Friday, November 10, 2017

'Toon Reviews 8: Peanuts 1970 Specials Part 8


You’re a Good Sport Charlie Brown









This sports-themed special gives us a lot to offer, and when you put everything together, you honestly get a pretty great performance from the Peanuts characters.  You don’t even have to be a sports fan to enjoy it.  For one thing, the sports the special focuses on are new outlets for Peanuts to explore.  Usually, when it comes to sports, the ones that get the focus are baseball or football.  Here, we have two sports that are pretty out of the ordinary.  In the beginning of the special, we’re treated to a lengthy sequence involving tennis.  It includes memorable moments of fun with Snoopy battling a tennis ball pitching machine, Linus and Sally lamenting about how you can’t play tennis alone when they find the courts full, and Snoopy doing a tennis tournament with an unseen player, getting overly mad when he loses, and discovering that he lost to little Woodstock.  However, it’s his performance that leads us into the second prominent sport of the special, motocross.  You see, Snoopy’s status as an athlete gets the attention of Peppermint Patty who’s off recruiting kids to compete in a motocross race, and that race ultimately dominates the focus of the rest of the special.  The racers who get the most coverage are Peppermint Patty, who's majorly over-confident that she’ll be the winner, Snoopy posing as the Masked Marvel who shows willingness to do just about anything to win, including using the tennis ball pitching machine when he loses his bike, and Charlie Brown, whose performance practically makes this special.  We all know that the prominent aspect of Charlie Brown is that nothing can ever go right for him, so it’s easy to predict that him competing in this motocross race will end in disaster.  At first, the special never ceases to go out of its way to majorly put the odds against Charlie Brown winning.  He only has enough money to buy a ratty old motor bike, he wipes out with the Masked Marvel causing him to lose his helmet, forcing him to wear a pumpkin in its place, and has a lot more ground to cover than the other racers.  However, despite everything that happens, Charlie Brown just keeps on running the race and gets through all the other obstacles it comes with.  This strategy is especially effective when all the other racers, including Peppermint Patty, run into obstacles that force them to drop out.  Snoopy does put up a good fight, including going so far as to shoot tennis balls at the very kid who puts food in his bowl, but even with that Charlie Brown never stops putting up a good race.  Everything that happens leads to a big finish when the winner of the race turns out to be Charlie Brown.  I’m not joking.  Even after everything that stood in his way, and even with his bad reputation, it’s Charlie Brown who’s the big winner.  I, for one, feel that it’s just amazing that someone as unlucky as Charlie Brown is given a well-deserved victory since it goes on to show that even though it’s more likely to fail than succeed most of the time, things can still work out on occasion.  This message is especially apparent when the special ends with Charlie Brown going on to another sport confident as a result of his motocross win, even though an instance of the classic clothes-stripping baseball pitch gag foreshadows the usual failure.  Well, at least we have a reminder that even Charlie Brown isn’t a “total” failure.  There’s a lot of fun sports-related gags and nice excitement from the motocross race, and the fact that this is a rare instance where Charlie Brown wins something make this special one worth seeing.
Highly Recommended
If you think I’m getting a little too nice with the Peanuts specials this decade, I just want to let you know that this is the last time you’ll be seeing this particular rating in this post.
The Ranking
  1. There’s No Time for Love Charlie Brown
  2. It’s the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown
  3. You’re Not Elected Charlie Brown
  4. You’re a Good Sport Charlie Brown
  5. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
  6. Be My Valentine Charlie Brown
  7. Play it Again Charlie Brown
  8. It’s a Mystery Charlie Brown
Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next special, which is easily the most obscure of all Peanuts holiday specials and the last one to feature original music from Vince Guaraldi, "It's Arbor Day Charlie Brown."

If you would like to check out other Peanuts special reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

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