“The Peanuts we love, in glorious 3D!”
Everything we know about The Peanuts is all compacted into a feature length movie. We follow Charlie and the gang through a few days in the lives. A new girl has moved in across the street and Charlie instantly falls in love. What will happen to our favorite characters? Let’s find out in my review of The Peanuts Movie.
Winter is upon The Peanuts. With a new season approaching, a new girl is moving in as well. It turns out that she is also a new student in The Peanuts class. The new kid in question is a red-haired girl, who Charlie Brown instantly falls for. As days go by, Charlie works up the courage to talk to her. To impress her, he learns to dance, helped his sister during the talent show, and takes the full responsibility of a joint book report. At almost every turn, he ends up running away from any contact with her. To his surprise, she chose him to be pen-pals with, but he has no idea why.
*** Spoilers ***
By the end of the school year, down on his luck, Charlie has one last chance to let her know how he feels before she goes to camp. Like every love movie, he rushes to her before she’s gone forever. By a stroke of luck, he catches up to her and finally works up the courage to talk to her. He asks her, why of all people, she chose him to be pen-pals with. She explains that because of his actions throughout the season, she appreciated the person that he is.
In the beginning, I appreciated the movie for what it was, but as it went on, I started to get tired of watching it. This is because it felt like I was simply just watching an extended episode of The Peanuts with 3 dimensional graphics. It didn’t feel like there was an overall story going on, but a collection of classic Peanuts stories strung together. The movie pulled me back in when it started paying attention to Charlie’s quest to talk to the Red-Haired Girl. I regained interest because to an extent, I could relate to Charlie Brown.
The art style turned out to be very good. They managed to translate how the characters present themselves in the classic cartoon. It worked great in 3D. The only thing that bothered me though was how they made Charlie and Linus. Specifically because they have hair in the form of individual lines. Everyone else with full hair looked good though. I was especially bothered at how Charlie’s hair was connected to his head at one end. You should look up the trailer or a screenshot, it’s weird!
Anyone can watch this movie. You can be an adult who grew up with the cartoon, or a kid of today’s generation who know nothing about it. This series really is timeless.