Movie Review: The Peanuts Movie

Thanks to a long-running comic strip and a series of classic animated features such as It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and A Charlie Brown Christmas, the Peanuts gang will always enjoy a special place in the hearts of many families. But what happens when the instantly recognizable style of cartoonist Charles Schulz gets re-imagined for a modern audience?

With so many terrible reboots of classic children’s properties, The Peanuts Movie could easily have been an unmitigated disaster. Instead, director Steve Martino and producer Paul Feig have struck a perfect balance between modern, CG-rendered visuals and the classic look and feel of the Peanuts comic strip. The result is the most beautiful representation of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the gang that has ever been realized in any medium.

But looks aren’t everything, and one of the reasons we love the classic Peanuts cartoons is because of their charming combination of warmth and humor. When the project was first announced, Feig assured fans that Charlie Brown would not “twerk, wear a baseball cap backwards or try to ‘break the Internet’ a la Kim Kardashian,” and true to his word, every character in The Peanuts Movie behaves exactly as you would expect them to.

Lucy is still offering psychiatric advice and trying to catch the eye of musical genius Schroeder, Linus still carries his blanket, and Charlie Brown is still working up the courage to talk to the Little Red-Haired Girl. The film touches on nearly every major piece of the Peanuts mythology, right down to Marcie addressing Peppermint Patty as “sir,” and Snoopy’s ongoing war against the Red Baron as his alter-ego, the World War I Flying Ace.

The voice work here is universally solid, with every performer offering a near-perfect rendition of the time-honored personalities of each character – with one notable exception. Rather than hire a new actor to offer their interpretation of an iconic role, the filmmakers used archived recordings of the late Bill Melendez to provide the voices for Snoopy and Woodstock. It’s a touching and heartwarming tribute, and the film is that much better for it.

While The Peanuts Movie could easily serve as a great introduction for younger audiences who might not be familiar with Charlie Brown and his friends, there’s also a cornucopia of nostalgia here that longtime fans will appreciate. Other children’s films may be littered with toilet humor and references to modern technology, but you won’t find any iPhones or video game consoles here – instead, you’ll get a wholesome, family-friendly experience that hearkens back to a bygone era, where the most villainous thing that happened onscreen was refusing to let Charlie Brown kick a football.

Ah, the good ol’ days.