That Was a Fun Movie, Charlie Brown

The kids wake up one by one, as alarm clocks go off across the town. It’s a snow day, however, and the kids don’t have to go to school! They grab their skates and their hockey sticks and get ready for a fun day on the ice; save for one kid, who’s convinced that today is the day that he will finally fly his kite. A kite? In the middle of winter? Only Charlie Brown.

Really, Peanuts has a simple formula. We have our favorite loser Charlie Brown, his friends, and his dog, Snoopy. When I first heard they’d be doing a Peanuts movie, I figured there was no way they could disappoint. Thankfully, the movie delivers! The movie manages to capture the feel of those old four panel strips, one of the main things being the melancholy optimism of Charlie Brown.

Overall, it feels like a fantastic tribute to Schulz’s strips, with several bits popping up straight out of the comic strip. The animation is interesting, blending CG with the dotted action lines of the newsprints, and while the weird mix of styles can be jarring at times, the presentation does justice to the hand-drawn appeal of the comics and the old animated stories. The story itself is pretty cute; we finally see the little red-haired girl of Charlie’s dreams, and we follow Chuck as he tries to find it in himself to finally talk to her.

Score: 4/5 – The Peanuts Movie is a great treat for long-time Peanuts fans, and a great movie to introduce a new generation of kids to the old gang, as we watch Charlie Brown be the goat that all of us have been at least once in our lives, and teach us that it doesn’t really matter, because as long as you keep running in the right direction, that kite’s gonna fly eventually.

The Peanuts Movie is now showing at cinemas nationwide.