Fifty years ago this month, you had the option of seeing the latest Peanuts movie, Snoopy, Come Home, brought to you by the same production team that created the popular TV specials that ran on CBS for so many years.
The Journal's well-known movie reviewer, Hugh Gallagher, didn't think too much of the movie, however and pulls no punches in his review. When it comes to a movie featuring lovable Charlie Brown and Snoopy, it almost seems blasphemous for a movie critic to say in so many words: "It stinks."
In his review, Gallagher notes, "The movie is too long for the thin plot and most of the fill material is very boring. It would be hard for a child not to squirm around a lot during this film." He notes that the music, created by the same composing team that worked on Mary Poppins, is "banal and poorly performed." And Gallagher adds that "the action is sluggish and the "Peanuts" pearls of wisdom fall very flat sometimes."
Good grief! I wonder what the corporate suits in charge of the Peanuts moneymaking machine would have thought of those observations?
Anyway, we never saw any of the Peanuts movies in the theater. My siblings and I were out of the target audience range by then. (I was a year away from entering high school.) We weren't too interested in Walt Disney pictures either.
We were too busy watching John Wayne movies at Amherst Theatre.
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Peanuts has been a regular topic on this blog.
3 comments:
I wonder if Mr. Gallagher actually saw the film, or cribbed his review from a Good Key comic? Feh.
I've always considered anything beyond the 1965 Charlie Brown Christmas to be pretty lousy.
In point of fact, I don't like C.B.C. very much. Except for the snappy dance scene where everyone's doing the armless-Fruge and the dust keeps billowing from Pigpen.
I suppose I blame it all on Lucy. She's bad enough in the strip. That voice, on T.V.
Lucy... I. Just. Can't.
I liked the first three or four TV specials, including the almost forgotten baseball-themed one ("Charlie Brown's All-Stars") that hasn't been shown in years. I really enjoyed the Vince Guaraldi musical scores, and would tape the specials with my reel to reel tape recorder. I can still play one of them – "He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown" – in my head!
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