Get The Skinny on ‘The PEANUTS Movie’!
Peanuts is something that we can all identify with in some manner.
Whether you are a Charlie Brown, a Lucy or a Pigpen, one of those characters probably spoke to you in some way. That is the reason that Peanuts has lasted for decades. Its honest portrayal of living.
Sunday morning at the top of the funnies section of the paper was good ole Charlie Brown, it was the first thing you wanted to read every Sunday morning and with good reason.
The last time the Peanuts gang took to the big screen they were racing against rapids and bullies. Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown came out in 1977.
Peanuts Movie takes Charles into the digital realm. Now I saw it in 3D but come to think of it, perhaps this may have been better and more comfortable in 2D. I may just have to compare.
That is one other thing about The Peanuts Movie, it needs more than one sitting. The Schulz family had full creative control and it shows. You won’t see anything jarring or out of place.
You will see many many homages to the strips, the TV specials, and a lot of Snoopy. Even Joe Cool shows up for the school dance.
There is one new character and one missing character. You will not see Re-run, Linus and Lucy’s little brother unless he is in the school auditorium somewhere and he very well may be. You will see Little Kid, a new character for Charlie Brown to interact with in a charming fashion.
I had some doubts going in to see this that they were going to modernize the adventures of Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang. I was a little worried about what Paul Feig may do. However with the family at the helm, this movie kept to it’s heritage.
The one thing I noticed was that the Red Baron scenes were not as dark as the original scenes we saw on television. I found myself asking if they removed the guns off the planes or if the originals even had the guns. A minor minor, thing, since as I just admitted, I did not remember if they were there or not in the original dogfights. Dogfights…I just made myself snicker. In essence it does not matter because the bullet holes are still present, guns or no.
There was a nice technique of incorporating the black and white strips into the movie, again a very nice homage.
The Peanuts movie will have something for everyone whether you are a Lucy fan, a Linus fan, a Schroeder fan, or a Peppermint Patty fan. Patty has some great scenes.
There are scenes about things we may have long forgotten too. Snoopy finds a typewriter, yup that is right guys, a typewriter not a cell phone, not a laptop, in a dumpster. He then puts it to good use just as he did in the strips.
If anything this movie should get an Oscar nod for sound editing, it is all there and that helps to make it even more true to the originals. The kids, yup folks they cast kids to play kids, are spot on, they sound like the original cast. They even brought back Bill Melendez’s voice (he died in 2008) for Snoopy and Woodstock.
The Peanuts gang mostly disappeared off the cultural radar but hung on tightly, and now is back to tempt a new generation to seek out the 18,000 comic strips and award winning specials.
