Like a lot of people I grew up on the Peanuts specials, and the one or two feature films that hit the theatres in the early 80s. So when this film rolled around it was fun to see the old gang again doing their thing.
The director got the character nuances right for the animation, but the script, though having a good premise, was pretty vapid in terms of what gags and jokes made peanuts appealing.
There was a bit of Lucas-Spielberg influence here in the form of Indy- Jones kind of stuff, which felt mildly out of place given the kind of emotionally-cerebral strip Peanuts is.
When all was said and done I observed that the production team relied heavily on mining past glories of Peanuts, and then combining that with modern CGI-toon joke-convention. That is we the audience would see classic poses, motions or routines from past Peanut's specials, but then beyond that there wasn't much originality as the creative forces then injected a lot of contemporary humor.
Charlie Brown is about heavy angst, and some pathos, not about doing the remarkable, even if it is shown in a Peanuts joke kind of way.
In short, I didn't mind seeing Joe Cool, nor Sally and her sweet Baboo all over again, nor the kite eating tree, Snoopy going for Linus's security blanket and everything else. Nor did I mind the film being in 3D, nor did I mind the use of 3-dimensional models as opposed to flat 2D cel animation.
What I did mind was a script that had little originality to it in terms of giving these characters the intellect that we knew they had from the previous 50 or so years of the stip, books based on the strip, and the ABC specials that used to air.
It's my conclusion that the production team relied a bit too heavily on the appeal of the Peanuts' gang, and then woefully invoked modern cartoon formulation in terms of jokes. Example; Sally is supposed to be this sweet young girl who has a crush on Linus, and is savvy in a very small way, but is otherwise pretty innocent. But here she isn't so innocent.
You be the judge. It's not a movie that I would willingly go see again, nor add to my DVD collection come next Christmas.
But watch it yourself and see what you think. You may like it.
The director got the character nuances right for the animation, but the script, though having a good premise, was pretty vapid in terms of what gags and jokes made peanuts appealing.
There was a bit of Lucas-Spielberg influence here in the form of Indy- Jones kind of stuff, which felt mildly out of place given the kind of emotionally-cerebral strip Peanuts is.
When all was said and done I observed that the production team relied heavily on mining past glories of Peanuts, and then combining that with modern CGI-toon joke-convention. That is we the audience would see classic poses, motions or routines from past Peanut's specials, but then beyond that there wasn't much originality as the creative forces then injected a lot of contemporary humor.
Charlie Brown is about heavy angst, and some pathos, not about doing the remarkable, even if it is shown in a Peanuts joke kind of way.
In short, I didn't mind seeing Joe Cool, nor Sally and her sweet Baboo all over again, nor the kite eating tree, Snoopy going for Linus's security blanket and everything else. Nor did I mind the film being in 3D, nor did I mind the use of 3-dimensional models as opposed to flat 2D cel animation.
What I did mind was a script that had little originality to it in terms of giving these characters the intellect that we knew they had from the previous 50 or so years of the stip, books based on the strip, and the ABC specials that used to air.
It's my conclusion that the production team relied a bit too heavily on the appeal of the Peanuts' gang, and then woefully invoked modern cartoon formulation in terms of jokes. Example; Sally is supposed to be this sweet young girl who has a crush on Linus, and is savvy in a very small way, but is otherwise pretty innocent. But here she isn't so innocent.
You be the judge. It's not a movie that I would willingly go see again, nor add to my DVD collection come next Christmas.
But watch it yourself and see what you think. You may like it.