lunes, 28 de diciembre de 2015

Film Review: ‘The Peanuts Movie’




You’re in love, Charlie Brown (and wouldn’t you know it, so is Snoopy). That’s the simple, slender premise 

behind “The Peanuts Movie,” Blue Sky’s gorgeous fan’s-best-friend adaptation of a comic strip that is 

beloved by so many around the world, director Steve Martino’s biggest challenge was simply not to screw it 

up. The late Charles M. 

Schulz almost surely would have appreciated the result, which presents a wholesome, goody-goody view of 

childhood emotional challenges barely advanced since his “li’l folks” first graced the big screen back in 

1969’s “A Boy Named Charlie Brown,” apart from the risky move or transforming the cartoonist’s hand-drawn 

bobble-headed characters into complex computer-generated models of themselves — in 3D, no less. 

While the old-fashioned story barely feels adequate to fill a half-hour TV special, the new look positions 

all involved to make as much in tie-ins and merch as they do in ticket sales.

Over the course of nearly 90 minutes, incorrigible romantic Charlie Brown develops a crush on his new 

neighbor, the otherwise nameless (and until now, virtually faceless) Little Red-Haired Girl, while his 

high-flying beagle falls for a little pink-haired poodle named Fifi, an entirely new character he imagines 

rescuing from the Red Baron. 

Both the boy and his dog set their goals high, though Snoopy has the self-confidence to follow through, 

while Charlie Brown suffers from near-constant insecurity — feelings exacerbated by longtime rival and 

resident know-it-all Lucy, who gladly enumerates his shortcomings, only to turn around and offer psychiatric 

help from her makeshift lemonade stand for a nickel a session.

For those who know the strip well, “The Peanuts Movie” should feel like the first day of a new school year, 

reunited with a classroom full of familiar faces. With the exception of Fifi (who looks like Snoopy with 

pink pom-poms stuck to her head and ears), everyone here is a well-established member of the Peanuts 

ensemble, and though their personalities come across as ever so slightly different (more by virtue of voice 

casting than by design), the kid characters are performed by actual kids: Noah Schnapp for Charlie Brown, 

Hadley Belle Miller for Lucy and so on. 

The grown-ups still speak via muffled trombone, while Snoopy’s and Woodstock’s voices have been resurrected 

from archival recordings by Bill Melendez, who directed nearly all the “Peanuts” features and TV specials 

(yet another of the pic’s many strategies for not straying far from the canon).

Over the course of an often-repetitive 50-year run, Schulz’s haiku-like strips were inherently too short to 

develop much more than recurring dynamics or themes, so in narrative terms, the film is obliged to lean more 

heavily on the property’s many previous animated incarnations (with certain lines, like Lucy’s disgusted 

“I’ve been kissed by a dog!,” lifted directly from “A Charlie Brown Christmas”). 

What will feel like nostalgia for adults should play as fresh to younger auds, as they discover the origin 

of Snoopy’s Red Baron obsession, his invention of the Flying Ace character and his first appearance in Joe 

Cool mode. Meanwhile, carrying on futile pursuits that have dogged him for half a century, Charlie Brown 

struggles to fly his kite, fails to kick his football and repeatedly makes a fool of himself in school.

One can only imagine the countless hours that must have been spent debating every little detail — from 

script to skin texture, the density of Pigpen’s dust cloud to the bounce of Frieda’s curls — although the 

creative team has been shrewd enough with nearly every one of its choices that audiences should have no 

trouble enjoying the film at face value. After all, is there any face in cartoon history more apt than 

Snoopy’s to answer the classic joke, “What’s black and white and read all over?”

Like most classic jokes, “Peanuts” isn’t so much funny as mildly amusing, which is evidently one of the many 

aspects of Schulz’s legacy that his son Craig and grandson Bryan fought to protect as screenwriters and 

producers on the film (presumably trumping their genuinely hilarious collaborator, Paul Feig, also credited 

as a producer alongside co-writer Cornelius Uliano). But a little modernization wouldn’t have hurt, 

especially in the diversity department. 

While Franklin remains Charlie Brown’s only brown friend, a non-white love interest would have been as 

progressive as Schulz’s tomboyish depiction of Peppermint Patty was back in the day.

From the very outset, following a version of the Fox fanfare delivered by none other than resident piano 

prodigy Schroeder, the film sets the stage with a hand-doodled snowfall: squiggly black balls loosely 

sketched in a rectangular frame, which fades from what could be one of Schulz’s comic-strip panels into a 

pleasant-looking CG alternative. 

As in “Horton Hears a Who!” (which Martino co-directed), we have entered a dynamic realm directly inspired 

by a visionary children’s artist, except that this time, instead of replicating the fantastical colors and 

creatures of Dr. Seuss’ imagination, here we have the stripped-down, hyper-simplified Midwestern world of 

Charlie Brown, who is himself a glorified circle with ink-spot eyes, bulb-like nose and an unruly curlicue 

for hair.

It was no small challenge for the Blue Sky team to adapt the handful of expressions and poses Schulz 

recycled countless times over the course of his career into what are meant to be fully articulated CG 

character rigs. (The sheer effort involved will be lost on most audiences, even many professionals in the 

animated community — not unlike last year’s “The Lego Movie,” which innovated in order to simulate the look 

of crude stop-motion.) 

Though actual hand-drawn touches do appear on occasion, from floating red hearts to an elaborate animated 

daydream sequence, the objective was clearly to find a vibrant, visually interesting homologue for 

fundamentally flat elements, all the while incorporating (or at least paying homage to) Schulz’s signature 

wobbly lines.

The cartoon that emerges is not only stunning to behold, but also as comforting as a warm puppy (to 

paraphrase Lucy), the polar opposite of “The Adventures of Tintin,” which committed the grievous design 

crime of replacing its protagonist’s popular comicbook face with a vaguely human equivalent. 

Though humans have been playing the “Peanuts” gang onstage since 1967 tuner “You’re a Good Man, Charlie 

Brown” first bowed Off Broadway, one need only consult Tim O’Brien’s artist’s rendering of a realistic-

looking Charlie Brown to confirm why the Blue Sky solution was the way to go onscreen. 

Still, it’s consistency with the characters’ language and personalities that seems to have mattered most to 

Schulz’s heirs, who rightly consider Charlie Brown’s long-unrequited romantic obsession with the Little 

Red-Haired Girl to be the right catalyst to bring his inner optimist to light.

As in his 1969 big-screen debut, Charlie Brown has the opportunity to experience both ends of the popularity 

spectrum, ranging from class reject to school hero. 

Early on, Lucy convinces Charlie Brown that if he really wants to impress girls, he has to show them he’s a 

winner — which is easier said than done for someone with a serious case of inadequacy, translating to a 

clumsily episodic series of minor life challenges, the most promising of which is a school dance. (It should 

be said that “The Peanuts Movie” has some of the most disappointing original songs of any “Peanuts” 

property.) 

Still, what better lesson for Charlie Brown, grammar-school Sisyphus that he is, than to turn his loser 

status on its big round head and prove, as his indefatigable creator did by delivering a strip a day all 

those years, that it’s the courage to continue that counts?


 The Peanuts Movie

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