I Want a Dog for Christmas Charlie Brown - 'Toon Reviews Shorty

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So it’s December once again, which opens up a few possibilities for material to look into for Christmas as additions to the MC Toon Reviews Shorty series.  I only have about a few reviews in mind this year though, so you won’t see much activity on this blog.  Nevertheless, any way to showcase the spirit of the biggest holiday of all is welcome in my way of thinking.  I don’t even have to think too hard for some of the things I plan to review.  Now, a few regular readers may recall that last year, I looked at some of the later Christmas specials of the Peanuts franchise.  Specifically, they were the Peanuts Christmas specials produced decades after the most iconic one “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.  As works that merely stood out for just being collections of random Christmas scenes with Peanuts characters, they easily fell flat compared to the main classic.  Their nature even went against the big lesson the first Peanuts Christmas special was trying to teach.  Enter the subject of this review, another Peanuts Christmas special released in the 2000s as a way to keep the Peanuts specials alive after the original creator had passed:

I Want a Dog for Christmas Charlie Brown

(December 9, 2003)

Unlike the two Peanuts Christmas specials that came before it, this one has the benefit of not being vastly different shorts strung together.  There’s a single cohesive story with a clear focus all the way through, thus living up to the promise of what the audience is in for.  Plus there’s the length of the special.  Most Peanuts specials only run for half an hour, but now and then, that length is doubled, making for a few standout entries in the franchise.  With this one going for about an hour and billing itself as a full-fledged Christmas story, you could go in expecting something great and in the Peanuts spirit.  This is why I’m sorry to say that I think this is actually the weakest of the Peanuts Christmas specials.

Yes, just because the story is more cohesive than it would be if it was just a series of unrelated vignettes, that doesn’t mean it’s executed well.  In fact, there’s a feeling all throughout the special that it exists to cash in on the Peanuts characters and the Christmas season and nothing else.  Given how this is the same franchise that advocated to not celebrate Christmas for commercial reasons, this is a pretty sorry state of affairs.  So many elements of the special hold it back from any true significance that ultimately leaves very little of an impression and ultimately doesn’t feel worth it.  For one thing, consider how deep and thought-provoking Peanuts specials tend to be even as they star a mere cast of children.  The conflicts they regularly go through are simple, but have a very mature approach that can hit the mark with adults just as much as kids.  Here, the main conflict is never able to transcend to all ages the way those in other Peanuts specials have been able to do, and that seems to be by nature of the story. 

This special stars Rerun Van Pelt, the little brother of Linus and Lucy, and the Peanuts character who’s actually a little kid.  His main goal in the special is to get a dog for Christmas so to not be lonely, and that’s it.  Of all the conflicts a Peanuts special has brought up, this has got to be one of the most weightless ones I’ve seen.  I don’t even see how this was the only way to execute this conflict as I can picture how more could have been done to represent Rerun’s desire for a dog.  Maybe deep monologues about his loneliness or a few smart-talking burns about the life he leads could help matters.  Actually, there is a little bit of the latter element.  Innocently calling out Linus and Lucy’s unusual quirks and giving a smart commentary of riding the back of his mother’s bicycle give creative insight to his youthful appearance.  Things like that make him feel at home in the Peanuts gang.  However, those moments are far and few between as the majority of the special presents Rerun as a simple little kid with simple desires and simple ways of asking for them.  Nothing really stands out about how he longs for a dog, and he goes through the same motions for much of the special.  Rerun says he wants a dog or wants Santa to bring one, someone like his mother or Lucy says a dog’s not worth it, and then he goes to hang out with Snoopy.  This same sequence happens so frequently that it’s hard to keep engaged, and most of Rerun’s moments as a standard little kid with hardly any weight to it do not help.

Considering that this is a Christmas special we’re looking into here, maybe the spirit of that holiday will bring this special up.  Believe it or not, it’s even hard to take this special seriously as something related to Christmas.  “It’s Christmastime Again” and “Christmas Tales” may have been haphazard vignettes strung together, but at least they felt like Christmas.  In this cohesive story, the holiday just feels kind of forced with the majority of the special not giving good enough reasons why it has to take place at this specific time of year.  It can honestly take place in any season without any holidays going on.  Any time there’s a short Christmassy scene like Snoopy playing in the snow or Lucy barging in on Schroeder playing Christmas tunes, they hardly gel with Rerun’s dog plot.  The sad part is that they’re the closest things the special comes to getting the right to be called a Christmas special, and they mostly feel like padding. 

By the way, the same can be true for an opening scene of Rerun talking about going to Paris with a girl in his class, and getting suspended because it’s considered harassment.  That’s something that raises a lot of questions about who’s right, but they’re never addressed and connect to the main body of the special even less.  This ends up being something that lingers on the mind for the rest of the special, and it didn’t even need to be there.  The story simply would have flowed better if Christmas vacation had just began when the special started and didn’t bring attention to the whole harassment thing.  As for the main part of the special, Christmas just doesn’t have nearly as much of a prominence as a story’s driving special of Rerun wanting a dog.  You can place the story in any other season, and nothing would really change.  Not even the constant mentions of Santa, the snowy settings, or the standalone scenes of Christmas shopping and merrymaking can change that way of thinking.

There are at least a few interesting things to take from this special, mainly if you’re a huge Peanuts fan.  In Rerun’s attempts to get a dog, he often goes over to Charlie Brown’s for the sole purpose of playing with Snoopy.  When Snoopy eventually grows bored with the boy’s ideas of fun, Charlie Brown tells Rerun about Snoopy’s family. 

This is a standout element because it’s very rare to hear anything about the famous beagle’s family outside of the original Peanuts comic strips.  Granted there isn’t much character to Snoopy’s brothers and sister apart from creative variations on the original design.  The sibling that stands out the most for the story is Spike.  Giving a much appreciated break from the monotonous setup, Rerun learns that he’s coming to visit, and plans on making Spike his new dog.  As far as Spike himself goes, I can safely say that he’s nowhere near as interesting as Snoopy.  Like the other siblings, the thing that stands out the most is his creative design as very scrawny, has a few chin hairs, and a hat suitable for his home in the desert.  While his desert mannerisms do offer some clever angles to lifestyle customs and holiday traditions, it’s not really enough to make Spike stand as a character. 

Nevertheless, Rerun is content enough with Spike being the best chance he has to get himself a dog.  During their time together, the thing that stands out the most is a sequence where it’s decided that Spike should be fattened up significantly.  The punchline to it is that after a while, Spike loses all the weight Lucy puts on him after a ride on the back of the Van Pelt mother’s bike.  All of this is mildly amusing, but it continues to perpetuate the issue that the Christmas element feels very forced in this special.  Nothing about giving a dog weight and losing it feels like it connects well with the holiday which is an issue when you put it at the forefront.  In fact, I recall seeing this plot similarly executed in an episode of The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, and it played out better there without any mention of holidays.  Either way, this sequence goes nowhere when it’s suddenly decided that Spike can’t be kept, putting Rerun back where he started.  With a few minutes left in the special, there’s one more tacked on Christmas scene of Rerun joining other Peanuts characters in a Christmas pageant and nearly flubbing his line.  I don’t know how to feel about how this religious scene not only feels tacked on, but is also not impactful at all considering one of the most iconic Peanuts Christmas scenes ever.  After that, only in the final scene does Rerun finally get the point of dogs being too much work with Snoopy riding in a sled he makes Rerun pull.  So after spending the entire special trying to get a dog, Rerun simply realizes that his elders were right all along.  Maybe this is a case of Peanuts’ way of being honest to real life, but it feels like nothing was accomplished, making the special feel very empty.  With a good amount of factors gone into the telling of the story, I’m not too surprised this is the outcome.

It can be appreciated that there’s some mildly good humor from the Peanuts characters and that this Christmas special is one cohesive story compared to the earlier short collections.  That said, “I Want a Dog for Christmas Charlie Brown” is one to leave most fans feeling apathetic.  The story approach feels way too juvenile, the main characters aren’t too compelling, beats are repeated, and there’s no real reason why this needs to be a Christmas story.  The latter point is especially hard to ignore with how unforgettable and impactful the Peanuts Christmas special that started it all is.  You’ll probably constantly be inclined to compare the two.  Really, it’s hard to blame the crew behind the special who probably had a lot to deal with in the production.  Charles Schultz was gone, everyone was probably out of ideas after doing these specials for decades, and the public was starting to view Peanuts as a whole as juvenile.  These are all believable factors that were bound to effect all future products.  Still, it’s a shame that this special didn’t turn out too good, and ends up feeling like something the crew made up as they went along.  The final scene of Charlie Brown lying in bed asking when it all will end is pretty convincing of this idea. 

At the end of the day, there’s only one true Peanuts Christmas special, and if that’s the only one you decide to make a tradition of watching, I don’t blame you.  This and the other two specials have some points of interest, but they’re held back by factors that prevent them from being anything truly meaningful.  To be fair though, when you set the bar as high as “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” it’s best not to expect to get as strong a follow-up.

Worth a Look

Stay Animated Folks,

And Merry CHRISTMAS!