"Peanuts" review thread
- Thread starter Flying Spaghetti Monster
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No, I think that comics and animation tend to be folded in with SF/fantasy because most of the best-known examples fall into that category. Although, granted, that is confusing medium with genre. I was being semi-facetious with my rationalization above; I agree that Peanuts probably makes more sense in the general TV & Media category.
^ And, here it is! Praise! 
Right?! I'm still waiting for Bill Watterson to explain where the black pads on Hobbes' paws went. They appeared in early strips, so they're canon!
Thank you for moving it! As for the film.. there were so many little things about the comic that the movie brought back. Like Snoopy trying to steal Linus' blanket. I think Peppermint Patty's introduction was just hilarious. They got everyone so right. Like how Marcie called Peppermint Patty "Sir." Or that the teacher's name is Mrs. Othmar. I did notice that Franklin is going to their school.. when before he was quite far away. But, like any adapted screenplay, they had to take charge of the story and write efficient scenes. For every little bit that they changed there were five things that were pleasantly the same.
I thought the film was excellent. Funny, sweet, heartfelt. I loved the CGI, too. It did a fantastic job at providing something new, while maintaining enough of a sense of the classic animation that it still felt like a Peanuts movie.
As for whether or not the "twist" at the end is fitting ... to me, it really isn't all that different than Charlie Brown winning the class (and school) spelling bee in A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Or helping save the day in Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown, or any other number of things that, occasionally, go right for him.
And, speaking of A Boy, the new film is a much more complete film, with a lot less filler - Snoopy's adventures are at least thematically connected to Charlie Brown's story - than the classic
As for whether or not the "twist" at the end is fitting ... to me, it really isn't all that different than Charlie Brown winning the class (and school) spelling bee in A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Or helping save the day in Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown, or any other number of things that, occasionally, go right for him.
And, speaking of A Boy, the new film is a much more complete film, with a lot less filler - Snoopy's adventures are at least thematically connected to Charlie Brown's story - than the classic
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Well, that makes sense. At the time Franklin was introduced, racial integration would've been less common -- and, of course, Charlie Brown's neighborhood had been uniformly white for the previous 18 years of the strip. That's the sort of thing that it makes sense to update.
I'm not sure it had anything to do with integration; Franklin went to school across town with Peppermint Patty and Marcie.
The idea of showing the Little Red-Haired Girl's face doesn't bother me. It's okay to develop a classic property-- carefully-- and I don't see that as a development that's antithetical to the core concept in any way. They could even add new characters. It would be different if they showed an adult's face, which I don't think was ever done in any strip or animation, because that would take us out of the kids' level. Having Franklin and Peppermint Patty and Marcie going to the same school bugs me slightly-- but maybe there was a school closing and merger since the last time we looked in on these characters. Things like that happen even in the time-frozen world of a comic strip.
He's in the sequel, What's Happening, Charlie Brown!!.
Maybe it's just been a while since I've seen/read much Charlie Brown/Peanuts but I don't recall Marcie and PP going to a different school than Charlie and the others.
"Peanuts" is very respectful to the source material- very sweet movie.
The backgrounds were beautiful, and the use of the Schulz strip art, in thought bubbles, was very nice.
Snoopy flying scenes were fantastic in 3d.
It was nice to hear so many kids laughing in the audience--nice to see kids don't need fart & belching jokes, and spastic characters to be entertained! There's hope.
The only thing missing was the philosophical elements that was an earmark of Charlie Brown.
Go see it!
The backgrounds were beautiful, and the use of the Schulz strip art, in thought bubbles, was very nice.
Snoopy flying scenes were fantastic in 3d.
It was nice to hear so many kids laughing in the audience--nice to see kids don't need fart & belching jokes, and spastic characters to be entertained! There's hope.
The only thing missing was the philosophical elements that was an earmark of Charlie Brown.
Go see it!
I'm not talking so literally, but more about what the approach symbolizes about the respective generations. In 1968, it would've been more likely that a white child would've had to go far afield from his own neighborhood to meet a black child, as Charlie Brown did (after all, the strip was mainly from his viewpoint). These days, at least in most urban or suburban areas, children of different ethnicities are more likely to interact regularly. So it makes sense for a modern Peanuts to treat Franklin as a member of the core community from the start rather than a visiting outsider. It's simply adjusting to the times.
They actually met at the beach, as I recall. And it turned out that they lived close but not too close, on the other side of Charlie Brown's town. He attended the same school as Peppermint Patty and Marcie.
I'm thinking, perhaps, that in this version of Peanuts, due to school consolidation they all attend the same school.
It is problematic that Linus and Lucy are the same age and in the same class, though. The whole point of Linus is that he's younger than the other characters but he's actually the smartest.
Well, one could argue that everything about this movie as taking place in one of the decades that Schultz worked on the strip.. notice the use pf landlines and the fact that these kids don't ever pull out cell phones.
I have more of an issue of everyone being the same age than having Franklin and PP attend the school, but maybe they have a few classes together for standardized testing and book reports. We only do see a few days at the school.
Also I thought in the strip Charlie Brown met Franklin at camp.
I have more of an issue of everyone being the same age than having Franklin and PP attend the school, but maybe they have a few classes together for standardized testing and book reports. We only do see a few days at the school.
Also I thought in the strip Charlie Brown met Franklin at camp.
What about Sally? I think she was even younger than Linus, and was introduced as a baby.
No, they just recently reran those strips online. It was at the beach. I think that CB lost his beach ball to the surf and Franklin found it.
I should have more clear. By "other characters," I meant the Charlie Brown, Lucy, Schroeder cohort. And, of course, Rerun is younger than all of them.
Technically, Schroeder should be the same age as Linus rather than Charlie Brown as he was introduced as a baby, with his Beethoven addiction already present. At some point in the 1950s, though, he was aged up from the Linus/Sally group to the Charlie Brown/Lucy group.
What's interesting about the Peanuts characters is that they weren't perpetually ageless, but just aged really slowly. IIRC, Charlie Brown was about three when the strip started in 1950, and by the '80s he was maybe eight and a half or nine. And of course Linus, Schroeder, Sally, and eventually Rerun were introduced as babies and then got older. But I guess they didn't age consistently.
And of course they went through an annual cycle the seasons in real time -- Halloween and Christmas every year, going back to school in the fall, skating in the winter, flying kites in the spring, etc. -- even though it took them five or six years on average to get a year older. And of course there were topical references that kept pace with reality -- name drops of contemporary baseball stars, stories about the Moon landing, things like that. So they were moving through time much faster than they were aging. It's a lot like Marvel Comics time. Of course, that was typical of comic strip characters, but usually they'd stay perpetually the same age while the seasons and holidays cycled through once a year. Calvin was six years old when he first met Hobbes and he was six years old when the strip ended a decade later, after nine or ten Christmases and nine or ten summer vacations. I'm not sure if Dennis the Menace or Little Orphan Annie or Billy from The Family Circus ever aged either. But the Peanuts characters did age very gradually, which was unusual.
And of course they went through an annual cycle the seasons in real time -- Halloween and Christmas every year, going back to school in the fall, skating in the winter, flying kites in the spring, etc. -- even though it took them five or six years on average to get a year older. And of course there were topical references that kept pace with reality -- name drops of contemporary baseball stars, stories about the Moon landing, things like that. So they were moving through time much faster than they were aging. It's a lot like Marvel Comics time. Of course, that was typical of comic strip characters, but usually they'd stay perpetually the same age while the seasons and holidays cycled through once a year. Calvin was six years old when he first met Hobbes and he was six years old when the strip ended a decade later, after nine or ten Christmases and nine or ten summer vacations. I'm not sure if Dennis the Menace or Little Orphan Annie or Billy from The Family Circus ever aged either. But the Peanuts characters did age very gradually, which was unusual.
I generally guestimate the ages of Charlie Brown, Shermy, Patty, and Violet as four at the start of Peanuts in 1950, which would put Charlie Brown at about ten by the end of the series. But you can make the argument for three in 1950 since Lucy started out as a barely verbal toddler, so she's probably about two at the beginning, and making Charlie Brown three would keep them roughly the same age.
Fortunately, Gocomics is running the early strips as "Peanuts Begins," so I was able to go back through them to remind myself why I thought Charlie Brown started out at age 3. The strip began on October 2, 1950. This strip from October 30 shows Charlie Brown having a birthday, and this strip from November 2 has him say he's four years old. So technically he was three years old when he first appeared, though that was only true for the first four weeks of the strip.
Interestingly, in those early weeks, the strip is mainly about two other kids who would later be identified as Shermy and Patty (not Peppermint), plus an early, far more doglike version of Snoopy. Charlie Brown was more of a supporting character. However, for the first several weeks of the strip, he was the only character given a name.
(And I'm a little annoyed that Gocomics has colorized these strips that were originally in black and white. Same with the more recent strips. Of course, it was only the Sunday strips that were in color. What's troubling is that I see the occasional comment on the site from readers who assume the colors were there originally and who question "Schulz's" color choices.)
Interestingly, in those early weeks, the strip is mainly about two other kids who would later be identified as Shermy and Patty (not Peppermint), plus an early, far more doglike version of Snoopy. Charlie Brown was more of a supporting character. However, for the first several weeks of the strip, he was the only character given a name.
(And I'm a little annoyed that Gocomics has colorized these strips that were originally in black and white. Same with the more recent strips. Of course, it was only the Sunday strips that were in color. What's troubling is that I see the occasional comment on the site from readers who assume the colors were there originally and who question "Schulz's" color choices.)
Yeah, good point. Peppermint Patty and Franklin were ways to bring more contemporary '60s elements to the strip, so their neighborhood may well have been envisioned as somewhat different from the core neighborhood, which really drew heavily from Schulz's own youth in the late 1920s/early '30s.
Whoa. Linus and Lucy are in the same class? And Charlie Brown and Sally as well? It is very unusual for non-twin siblings to be in the same grade, to say the least!
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