You Excelled Expectations, Charlie Brown!

In any of its forms, Charles Schulz’s Peanuts has never been particularly creative, well-written, or even, I’ll say it, funny. But it’s endured for sixty-five years off of its innocence, taste-of-childhood charm, and warm endearing characters.

The Peanuts Movie had the choice of either replicating those qualities as close as possible, or going down the corporate sell-out route of properties like Alvin and the Chipmunks and Smurfs. This was worrisome, as was the fact that the production company behind the movie, Blue Sky Studios, had yet to produce a decent film.

But you know what, the opening title reads The Peanuts Movie by Schulz, and that’s exactly what it is. This movie written in fact by Schulz’s son and grandson gets everything right by his legacy. It’s still not really creative, nor technically well-written, the plot’s pretty basic and whimsical with a moral you can guess a mile away, but it captures so fully the essence of his strip and of his characters that it’s instantly enjoyable and mesmerizing. The story centres on Charlie Brown falling for the new “little red-haired girl” in his class and doing everything he can through a series of episodes to get her to like him. At the same time his dog, Snoopy is writing his fantasies of being a World War I flying ace pursuing the dastardly Red Barron and rescuing the love of his life Fifi.

I’m not much of a Peanuts fan having only seen a handful of the specials and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, but even I recognize this as a much-used storyline in the series. However the film takes on a very new approach, creating new scenarios and obstacles for Charlie Brown along the way, while still retaining the strip’s timeless style and tone. Another part of that timelessness comes from the characters, and in addition to Charlie Brown and Snoopy, everyone’s favourites are here, including Woodstock, and Lucy, Linus, Sally, Schroeder, Pigpen, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, and Franklin, all of whom are just as memorable and endearing as ever. All of our favourite touches are still there from the kite-eating tree to the incomprehensible adult speech to Lucy’s five cent psychiatry booth. It truly feels like the natural film evolution of the comic strip, and maybe in some places goes above and beyond. The specials never struck me as all that funny, but this movie certainly was. It got out a lot of legitimate laughs.

It also goes above and beyond in its animation. It’s still unbelievable to me how the 3D animation was able to capture so well the 2D nature of the cartoon. It somehow still feels like a drawing, aided by small touches like squiggly lines and a stop-motion quality to the still energized movement; and it’s just so visually appealing. If I had one criticism it’s that the fantasy sequences tend to get too massive in scale for a world so rich in a sense of simplicity. But I can’t complain much, because the spirit is still there and these scenes do look superb.

I could say The Peanuts Movie is great. I could even say it’s wonderful. But the best and most complete word to describe it is adorable. It’s adorable how shamelessly it wears its heart on its sleeve, how instantaneously sentimental but enjoyable the characters and situation are. If you never were interested in or aren’t open to Peanuts, you’re not going to like this movie. But speaking as someone who only ever had a passing interest in the strip, for an hour and a half from the moment Schroeder first appeared playing the 20^th Century Fox anthem, I had a big dumb grin on my face. And when a movie can do that, there’s really something special to it!