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It’s only when it makes concessions to modernity that The Peanuts Movie really stumbles. Other than these few moments, it’s a sweet, innocent blast of nostalgia, never withholding from the melancholy and defeat that permeates the comic strips. It won’t rival any of the now classic TV specials, but it’s a welcome return from Charlie Brown and the gang.
The plot is a loosely interconnected series of episodes regarding Charlie Brown trying to gain the attention of the Little Red-Haired Girl. The Peanuts Movie reassembles the greatest hits of the comics and specials, mainly that Charlie Brown can’t win at life, and Snoopy has a rich imaginative life. The stakes are demonstrably low, and that’s almost refreshing in a way. There’s no fate of the world in the balance, just trying to survive a year of elementary school.
The trade-off then is that we must now witness Charlie Brown and company in 3D computer animation, which captures the essence of Charles Schulz’s drawings, but forsakes some of the heart and spirit that the hand-drawn animation provided. This becomes a major problem in the extended Red Baron sequences, which play very large and broad in comparison to the smallness of the main story. These Red Baron sequences play like Porco Rosso intruding upon the tender moments of character connection.
Even worse are the presence of modern pop songs from Meghan Trainor and Flo Rida. These pop songs feel like arm-shrugging efforts to appeal to younger audiences of today. The Peanuts gang belong out-of-time, and scored to Vince Guaraldi. Much better is the general music score by Christophe Beck, which finds a way to incorporate pieces of Guaraldi’s famous pieces while expanding off into his own textures and sounds.
Much like the comics, The Peanuts Movie excels when it narrows it focus on the various characters interacting and learning from each other. A talent show performance by Sally is saved by the intervention of Charlie, and it’s uplifting in its depiction of sibling togetherness and love. Or Snoopy helping Charlie Brown learn how to dance in an effort to impress the Little Red-Haired Girl. These moments are sweet, empathetic, and tinged with real expressions of friendship and support.
And many of them are cut down by Charlie Brown’s inevitable defeats, yet he still manages to stay his courageous self. For all of the knocks Charlie takes throughout this, and for all of his neurosis, he still manages to get back up and try again. The climatic meeting between him and the Little Red-Haired Girl is a well-earned and hard fought bit of happy ending fulfillment in which she tells him that she respects him for being selfless, caring, and honest. A credits sequences has Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, but it can’t sour our hero’s innate goodness. The Peanuts Movie may lack for ambition, but it places its emphasis on the heart, character, and bittersweet snapshots of our perennial neurotic Charlie Brown.
