The Peanuts Movie

Grade: B

As somebody who plays the piano and has had a thing for red-headed girls in the past, I can identify with certain characters from the Peanuts comic strip. The Peanuts Movie does a fine job of retaining the thoughtful charm and heart we have come to expect from this Charles Schulz creation. Not everybody gets equal air time; Sally and Schroeder are unfortunately brushed aside to make way for bits such as several interminable Red Baron/fantasy sequences. I never much cared for Snoopy’s Walter Mitty-like tangents, and here is no exception. At the center of it all is Charlie Brown. He’s the original Gaylord Focker – a well-meaning guy who just wants to please and works so hard to do so, but his good intentions continuously backfire in all the worst possible ways. The movie, like at least one of the musicals based on these characters, does not have a traditional plot with a beginning, middle, and end. There is no real through-line here. It plays like a series of comic strips, with numerous tiny stories. If you’re writing a script based on Peanuts and follow this formula, you can end it anytime. As there is no real climax or denouement, it doesn’t matter where or when you conclude it. That said, I was satisfied with how this film left us. Things finally seemed to be looking up for Charlie, at the moment. And as he said in his kite-flying advice to a kid at the park, they kept it simple.

Grade: B