Wednesday, November 11, 2015

The Peanuts Movie

I was so happy six months ago when I first saw the posters go up in theaters advertising the new Peanuts movie that was coming out this November. This meant that at long last I no longer had to try and figure out the mysterious dates the evil execs at CBS had planned to show their Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Christmas specials this year. I swear they purposely keep those things under double secret lock and key like Kevin Spacey does Justin Bieber’s gimp suit for whenever he decides to pop into London for a little professional consulting.

Now I know that I can in all likelihood I can probably go online and find these holiday specials whenever I want to but that’s not the point. The point is, whoever has control over the Peanuts kingdom needs to finally let it go so we can have more material; similar to what George Lucas did with Star Wars. Can you imagine if J.J. Abrams got a hold of this and decided to make Charlie Brown Mexican? And even worse, let George Lopez be the man behind his voice? We might have a second Civil War on our hands in this country.

Anyway, thankfully the guys behind Ice Age were given the opportunity to give us the next chapter for our down on his luck hero and I’m pleased to say that they did a solid job. All of your favorites are back and they each get a decent amount of screen time. The only thing they really did differently was tone down how much of a jerk Peppermint Patty is in today’s version versus that of the old school classics. Go back and watch the Thanksgiving special; she was like an ugly mix of Pepe’ le Pew and one of the Alpha Beta frat boys from Revenge of the Nerds.

The updated animation was phenomenal and all of the new people who were responsible for doing the characters’ voices sounded great. But the star of the show as always was Snoopy. A new girl moves to town and Charlie Brown sees this as an opportunity to wipe the slate clean. There will finally be someone in town who doesn’t know about all of his past failures: his never being able to fly a kite, his horrible career as a baseball pitcher, his limitations as a cook, and so on and so on.

The only thing is, he must somehow work up the nerve to talk to her. But he is convinced that the only way he can do so is by doing something spectacular. This is where Snoopy comes in. For 90 minutes he goes through an array of ways to help his shy friend overcome his anxiety, all the while poetically documenting what’s happening on his typewriter through the eyes of his alter ego, the Flying Ace.

This provides the movie’s coolest and funniest moments by far. Just looking at what the animation department was able to do with these scenes makes it worth the price of admission alone and it will definitely wake your kid up if their short term attention spans start to wane a bit.

I absolutely loved this film and I honestly think that there is something in it for everyone. And the fact that they paid Trombone Shorty a ton of money to do the adults’ voices is hilarious to me. I rate this movie as FRESH and I suggest that you see it with your family over Thanksgiving.



 

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