The Peanuts Movie

I mentioned on Facebook yesterday that I watched The Peanuts Movie last night with my family, and so of course I have to write a review about it today. (Though, for the record, I also wanted to make sure to get this conversation down that started our viewing. I told the kids we were going to watch a movie.

Tomas: What movie?
Me: The Peanuts Movie. It’s supposed to be great.
DC: Why did they call it the Penis Movie?
Me: Peanuts. Peanuts!

It’s an important T in that title. Reminds me of this:

Anyway. The movie was pretty much awesome. I was impressed to see how well they transitioned the characters from the simple animation specials over to a full blown CGI film. In my head, there was no way they were going to pull that off, but in the end, it just worked.

The story is classic Charlie Brown and Snoopy. You’ve got all the main characters, Charlie Brown constantly doing the right thing and getting bad results from it, Snoopy and the Red Baron, Vince Guaraldi tunes trilling in the background. You name it. I worried that the hour and a half running time would drag on too long, but that didn’t end up being an issue either. The movie felt light and fun and innocent. So different from any other movie I can think of that’s come out recently.

One of the biggest differences was that there were no “adult references” hidden in the film, as opposed to so many other animated movies getting released these days. It didn’t try to entertain an adult crowd and a children crowd on two different levels: it just stuck to what it wanted to do, and it did it so well. The movie was actually rated G, for crying out loud. How many of those come out each year?

I was even more pleased to see the movie did well in the theaters (well over $100 million). I see so few movies in the theaters these days, not because I don’t want to, but because I generally just don’t have the time. But I know how important those theater numbers can be to a movie and a genre’s success. My hope is that more films like this get made because of that. I’d like some variety in the movies out there.

If you like the old Charlie Brown specials and you haven’t seen this movie yet, you owe it to yourself to sit down and watch it. I loved it from the beginning to the end. 5/5