Slated for release in 2015, the movie is (at least so far) being billed as, "Peanuts: by Schulz"...a worthy sign that some semblance of the original comic strip will be preserved. I can only hope 'Schulz' will not feel compelled to roll over in his grave when it is released.
The minute-long trailer seems inoffensive enough, lending Charlie Brown and Snoopy familiar mannerisms that hold true to the old days. It even sports that Vince Guaraldi piano jam that has pretty much become the Peanuts theme - further evidence that something will remain of the original, that all that made Peanuts great in the past will not be snuffed out in one bloated, belch-like endeavor to make it palatable to a new audience.
Hey, it happens. In the past 15 years, I've twice bore witness to a grievous bastardization of another childhood favorite. Jim Carrey and Mike Myers were each, in turn, unleashed on Dr. Seuss in the early 2000s, with, in my opinion, disastrous results.
I have nothing against Jim Carrey or Mike Myers, in their element. But to try creating a mash-up of their comedic shticks and the sweet, dreamy trip of Dr. Seuss - whose books allowed the imaginations of readers to do the walking for three generations - in other words, to turn the heady unraveling of a rainy day when the Cat in the Hat pays a visit into a particle stream of Austin Powers-caliber fart jokes and 'peeing in the fountain' sight gags, was the most horrible fucking thing I have ever seen on the big screen.
This, from someone who endured Bulworth and Dr. T and the Women...
I'd give anything for that not to happen with this incarnation of Peanuts. And I am especially defensive of Peanuts, because I'm especially fond of Peanuts.
There are two ways this new movie can go, as I see it It will either corrupt the franchise entirely, desperate to keep viewers' attention by updating the characters, turning them too savvy, or too snarky, or just needlessly too modern (imagine Charlie Brown an uber depressive emo...Schroeder an arrogant hipster...Linus, a David Spade-type know-it-all, with an asshole comment about everything...)
Or...
It will go the saccharine, river-of-sugar route, which would be equally as untrue to Schulz's vision. The Peanuts comic strip conceived and churned out dutifully for 50 years by Charles Schulz, almost until his death in early 2000, was not saccharine. Too often, it gets dismissed / remembered as such, by people who are not digging deep enough, or are distracted by some of the more prominent totems of the Peanuts world: sayings like Happiness is a Warm Puppy, for instance, or what's always been perceived as an overstated Christian message (although that itself would seem to be misunderstood...)
Instead, Peanuts was intended to humanize kids, to put intelligent, and yes, sometimes pensive thoughts in the mouths of children. It was first and foremost a comic strip, so its main charge was providing the requisite daily dose of gag relief, but it was philosophical too, even a little dark once in a while. Not the overwrought and ridiculous 'dark' populated by vampires (and mascara-streaked emos...) that makes for flashy Saturday night programming on the WB; rather, the plainly dressed sort of dark, sporting a clean haircut and sensible shoes, that visits ordinary people at odd moments in this life, usually vulnerable moments. Peanuts was, at times, tuned into the kind of thoughts that can draw shadows out from the corners of any room and turn any day pensive, without there really being a reason.
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POTENT - Throughout its 50 year run, Peanuts sought to humanize kids, to portray them as thoughtful individuals, and did so without coddling them or pandering to them. This particular panel, which I clipped from a newspaper page in the mid 1990s, is perhaps the best print evidence that Peanuts does not deserve to remembered as saccharine.
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The very best example of Peanuts' complexity might be Charlie Brown's opening line in the now classic 1965 Christmas special: "I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy. I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel ... I just don't understand Christmas I guess. I like getting presents, and sending Christmas cards, and decorating trees and all that, but I'm still not happy. I always end up feeling depressed."
Numerous animated specials followed that one, throughout the 1970s and 80s. Some were better than others; and some, admittedly, went out of their way to capture what was popular in the day, in the very manner I'm hoping will not be the case here. (1983's It's FlashBeagle, Charlie Brown leaps to mind...) But most were drawn from storylines in the comic strip, and nearly all bore a sampling, at least, of the intimate brand of intelligence and melancholy that sets the strip, which at its peak ran in over 2,500 newspapers, apart. I remember watching She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown when I was nine, and really being moved by the end scene, where, after a tape malfunctions, Woodstock saves the day by whistling music so that Peppermint Patty can complete her skating routine. The tune he whistles? O Mio Babbino Caro.
An odd yet fitting choice for a children's program. There was (is) something lovely about the scene, which I just cannot see working now. Kids today either have to be shouted at, or completely inoculated from reality, from themselves, from their 'pensive thoughts'.
Maybe I'm wrong...about what kids respond to these days and what lengths this new movie will go to get and keep their attention. Seriously, I hope I am. But either way, it's been proven time and time again that when someone great passes, that which made them great should probably be left to pass with them.
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