Movie Review: 'The Peanuts Movie'
By Bill Wine
PHIlADELPHIA (CBS) -- Not every comic strip graduates to the movie screen.
Which is why there may be folks behind the scenes of certain published strips now experiencing a form of what we might call Peanuts envy.
That's because the Peanuts gang, that bunch of little people who live in a comic strip, are about to be a literal big deal.
The Peanuts Movie is a movie based on Peanuts, the beloved comic strip – the film commemorates the strip's 65th anniversary -- with a group of characters who have, it seems, always been a part of our lives.
Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus, Sally, Schroeder, Pigpen, and Peppermint Patty are all involved in The Peanuts Movie, originally titled Snoopy and Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie.
The most prominent characters are, of course, Charlie Brown and his loyal beagle, Snoopy – an underdog and a dog, the former anything but secure and confident, the latter brimming with security and confidence.
The appropriately minimalist storyline finds Charlie Brown trying to impress a new nameless neighbor – oh, okay, Little Red-Haired Girl (Francesca Capaldi) -- while Snoopy not only takes to the sky and does daydream battle as his alter ego, the Flying Ace, opposite his archrival, The Red Baron, but he rescues the pink poodle that he has fallen for as well: a pink poodle named Fifi, voiced by Kristin Chenoweth.
Peanuts was a syndicated daily comic strip written and illustrated by influential cartoonist Charles M. Schulz. It ran from 1950 to 2000, when Schulz passed away, and continued in reruns in thousands of newspapers for millions of readers in over 200 languages.
Talk about universality.
Seasonal television specials – such as A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown – also became a tradition, and a few feature films followed.
Director Steve Martino (Horton Hears a Who!, Ice Age: Continental Drift) aims this upbeat offering and array of sight gags at youngsters, has the kids provide the voices of the kid characters, uses trombone sounds for the wordless voices of the adults, and makes sure that whatever inspiring or instructional messages emerge do so in a natural way that comes through the characters and always remains part of an entertaining and fluid narrative.
His primary voice cast includes Noah Schnapp (Charlie Brown), the late Bill Melendez (Snoopy -- via archival recordings), Hadley Belle Miller (Lucy), Alexander Garfin (Linus), Mariel Sheets (Sally), Noah Johnston (Schroeder), A.J. Tecce (Pigpen), and Venus Schultheis (Peppermint Patty).
The G-rated screenplay by Charles Schulz , Craig Schultz (Charles' son), Bryan Schulz (Charles' grandson), and Cornelius Uliano continues the strip's tradition of saddling cute little kids with weighty adult preoccupations and concerns, and sprinkling those breadcrumbs of philosophy that Schultz spent his whole career claiming were unintentional.
Giggling kids in the audience won't care one way or the other. Nor should they.
As for grownups in attendance, for whom this will be essentially a nostalgic experience, most will respond to the film's abundant charm, but some of them (ahem) may feel there's too much Snoopy and not enough Charlie Brown. But, then, what do grownups know?
So we'll exclaim "Good grief!" and make it 2-1/2 stars out of 4 for the family-friendly animated treat, The Peanuts Movie. Forget grief: this one's smiley and chuckly good.