If you're a fan of the late Charles Schultz's long-cherished Peanuts comic strip, you likely gulped (or possibly threw up a little in your own mouth) upon hearing news of a flashy 3D reboot.
Blue Sky, the animation boutique attached, may have pleased millions with its Ice Age sequence. But the same studio was surely doomed to collide catastrophically with the melancholic 2D universe of America's most famous pre-teen existentialist. Right?
Wrong. Happily, The Peanuts Movie is as loyal as a certain headlining beagle to the source material.
Indeed, the plot is None More Charlie Brown. Chuck – as he is known to unfailingly wonderful Peppermint Patty – would dearly love to impress the Little Red-Haired Girl who has just moved in across the street.
But, alas, Charles – as he is known to Patty’s faithful sidekick Marcie – would also like to fly a kite without losing it to the kite-eating tree. Sadly, Charlie Brown doesn’t really do kite success. Or baseball success. Or any success. He is, rather, the very personification of Beckett’s fatalistic maxim: fail again, fail better.
Still, he may have an “in” with the Little Red-Haired Girl: he has picked up a pencil she dropped; now if only he had the courage to hand it back.
Commendably, the film’s 3D images do not exclude such old-fashioned pencilled devices as “lines of sight” and occasional squiggles.
The late animator Bill Melendez continues to voice Snoopy and Woodstock courtesy of archival recordings. Other voices are provided by Real Live Children. The screenplay, written by Craig and Bryan Schultz (Charles’ son and grandson, respectively), makes a decent amount of room for a subplot concerning Snoopy’s imagined aerial rivalry with “The Red Baron”.
Director Steve Martino ensures that Charlie Brown remains a snark-free zone. There are no nods or winks toward older viewers, nor is there dumbing-down for younger ones: psychiatric help is still available at reasonable rates from Lucy’s cardboard booth.
Purists might argue that the new film is a little bouncier than Peanuts strips or TV specials of yesteryear. Or that we're never supposed to see and hear the lost object that is the Little Red-Haired Girl. Or that Patty should only acknowledge Snoopy as "the funny looking kid with the big nose". But we're just too charmed to care about such teeny caveats. We're delighted to report that: you're a good movie, Charlie Brown.
