Whenever something is “reimagined” or “rebooted”, fans of the original material usually cry out in agony. In this day and age, whenever something timeless is brought back into the limelight, it will more often than not be updated to be more marketable to the current youth demographic.
So, like the rest of the world, when I heard the announcement that Schultz’s timeless comic “Peanuts” was getting a modern era movie adaptation, I was pretty upset. But keeping an open mind, I walked into the theater with not many expectations. 90 minutes later, I left with a huge smile on my face; surprisingly “The Peanuts Movie” not only kept the feel and essence of the original comics/cartoons, but the few things that it updated worked toward the film’s advantage and not against it.
Normally with reboots, one would make a list of all the hor- rible “additions” made to the source material, but with “ e Peanuts Movie” there is only one additional major change: the animation. is one change only helps the movie to become even more loveable. Blue Sky Studio (“Ice Age”, “Horton Hears a Who”) is the team be- hind this visual wonder.
Watching it as a fan of the Peanuts, I was surprised about what they did to keep it faithful while adding a little modern touch. It is animated in three dimensions but all the characters move like it still exists within a 2D space. The movement of the characters is animated in a way that they replicated the jolty hand drawn animation of the original cartoons, and all the faces are ridged like they were drawn by Schultz himself. This mixes surprisingly well the gorgeous newer animation, making it a beautifully unique lm.
“The Peanuts Movie” does everything right from having actual children voice all the characters to the backgrounds never moving when the characters walk. The town of the Peanuts still exists in its original time period, no cellphones or internet, but cord phones and children playing outside.
The creators went so far to be like the original material that no new lines of dialogue were even recorded for Snoopy and Woodstock, all their iconic sounds were taken from archives of the original actor Bill Melendez.
With a simple story and all the characters still true to their iconic selves, “The Peanuts Movie” is a film that parents should take their kids to, especially if they grew up with the Peanuts themselves. The only people who won’t like this film are those who never liked the Peanuts in the first place. But to all those fans out there it is a fun, heart-warming film that everyone should see.
