The Peanuts Movie on DVD

The Peanuts Movie [j DVD Peanuts]

In a year (2015) filled with some tremendously popular films, I will have to admit that The Peanuts Movie was my favorite film that I saw in a theatre. Written by Peanuts creator Charles Schulz’s children, The Peanuts Movie manages to capture the emotional tone and sense of humor of the original comic strip, as well as the classic original animated specials from the 1960s and early 1970s, like A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! The animation in this film is absolutely superb…giving an almost three dimensional quality to the characters, never previously accomplished on screen. The music by Christophe Beck pays appropriate tribute to the classic jazz riffs Vince Guaraldi created for the early Peanuts TV specials. I especially appreciated that the producers/director chose to use child actors as the voices of the dozens of classic Peanuts characters — just like all the original TV special did. The film is comprised of a number of separate short stories, encompassed by an overarching plot in which everyman Charlie Brown pines for the new kid in his class…the little red-haired girl. Hoping to impress her, his efforts over an entire year of school result in personal disasters and awkwardness. But in the end, the emotional payoff for these characters is sweet and intense. As always, fan-favorite character Snoopy gets a lot of screen time, as his many imaginative adventures come to life — Snoopy vs. The Red Baron, etc.

This film was an obvious labor of love — love for this huge family of beloved characters, and love for all the fans of Peanuts that have shared the stories over multiple generations. It is a marvelous little gem of a film, complete in and of itself. I hope they don’t try to make a sequel, because this film is perfect by itself! If you can’t tell…I love this movie!

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to revisit all the classic old animated TV specials, as mentioned in the review above.] [ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ official The Peanuts Movie web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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