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We’re still in December, and
there’s more Christmas material for me to look into. For this shorty, I’m covering another special
from the Peanuts franchise. Like another special I covered, I feel that this one also is not up to the greatness of the
iconic Christmas special from 1965. It’s
especially felt since this one frequently airs after "A Charlie Brown Christmas" to fill up the hour-long timeslot. Nevertheless, I still find it quite enjoyable
by Peanuts standards. This is:
Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales
(December 8, 2002)
In many
respects, it would be appropriate to also refer to this special as “It’s
Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown 2.”
Like the former special, there’s no specific story. It’s just its own set of short vignettes
about different Peanuts characters doing something Christmas-related. However, I feel like the setup is done better
here because you already know that it’s what you’re going to get going in. Not only is it given away by the emphasis on
Christmas tales in the title, but each segment is introduced by a Christmas
card opening. This way, each segment is
able to exist as its own story and flow at its own pace. It still has the issue of going against the
original classic’s message against commercialism which severely holds it back
from greatness. I can’t be too hard on
that since really that should be expected going into a special marketing
Peanuts characters doing popular Christmas activities.
In addition
to this, the special also has a few drawbacks inherent with Peanuts specials
released at this time, in the early 2000s.
It was just in the advent of the death of the original creator, Charles
Schultz. A lot of the
creative punch and enthusiasm going into the specials had been phased
out. The characters seemed to fall flat
a bit through struggling to get mileage out of their one dominant trait. The same could be said for much of the
stories through stretching out common plot threads of the franchise for much
longer than necessary. Maybe it’s just
me through being thrown off by weaker vocal performances than the old days and
an art style feeling a bit too modern for the tone of the franchise. I guess these feelings will be clearer if I
were to look at other specials from this era.
The
question for here is, does this setup work better for when a special consists
of many short segments as opposed to one long story? Let’s find out by looking at each individual
Christmas tale:
The first
tale is in all honesty, among the more directionless ones in this special. It’s just 2-3 minutes of Snoopy just goofing
around, but set to a Christmas theme. He
starts off ice skating while trying to convince Lucy to make him her
partner. Then he’s suddenly posing as a
salvation Santa where he’s met up by the Van Pelt kids and plays accordion. Finally, he appears back home where through
trying to be friendly with the cat next door, he ends up getting a Christmas
tree cutout in his doghouse. It’s all
right for a decent laugh, but for how thrown together this segment seems, it’s
far from Snoopy at his best.
Linus’
segment fares a little better. It too
consists of radically different subjects, but they both make up for that for
being very humorous and have a common theme of writing letters. It starts with him writing a letter to Santa
Claus while trying to sound polite. Humor consists of admirable objections from
Lucy and a punchline about deciding to ask for Santa’s catalogue.
The rest of the segment has an interesting
setup. He meets a girl in class who has
a strange fascination with changing her name everyday. This makes a normally simple task of sending
her a Christmas card very difficult. It
too comes with a funny punchline where Linus sends the girl her card which is
returned to him because the name and address don’t exist. When asked the reasonable question why she
even bothers with this difficult person, he flatly responds that she fascinates
him.
It’s funny for boiling down to the
basics of why kids keep up with crushes, but it’s a little disappointing that
the segment just stops instead of ends.
It would’ve been great to hear exactly what that girl’s deal is.
This leads
us to what Sally gets up to in her segment.
I often get some decent enjoyment from her mixed up approaches to
certain things, and that continues to be the case here. It’s shown right at the start when she writes
a letter in complete belief that the famous Christmas gift-giver is Samantha
Claus. Charlie Brown humors her a bit to
get her to come up with oddball reasons why Samantha has a red suit and white
beard. Also hilarious is Sally’s mood
swings through going from having a tirade of making a fool of herself to calm
and happy when she sees Charlie Brown wrapping her Christmas present.
We once again hop from topic to topic without
proper transitions, but it’s all made good through how enjoyable Sally makes
everything we get. There’s a short scene
of her attempts at being religious. She draws stamps of shepherd bunnies for
Christmas cards, and wants to know the name of the star the wise men followed
to Bethlehem.
After that comes another
prominent subplot of her “falling down” a Christmas tree instead of cutting one
down. The funny thing about this move is
that her practice of just staring at a tree really hard to make it fall down
actually works. It also shows for all
her quirks, she’s capable of being reasonable.
The deal was that she could take the tree from the yard of the kid it
belonged to if it really fell down. Even
though it does, Sally does feel bad for how upset the kid is about her taking
the tree. It all works out though when
he lets her have it anyway.
Then in one
of the smoother topic transitions, a scene of Charlie Brown and Sally
decorating the tree leads to a talk about fruit in stockings. This is followed by a cute ending gag where
Sally ensures to get lots of fruit by nailing many little stockings to the
wall. It’s all fun stuff from her for
sure.
Of all the
segments here, this one seems to be the most focused. It may seem like a random scene collection,
but they work for covering one certain theme.
Lucy has the reputation for being the bossiest of the group with a lot
of attitude issues. As the first moments
of this segment show, she’s setting out to make better attempts at being good
at Christmas.
Of course that’s easier
said than done with her trademark attitude being as strong as ever regardless. She calls foul at Charlie Brown’s suggestion
of being nice all year round instead of just at Christmas. She goes through her usual shtick of leaning
around while Schroeder plays piano and bugs him about buying her stuff. Lucy’s biggest role in this segment is
constantly trying to coax Linus into doing what she wants. There’s humorous banter as she has him write
an overly formal letter to Santa, and has nonsensical logic for how the Bible
says Linus absolutely must get her a gift.
Apparently the single mention of the word “sister” is the deciding
factor.
While it’s not decided how she
feels about her attempts at being good for Christmas, the audience can see that
Lucy has a peculiar way of appeasing.
Now for the
last segment of the special from the usual titular character of the franchise,
Charlie Brown. In a way, it works as a
segment to end the special, through leading up to Christmas morning. The beginning doesn’t seem like the best fit
for that though with Charlie Brown writing a Christmas card for the Little Red-Haired Girl
which is never brought up again. I do
give it credit for revealing the name “sweet baboo” as something exclusive to
his whole family and not just Sally.
The
rest of the segment is just of simple preparations for Christmas Day on the
night before. There’s leaving something
for Santa, Sally asking about sugar plums, and her comedic way of waking her
big brother up for the big day. Now,
Christmas Day itself isn’t all that triumphant here. It just serves as a basis for a sight gag of
Snoopy in a weird Christmas sweater and Woodstock ending up with a toy bike
that was meant for Sally. Still, all
this is very funny even if it’s nothing too special and that Charlie Brown is
outclassed entertainment-wise in his own segment.
There’s no
denying that special exists for no other reason than to give people more Peanuts
Christmas scenes after A Charlie Brown
Christmas ends. While it’s no secret
that it falls flat compared to that classic work, it becomes much more
enjoyable if you go in knowing what to expect.
While the production values with bland visuals and less passionate than
average voice actors prevent it from being one of the best specials, it’s fine
seeing them in short segments. Each is
their own little story that doesn’t go longer than it needs to. Furthermore, even if just seeing Peanuts
characters enjoy Christmas isn’t poignant without a big lesson to take from it,
it’s plenty enjoyable anyway. Plus,
making its vignette driven setup better known puts it over “It’s Christmastime
Again” at least. There’s really no need
to watch it when the more iconic Peanuts Christmas special is over, but if you
choose to, you’ll get the right amount of Christmas cheer out of it.
Recommended
That’s it for this ‘Toon
Reviews Shorty. Until the next one:
Stay Animated Folks,
And Merry CHRISTMAS!
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