The Peanuts Movie

When Charles Schultz retired from producing the Peanuts comic strip in 1999, he had been at it for 49 years and had drawn nearly eighteen thousand strips. He had embraced the marketing of his characters with enthusiasm, and thanks to a lot of Charlie Brown tv specials, Snoopy t-shirts, and Woodstock lunchboxes, Schutz made an estimated 1.1 billion dollars over the course of his career. Good ol’ Charlie Brown may never have been terrible at baseball, football, and kite flying, but he was an immensely profitable cash cow.

After his death in 2000, Schultz’s will specified that there were never to be any new Peanuts strips. His syndicate respected that wish and instead has printed reruns in the papers for the last fifteen years. However, the will did not forbid new material for tv or film. Consequently, we have The Peanuts Movie now in theaters. It’s a lushly produced computer generated cartoon that features the whole gang – Charlie, Linus, Lucy, Sally, Peppermint Patty, Marci, and all the rest.    

 

Though the technology and production are 21^st century, the story is strictly old school. The entire film is basically just a string of familiar jokes and scenarios culled from the strip and other animated projects. The main gist is that Charlie Brown is madly in love with the new kid in class, the Little Red Haired Girl, and spends the movie trying find ways to impress her. Throughout the film, all the familiar set ups are reliably present – Charlie fails at flying a kite, Snoopy has elaborate daydreams about being a World War I flying ace and battling the Red Baron, Lucy runs her psychiatric stand and still only charges five cents, Lucy’s still crazy about Schroeder, and Sally still calls the blanket-carrying philosopher Linus her “sweet baboo.” On the one hand, all of this feels almost too familiar and well-worn. A parent might wonder why he shelled out eight bucks for his daughter to see material she already has at home on DVD, but on the other hand, I admire that the film is actually true to Schultz’s spirit and aesthetic and doesn’t particularly try to tart things up for the sake of attracting teens and tweens. This is in sharp contrast to the candy-colored trainwrecks made out of Dr. Seuss’s material over the last few years. The Peanuts Movie is both as innocent and as slight as the original tv specials from the 50s and 60s. 

 

Visually, the film is an interesting combination of tactile, 3D digital rendering and what appear to be hand-drawn eyes and mouths for all the characters. For the first time ever, Snoopy actually appears to have fur, Charlie Brown’s trademark yellow and black zig-zag shirt has texture, and Linus has hair instead of just black lines poking out of his head. But their eyes and mouths maintain the same rough, hand-drawn feel they had in the strips and tv specials. Visually, Snoopy’s flying ace day dreams are the most lovingly rendered and compelling to watch.

For older viewers, The Peanuts Movie is a nostalgia trip of the first order. I sat next to two adult women in their 40s at the theater and every time Vince Guaraldi’s familiar music began to play or when Charlie cried out, “RATS!” they cooed and laughed and loudly asked each other if they remembered that from the Christmas special, the Halloween special, etc. But if you’re not particularly nostalgic about Charlie Brown, there’s a good chance that as an adult, you’ll be bored out of your gourd in The Peanuts Movie. It doesn’t have much going for other than its appeal to your childhood.

It’s meant for younger viewers for the most part. My six year old was perfectly happy through the whole movie, and I imagine she’s the exact target the filmmakers were aiming for. 

  

The Peanuts Movie doesn’t do anything to update this half-century old set of characters, but it will probably reenergize the Charlie Brown marketing machine for a new generation. Wherever he is, I’m sure Charles Schultz is happy that there will be Peanuts lunchboxes and Snoopy t-shirts for another fifty years.