November 10, 2015
Hello, blog readers, this is Neil again. There will be no new Gravity Falls until November 23, so the next time I'll review it will be for the blog post on December 1. So for now, I'll review a movie that I saw this weekend- The Peanuts Movie.
It was a risky move- bringing the classic and beloved comic strip back to theaters in an animation style that mixes modern CGI with the 2D of the old strips and cartoons. Most attempts to please older fans had the potential to alienate younger fans, and vice versa. The humor of Charles Schulz's comics may have been too dry for today's kids, and the focus on failure might be too cynical for a child audience. Fortunately, thanks to the involvement of the Schulz family, who has owned the rights to the characters ever since Charles Schulz's death on February 12, 2000, it manages to reflect the slightly-melancholy tone of the old strips and specials while also being appropriately uplifting for modern audiences.
Everyone is the same as they were before. Charlie Brown is still a good soul with the worst luck possible for any human. Linus is still the thumb-sucking, blanket-clinging wise sage. Sally is still the immature little sister that stalks Linus, her "sweet baboo". Lucy is still the cruel girl that stalks Schroeder, tries to say that she's prettier than any other girl in school, pulls the football away from Charlie Brown, works as a five-cent psychiatrist that has no idea what she's talking about, and wants to slug every other boy or dog in town. Schroeder still practically worships Beethoven and is tormented by Lucy's obsessive crush on him. Pig-Pen is still constantly dirty and unrecognizable without his dirt cloud (which has made him something of a girl magnet among some girls). Peppermint Patty is still the aggressive tomboy with the crush on Charlie Brown, or "Chuck" as she calls him. Marcie is still Peppermint Patty's quiet sidekick that calls her "Sir" and also has a crush on Charlie Brown, or "Charles" as she calls him, albeit a much more understated one. All the adults still speak in trombone sounds and are always offscreen. Snoopy is still an author, a World War I flying ace, and Joe Cool. Woodstock is still Snoopy's sidekick bird. The only major difference is that it's in a 2.5D traditional animation/CGI hybrid. The plot isn't too out of the ordinary for Peanuts stories. A new girl simply referred to as "The Little Red-Haired Girl" comes to town, and Charlie Brown is instantly smitten with her, but lacks the courage to talk to her. He tries many times to talk to her or appear more confident to impress her, and Snoopy often acts as a wingman of sorts, but none of his attempts at success last until the very end, when The Little Red-Haired Girl says that she likes him anyway because of his genuine and kind soul. Meanwhile, Snoopy writes a story about himself as the pilot of the Sopwith Camel (but, even in his fantasy sequences, flying his doghouse like a plane) rescuing his love interest meant as a response to The Little Red-Haired Girl, a girl-dog named Fifi (voiced by the only major star in the cast, Kristin Chenoweth, and even then she's not so much voiced, per se, so much as she simply makes more feminine versions of Snoopy's sounds) from his mortal enemy, the Red Baron.
The animation was some of the best animation I've seen in an animated movie so far this year, and quite the step up from the generic CGI from most of Blue Sky Studios' productions. The storyline isn't overly risk-taking, aside from Charlie Brown actually getting a happy ending for once, but works as a semi-modern Peanuts story nonetheless. The writing has humor that represents all of the traits of the characters present. One of the best quotes is when Sally is happy to be at the end of the school year, thinking that after the end of this day, she'll never have to go back to school ever again, but Charlie Brown reminds her that they still have six more years of grammar school, then four more years of high school, then four more years of college (even though there are younger and older siblings, everyone's in the same grade for simplicity's sake). Because of Sally's poor math skills, after adding all of those up, she says, "Oh no! That's thirty-seven more years of school!" Technically, she's close to right, seeing as how the Peanuts gang never ages in their official media, so therefore, they'll be in elementary school forever. The music, while it may have been oversaturated with pop music that seems out-of-place for Peanuts, and by Meghan Trainor, no less, whose musical style in most of her music that's not in this movie is more than a little annoying, still sounds much better than some may have thought, and actually works well alongside Vince Guaraldi's classic jazz soundtrack from the old specials.
While I doubt it will receive the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, which will probably go to Disney/Pixar's Inside Out (if you've seen Inside Out, you'd know why it will win that award), at least from a perspective of personal enjoyment and nostalgia, it was my favorite movie of the year, animated or otherwise, and shows that, when the right people are working on their movies, Blue Sky Studios can reach similar levels of storytelling quality to Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and DreamWorks Animation. So what's next for the Peanuts gang? Will Blue Sky make more movies about them? Will they work on any future TV specials for the characters? Only time will tell, but for now, it's good to have the characters back in a major capacity such as this. 9.7/10. Thanks for reading this blog, and I'll be back next week with probably a review of Spectre, the newest James Bond film.
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