Good Grief! A Review of Snoopy and Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie

directed by Steve Martino
written by Brian Schulz, Craig Schulz and Cornelius Uliano

Fifteen years after the death of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, his beloved characters have come to the big screen in a film that is reverent, innovative and full of the heart that has made the original comic strip well-known the world over.

The Peanuts Movie is the story of Charlie Brown (voiced by Noah Schnapp), an insecure elementary school student and his quirky dog named Snoopy (voiced by Bill Melendez). Charlie Brown's life gets turned upside down when a pretty red headed girl (voiced by Francesca Capaldi) moves in next door to him, and enrolls at his school. The film follows his efforts to impress the girl, invariably with results that are both hilarious and cringe-inducing.

The film hews pretty closely to both the comic strip and the various hand-drawn animated features based on it that have come out over the years. Charlie Brown's entire supporting cast of Linus and Lucy, Schroeder, Peppermint Patty, Marcie are all in attendance, along with the indecipherable adults who dialogue consists of muffled audio. It's a very traditional take on the cartoon, and even though the dialogue has been updated, much of remains charmingly, almost defiantly old-fashioned, like the characters' clothes, hairstyles, and almost everything else (although in the end, the characters do play in an inflatable playground). It's safe and charming and that was, to be honest, pretty much the best way to go with characters and a world this well-loved. Innovations made possible by computer-generated imagery, like the amazing detail put into rendering the characters' hair, and other little touches, were most welcome.

The good news about this movie is that it's accessible even to people who've never read a "Peanuts" strip in their lives, which would probably characterize most of the young viewers who would watch it (like my younger daughter), but it is a much richer experience for longtime readers of the strip, and even moreso for kids who have read the strip and have seen the cartoons. As someone who's done both, I quite enjoyed the film, and was happy to see that both of my children who watched it with me did as well. The highlight, for me, was the realization of Snoopy's "World War I flying ace" fantasy.

It was really pleasant viewing, and I recommend it highly to lovers of the long-running Peanuts strip and people who have yet to discover it.

8.5/10