitor has been breathlessly described as "the Mount Everest of insane Italian '70s movies."

Briefly: an 8-year-old girl named Katy with telekinetic powers must carry on her magical genes by mating with her brother before a shadow agent can sleep with Katy's mother. Thankfully, a space Jesus known as Jerzy (John Huston) is there to intervene with the help of his child army.

Everyone on the same page? I know I sound like I had a psychotic episode while I was writing that, but that is legit what happens in The Visitor - that, and deliciously overblown visuals that are fraught with symbolic meaning. There's a reason why The Room is so much fun to watch, but stuff such as 3 Days to Kill is just unbearable. Blind, raging ambition is always fascinating, regardless of how successful it is.

The Visitor is like staring directly into the hot, glowing sun of ambition. A midnight screening is surely in order.