Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales - 'Toon Reviews Shorty

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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!

'Toon Reviews 13: The Loud House Season 2 Episode 22: Legends/Mall of Duty

Legends

There are many cartoons in this series that show the relationship between two or more of the Loud siblings, but very few show one of the kids’ relationship with their parents.  That’s the value of this cartoon which focuses on the relationship between Lincoln and Dad.  It also helps that this cartoon has the added benefit of paying homage to the classic Nickelodeon game show, Legends of the Hidden Temple.  My experience with that show was watching reruns of it back when the channel, Nickelodeon GaS, was a thing.  It was a nicely constructed physical challenge and knowledge-based show with an interesting premise of teams of kids taking on challenges related to a certain legend which would lead up to the always exciting temple runs where the teams would attempt to navigate through different rooms to find a treasure while avoiding the temple guards.  It’s a game show concept so appealing that it even worked well in movie form as a live-action TV movie from 2016 proved.  As for this Loud House cartoon, it’s utilized well here as something Lincoln and his dad, both trying hard to find something to bond over, get on the actual game show since the show itself is something they both enjoy.  The game show’s environment is filled with references to the source material like the names of the teams, the Orange Iguanas and Silver Snakes, the host, Kirk Fogg, voiced by the real actor, the usage of the talking stone head Olmec, and the temple challenges feeling like they’re lifted straight from the original game show.  It’s a fun environment that not only will surely appease to nostalgic Nickelodeon fans, but also help invest anyone in Lincoln and Dad’s bonding.  Their shared love for the show is easy to feel when they start out the show with great enthusiasm in the first few challenges, even if they don’t always win.  However, their rivals in the game, Stand and Steak Stanko, don’t make what we see as enjoyable as everything else sets it up to be.  They’re one-dimensional antagonists who delight in mocking their opponents for no good reason at all and only care about the fame of winning.  The worst part about it is when they challenge the Orange Iguanas to a bet at the end of the game, Lincoln and Dad buy into their petty torments and fail to cooperate as well as before.  Such a grating father and son team shouldn’t be worth Lincoln and Dad's concerns, and the fact that they get on each other’s nerves during the following temple challenges is frustrating considering how much their bonding was working before.  Fortunately, just when Lincoln and Dad’s tensions get really bad, they come to their senses and decide that being on the show together is more important than beating the Stankos.  As a result, their temple run to retrieve the assigned treasure is a solid high point for their bonding, and is a fun, fast-paced sequence filled with respect for its source material to boot.  The Stankos end up winning with the fastest time anyway, but this outcome leads to an even stronger moment in the cartoon.  Lincoln and Dad have to go through the airport in their underwear as part of the bet, but despite how embarrassing this is, everyone at the airport who saw them on TV claps for their great bond, showing that even to random bystanders, good relationships are more important than winning a game.  Too bad the security guards don’t as the moment is followed by Lincoln and Dad getting arrested.  Overall, despite that ending sting and the one-dimensional antagonists, this cartoon wins for its nice father-son bonding moments, and the interesting backdrop they’re set against. 9/10

Mall of Duty

Looking after younger siblings can be a big challenge, especially if you’re Lincoln’s age.  However, out of a story set against this challenge can come something really entertaining, and that’s what we get here.  Lincoln is assigned to watch his younger sisters while his parents and older sisters are out.  However he develops responsibility issues when he wants to get an autograph from another favorite TV figure of his, Rip Hardcore and goes to the mall where it’s happening, taking his little sisters with him.  Lincoln, the man in charge, makes the younger sisters wait around in an endless line, and they all constantly complain about being bored, forcing Lincoln to try and entertain them.  While his attempts do ease the fact that he forced the young ones into doing something they didn’t want to do which does lead to humorous antics and comeback lines, Lincoln’s responsibility issues grow even more when he puts them all on a kiddie train, expecting them to stay put which can be neglectful.  Considering that Lincoln has been a good, loving big brother before, it’s really hard to imagine him as neglectful.  Well, Lincoln ultimately gets his Rip Hardcore autograph, but then the cartoon really starts picking up with the challenging part of caretaking afterwards when the kiddie train goes off the rails due to Lincoln jacking up the quarter power, and lands the younger sisters in various places of the mall.  Lincoln then proves that he truly can be a good brother after all as he sets all his priorities into finding them.  In the process, he puts everything we saw of Rip Hardcore at the beginning to good use giving him more value than just being part of one of Lincoln’s favorite shows.  Because of Rip’s methods, Lincoln tracks his sisters down to stores that fits their interests.  He follows a trail of chemicals to find Lisa at an appliance store, tracks Lucy based on a disturbance of the severed head of a clothes mannequin, finds Lola in her natural habitat, a princess-themed toy store, and deduces a chewed bone at a toy store as a clue to Lana in a pet store.  Not only are these scenes of Lincoln’s methods of finding his sisters successful in making Lincoln’s interests credible to the story, but they also lead to some entertaining, and even cute, bits from the younger sisters, particularly one that further enhances Lana’s endearment when she hatches baby ducklings who follow her around.  Then Lincoln has to retrieve Lily from the kiddie train still speeding through the mall which is a challenge since her infant mindset made her the only one to actually enjoy the train.  There’s a lot of great action as Lincoln uses his yo-yo to get to the engine and holds Lily tight as it crashes through various obstacles, and also heart when he gives up his autograph, his reason for coming to the mall, away for her sake.  The heart even continues through to the end when the younger sisters show sympathy for Lincoln losing his autograph and even keep what he did a secret from Mom and Dad.  It’s a cute way of showing that even if they get on each other’s nerves that will never stop the love between them.  This, along with its use of little things leading to something big, and everything taking place in an interesting environment of the mall make this cartoon a fun and heartfelt adventure in looking after younger siblings. 9.5/10

The Ranking

1. 11 Louds a Leapin’
2. L is for Love
3. Pulp Friction
4. Frog Wild
5. Yes-Man
6. Party Down
7. Friend or Faux
8. Room with a Feud
9. Lock n Loud
10. Fool’s Paradise
11. Fed Up
12. Out of the Picture
13. Job Insecurity
14. Potty Mouth
15. Mall of Duty
16. The Loudest Mission: Relative Chaos
17. Spell it Out
18. Baby Steps
19. Shell Shock
20. Suite and Sour
21. Back in Black
22. Legends
23. Future Tense
24. Patching Things Up
25. No Spoilers
26. The Whole Picture
27. No Laughing Matter
28. Health Kicked
29. Garage Banned
30. Back Out There
31. The Old and the Restless
32. Kick the Bucket List
33. Intern for the Worse
34. Lynner Takes All
35. Cheater by the Dozen
36. Pets Peeved
37. Making the Grade
38. Vantastic Voyage
39. Change of Heart
40. ARGGH! You for Real?
41. No Such Luck
42. Brawl in the Family

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode with more development for Lola's character, even if it does break continuity a bit, in "Read Aloud," and Lincoln's crazy birth story in "Not a Loud."

If you want to stay updated for more reviews, become a follower of this blog, click here to like the official Facebook page, and click here to follow me on Twitter.

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

'Toon Reviews 13: The Loud House Season 2 Episode 15: Back Out There/Spell it Out

Back Out There

This cartoon combines two of the weaker types of cartoons for this series which are the misunderstanding plot and the Lincoln and Clyde misadventure, though to be fair, the latter type has an interesting addition of Lincoln’s other friends, Rusty, Liam, and Zach.  At the very least with this one, we get a strong sense of characterization, and the way it’s executed makes the experience thoroughly entertaining.  What Lincoln’s friends get up to is that they worry about him on account that he hasn’t hung out with them in a while.  They find that he’s been spending a lot of his time at Ronnie Anne’s old house long after she moved away. Coming to the conclusion that he has post break-up blues over her (even though Lincoln has a different love interest and “Relative Chaos” has several moments where he and Ronnie Anne agree they’re not a couple), they set out to try and “cure” him.  This is where the whole plot becomes problematic and a little unengaging.  As is common with misunderstanding plots, everything that happens is based on wild assumptions, and no one thinks to directly ask said person what really goes on.  Actually, the other friends do suggest respecting Lincoln’s privacy or talking with him about the issue, the smart option, but Clyde flat out insists on spying on Lincoln and going along with the assumption.  These guys following their belief instead of taking a chance and finding out the truth just makes them look dumb and not that well suited for being leads.  However, they seem just fine as leads anyway for how great these guys value Lincoln as a friend.  They treat Lincoln to a legitimately fun and thoughtful boy’s day out filled with things they love to do like trips to the arcade, rock-climbing, go-carting, and going to the pier all in stylish white suits.  Even when they follow an assumption for all they know could be completely wrong, their subsequent attempts to get Lincoln a new girlfriend are thoughtful given their mindset.  They even make for a few humorous encounters between Lincoln and some of the girls, even though a few encounters don’t work as well.  There’s also fun personality quirks from all of Lincoln’s friends working off of each other.  We have Clyde as the overconfident brains, Rusty is both boastful as a ladies man but also hilariously nervous about something happening to the white suits, Liam adds in a unique country feel with his mannerisms, and Zach…honestly doesn’t add that much apart from going with the plan.  Going back to the misunderstanding plot guidelines, you can easily predict that the guys find out the real reason why Lincoln was constantly at Ronnie Anne’s old house, which was to look out for a package that was sent there. While they look like total fools, it’s great that Lincoln understands their motivation, though it is disappointing that we never see how they stopped a bus they sent Lincoln on.  Also, as the cartoon ends, we see that the guys’ actions weren’t completely pointless when Lincoln feels like he does miss Ronnie Anne a bit after all, opening up possibilities for how he’ll truly cope with her not being around in the future.  While this cartoon is fueled on a dumb plot thread that lessens the engagement factor, the fact that Clyde and the gang still come off as likeable and devoted friends as well as some noticeable effect of their efforts help what we see to come out good.  9/10

Spell it Out

When a cartoon character has their own unique way of going about life, chances are that character is one of my favorites, and Lucy probably has the most unique way of life out of all the Loud siblings.  Her fascination with darkness shapes practically everything she does, like how she dresses in black, always has her hair cover her eyes, hangs out in a coffin, goes for night walks with her pet bat, has a dark monotone voice, and her tendency to scare people.  These are all examples of how Lucy stands out as a character, but like “Back in Black,” she’s made even better for how endearing she is through her unusual ways.  The opening to this cartoon consists of several ways Lucy’s siblings seemingly ignoring her.  They turn down her disdain towards certain decisions, never listen to her when she says something, and overall don’t notice she’s not around.  It’s quite impressive that someone as dark as Lucy can be so sympathetic through it all.  It genuinely feels like everyone keeps ignoring her existence and never acknowledges that she has feelings too.  Well, since Lucy has a habit of scaring people, it makes a little sense why this keeps happening.  Fortunately, Lucy comes up with a plan to get back at her siblings.  In previous cartoons, she’s mentioned a distant relative named Great-Grandma Harriet, who’s revealed to look just like her via an old photo.  Her role is in the form of the reveal of an old trunk Lucy finds in the attic which contains an old book of spells.  You can imagine all the fun Lucy has with this book as she uses it to work all kinds of spells on her siblings like killing Lori’s phone, making Lana’s butt itch, and making Lisa’s entire body sticky.  While you wouldn’t expect these spells to work given the down-to-Earth nature of this show, they’re executed to be perfectly convincing and lead to funny reactions from the siblings which also feels cathartic after what they put Lucy through.  However, it’s also fascinating how they work around the supposed spells.  Since they continue to walk all over Lucy and she’s still highly sympathetic, we’re lead into the most drastic and convincing spell of all.  Lucy takes extreme measures to cast a spell that makes all her siblings unable to speak, and the following montage of everything going Lucy’s way while the other Loud kids are forced to go along with her requests while they’re mute is extremely satisfying with Lucy being happy while everyone else endures what she did.  However, time is also taken to get Lucy to regret becoming to her siblings what they were to her, and how she feels is easy to buy as is the nobleness of her decision to undo the spell through potentially making herself mute.  Then, in an entertainingly staged scene where Lucy’s monotone voice is all that’s heard as the other siblings pantomime their words, we get creative reasons for what really caused the spells. The biggest reveal is for everyone else’s inability to speak coming from losing their voices by cheering for Pop-Pop at a shuffleboard match.  It’s all nicely capped off by everyone realizing their fault in the matter and they all give a genuine apology, showing that even with their less than pleasing qualities, all the siblings truly do have a heart.  Through effective comedy, creativity from the spells and the reveal of how they seemed real, and Lucy’s genuinely crafted sympathy, like her and the siblings coming together, this cartoon is a pretty magical result. 9.5/10

The Ranking

1. 11 Louds a Leapin’
2. L is for Love
3. Pulp Friction
4. Frog Wild
5. Party Down
6. Room with a Feud
7. Lock n Loud
8. Fed Up
9. Out of the Picture
10. Potty Mouth
11. The Loudest Mission: Relative Chaos
12. Spell it Out
13. Baby Steps
14. Shell Shock
15. Suite and Sour
16. Back in Black
17. Patching Things Up
18. The Whole Picture
19. Back Out There
20. The Old and the Restless
21. Kick the Bucket List
22. Intern for the Worse
23. Cheater by the Dozen
24. Pets Peeved
25. Making the Grade
26. Vantastic Voyage
27. No Such Luck
28. Brawl in the Family

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next episode which is our April Fool's Day kick for Season 2, "Fool's Paradise," and the Loud kids once again show consideration of the world around them as they try to get a good new job for Dad in "Job Insecurity."

If you want to stay updated for more reviews, become a follower of this blog, click here to like the official Facebook page, and click here to follow me on Twitter.

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