The Peanuts Movie: An Added Dimension
The computer-animated Peanuts movie that just happened to align with the comic strip's sixty-fifth anniversary seemed to get good notices, including some from people I supposed to be other Peanuts fans, but where I had bought a Blu-Ray of The Lego Movie I waited on The Peanuts Movie until I was surprised to see it turn up on Netflix. This could have had something to do with how, aware as I am of how "drawn animation" has helped shape perceptions and form mental images of the Peanuts characters, a good number of the TV specials and the four feature-length movies made years ago preceded me by enough that I'm only aware of their storylines through their storybook adaptations. It just might be that, with certain small elements condensed out along the way, they kept striking me as veering between "ultimately outright depressing" and "perhaps lightweight." (As a small example, when I finally had the chance to see "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," its concluding minutes didn't seem quite as bleak as the storybook had somehow left me thinking.) Still, I wound up taking a chance, and there were things about The Peanuts Movie I did get to mulling over.
The Peanuts characters have been translated into three dimensions before, and I had found the promotional images for this movie appealing. This might have had something to do with the way the eyes and mouths continued to more or less be "drawn" on. Once I had started watching, it didn't take long at all until the visuals seemed to "work"; in fact, the only thing that might have taken a bit of getting used to was a first sense of the characters snapping between the "profile" and "three-quarter views" they'd first been drawn in, even if that made me recall hearing the previous animation having wound up that way as well. "Mental images" using black-and-white strip linework definitely added something to the appeal for me, and even reminded me of the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World live-action movie, a film I perhaps might not have thought an awful lot about in recent years. It's easy enough to think of comments about how hard it is to precisely imitate Charles M. Schulz's style (although I can suppose counterexamples might yet be found); in some ways the computer animation might have worked that much better than the drawn animation.
The four previous movies, made back when TV specials were also appearing on a regular basis, all had stories that might be summed up with great brevity as including "trips." The Peanuts Movie might have been freer to stay close to home and instead build a story around the Little Red-Haired Girl moving into town. It was familiar enough that Charlie Brown would struggle, again and again, to work up the courage to talk to her, but there was a very large surprise at the end of the movie when, after a great deal of "never quite dwelling on her," she was up close and talking about how, even through all the catastrophes that kept getting in the way of Charlie Brown's various plans, he had come across as a good and decent person anyway. I did think of the TV special where the Little Red-Haired Girl had been drawn (from the storybook, she had seemed silent and perhaps sort of haughty) so that Charlie Brown could give her a kiss even after blowing a big football game thanks to Lucy's familiar ritual, only for this to send him into such reveries that he had woken up the next morning unable to remember any of it. I seemed to remember an interview with Schulz where he had wound up thinking that "a mistake," and the sense of the movie pushing into somewhere unexpected did sort of catch up to me. At the same time, though, I have to balance that against the thought that one more ending where the most Charlie Brown can do is not give up (there are times when I can wonder about the strip presenting him as someone who refuses to acknowledge his limitations but never seems able to do much to address them either) would have been "familiar" but not completely satisfying itself.
In any case, there was a sense that this was Charlie Brown's story, with Snoopy getting a story of his own (with the aid of his portable typewriter, which he just happened to find in a trash bin even if every house still had a rotary phone) and everyone else was a supporting character. I could miss the feeling of Linus as "Charlie Brown's only real friend" (although his stringy hair was represented in three dimensions in a way that sort of drew attention to itself, just as Charlie Brown's "forehead curl" could have been a little too literal as compared to the way it could have been interpreted at least at times when drawn in black and white), but Lucy having a small role did at least tone down the danger of her being interpreted as "the ultimate monster" some do seem to jump at. It at least got my attention that Patty showed some romantic interest in Pig-Pen (which reminded me of an odd impression of "unconventional shipping" between Peppermint Patty and him one year in the strip's history), and Shermy's own small dose of inside jokes did get me thinking others might also have impressions of him being the "one of the originals" characters who faded away the fastest.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/266660.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.
The Peanuts characters have been translated into three dimensions before, and I had found the promotional images for this movie appealing. This might have had something to do with the way the eyes and mouths continued to more or less be "drawn" on. Once I had started watching, it didn't take long at all until the visuals seemed to "work"; in fact, the only thing that might have taken a bit of getting used to was a first sense of the characters snapping between the "profile" and "three-quarter views" they'd first been drawn in, even if that made me recall hearing the previous animation having wound up that way as well. "Mental images" using black-and-white strip linework definitely added something to the appeal for me, and even reminded me of the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World live-action movie, a film I perhaps might not have thought an awful lot about in recent years. It's easy enough to think of comments about how hard it is to precisely imitate Charles M. Schulz's style (although I can suppose counterexamples might yet be found); in some ways the computer animation might have worked that much better than the drawn animation.
The four previous movies, made back when TV specials were also appearing on a regular basis, all had stories that might be summed up with great brevity as including "trips." The Peanuts Movie might have been freer to stay close to home and instead build a story around the Little Red-Haired Girl moving into town. It was familiar enough that Charlie Brown would struggle, again and again, to work up the courage to talk to her, but there was a very large surprise at the end of the movie when, after a great deal of "never quite dwelling on her," she was up close and talking about how, even through all the catastrophes that kept getting in the way of Charlie Brown's various plans, he had come across as a good and decent person anyway. I did think of the TV special where the Little Red-Haired Girl had been drawn (from the storybook, she had seemed silent and perhaps sort of haughty) so that Charlie Brown could give her a kiss even after blowing a big football game thanks to Lucy's familiar ritual, only for this to send him into such reveries that he had woken up the next morning unable to remember any of it. I seemed to remember an interview with Schulz where he had wound up thinking that "a mistake," and the sense of the movie pushing into somewhere unexpected did sort of catch up to me. At the same time, though, I have to balance that against the thought that one more ending where the most Charlie Brown can do is not give up (there are times when I can wonder about the strip presenting him as someone who refuses to acknowledge his limitations but never seems able to do much to address them either) would have been "familiar" but not completely satisfying itself.
In any case, there was a sense that this was Charlie Brown's story, with Snoopy getting a story of his own (with the aid of his portable typewriter, which he just happened to find in a trash bin even if every house still had a rotary phone) and everyone else was a supporting character. I could miss the feeling of Linus as "Charlie Brown's only real friend" (although his stringy hair was represented in three dimensions in a way that sort of drew attention to itself, just as Charlie Brown's "forehead curl" could have been a little too literal as compared to the way it could have been interpreted at least at times when drawn in black and white), but Lucy having a small role did at least tone down the danger of her being interpreted as "the ultimate monster" some do seem to jump at. It at least got my attention that Patty showed some romantic interest in Pig-Pen (which reminded me of an odd impression of "unconventional shipping" between Peppermint Patty and him one year in the strip's history), and Shermy's own small dose of inside jokes did get me thinking others might also have impressions of him being the "one of the originals" characters who faded away the fastest.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/266660.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.