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The Peanuts Movie review: 3D meets Schulz's iconic strip

Aleesha Matharu | Updated on: 10 February 2017, 1:46 IST

If you grew up reading the Peanuts comic strip (and if you didn't, who are you - it ran for 50 years!), you really should troop down to the multiplex and watch this film for a 90-minute explosion of nostalgia.

The film, which brings perennial underdog Charlie Brown (voiced by Noah Schnapp) and his loyal, trouble-making beagle Snoopy (Bill Melendez) to life, sets out in simple, direct fashion to recapture the essence of Charles M Schulz's original comic strips while giving it a fresh coat of digital paint (it's in 3D).

Even so, the film has Hollywood written all over it: a $100 million budget, 20th Century Fox is distributing, and animation company Blue Sky Studios produced it, having made the four wildly successful Ice Age movies before for Fox.

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Don't worry if this sounds like a radical departure for the Peanuts gang: it certainly helped matters that two of the movie's screenwriters, Craig Schulz and Bryan Schulz, are Charles' son and grandson respectively.

But it wasn't them alone - they collaborated with Horton Hears a Who! director Steve Martino. Thanks to the fact that the three held the creative reins throughout, the animation retains the minimalist feel of Schulz's original artwork.

A thin storyline, but what the heck

The story doesn't venture far from what Peanuts fans already know and centres around two romances. We follow Charlie Brown through a school year watch his progress regarding his crush on the elusive Little Red-Haired Girl.

Meanwhile, Snoopy is hammering out a First World War novel in which he saves a French poodle pilot from the devious Red Baron.

The gang of friends is the same as ever: there's Charlie's scourge Lucy van Pelt, who is bossy, opinionated, but nicer than she seems. There's her brother Linus, who's a dreamy, intellectual philosopher who devotes much of time to sucking his thumb. Then there's Schroeder, the Beethoven-loving piano virtuoso; and noble Pigpen, who is forever covered in mud or dirt; and Woodstock, the little yellow bird.

We never actually see anyone's parents, and the teachers only appear as voices - their voices coming as nonsense sounds through loudspeakers to the tune of: "Waaa. Waaa waaaa waaa waaah." Schulz doesn't even give them any actual words to say - that's because his cartoons were never about parents or teachers. Or just about anything other than what it's like to be a kid (and a dog) in a kid's world.

A timeless effect

Charlie Brown's dogged determination - whether to fly his kite, or kick that football - that makes him such a wonderful character to watch as he fumbles his way through childhood.

A still from the film.

The movie also doesn't in any way try to contemporise Schulz's work and keeps all things modern like mobile phones, iPads and silly fart jokes at bay, giving it the innocence of the strip while keeping the characters in a timeless, suburban American world.

It's like a weird time capsule. Snoopy types his "It was a dark and stormy night" prose on a typewriter, while Charlie Brown uses a fountain pen to write a book report.

Blue Sky could have gone an entirely different direction and made a movie that would appeal to the masses much like The Lego Movie with a dash of anything and everything in it.

Thankfully, they didn't.

The music

But just when an adult thinks he or she can cosy up in a big soft blanket of nostalgia, some auto-tuned pop song (Meghan Trainor, LMFAO and David Guetta are on the soundtrack) reminds you that it's really 2015.

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The saving grace of the soundtrack are the rest of the songs: Christophe Beck and Vince Guaraldi's jazz scores from the older Charlie Brown TV specials.

The verdict

There's enough dancing and silliness with Snoopy to keep younger kids engaged and enough nostalgia for adults.

And with his knack for falling into the worst imaginable luck, unfortunate choices, and ridicule by his peers, Charlie Brown is the very embodiment of the feelings of self-doubt that we all carry within us.

He wears his heart on his sleeve because, and despite the trouble it gets him in, it's such a lovely and honest approach to life.

And that's exactly why the world of Charlie Brown and Snoopy will never get old.

RATING: 3 out of 5

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First published: 12 December 2015, 6:47 IST
 
Aleesha Matharu @almatharu

Born in Bihar, raised in Delhi and schooled in Dehradun, Aleesha writes on a range of subjects and worked at The Indian Express before joining Catch as a sub-editor. When not at work you can find her glued to the TV, trying to clear a backlog of shows, or reading her Kindle. Raised on a diet of rock 'n' roll, she's hit occasionally by wanderlust. After an eight-year stint at Welham Girls' School, Delhi University turned out to be an exercise in youthful rebellion before she finally trudged her way to J-school and got the best all-round student award. Now she takes each day as it comes, but isn't an eternal optimist.