Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales - 'Toon Reviews Shorty

If you like this review and want to stay updated for what else I have in store, become a follower of this blog, click here to like the official Facebook page, and click here to follow me on Twitter. Now on with today's review:

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!

It's Christmastime Again Charlie Brown - 'Toon Reviews Shorty

If you like this review and want to stay updated for what else I have in store, become a follower of this blog, click here to like the official Facebook page, and click here to follow me on Twitter. Now on with today's review:

It’s been a while since I talked about a Peanuts special, and that can be seen as problematic since I have a long ways to go in covering them.  I guess I’ve just lost sight of viewing them through devoting time to many other shows.  Thankfully, there are specials appropriate for certain times of the year to look into.  This includes Christmastime.  “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is a very popular special, especially since it’s the one that put Peanuts on the TV animation map.  However, that is not the only Peanuts Christmas special.  There are a few other specials devoted to that holiday despite none of them being nearly as iconic.  At this time of year, I’m now motivated to look into one of those other Peanuts Christmas special.  For this Shorty:

It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown

(November 27, 1992)

Going into the special, you might think that it’s a normal standalone story.  However, that expectation is sure to catch you off guard.  The special isn’t one story; it’s several vignettes of different Peanuts characters doing something Christmas-related.  I can see a possible meaning for its direction.  For the longest time, the Peanuts specials appeared to stray away a bit from the simple childlike tone that gave them a special identity.  Some ideas were either too ridiculous or too intense and heavy particularly through how they were approached.  Moreover, the childlike perspective was more or less compromised by showing adults and allowing them to talk in audible English.  That just robbed the franchise of its uniqueness in my opinion.  The most noticeable thing that caused many Peanuts specials at the time to not feel like Peanuts was the complete change in music.  With the death of Vince Guaraldi in 1976, new composers were brought in.  While their music was certainly not bad, it mostly felt a little too hip or too dramatic for what Peanuts was meant to stand for.  With all these factors, specials of the mid-90s going into the 2000s can be seen as ways to get back to Peanuts’ roots.  The vignette-driven setup and the simplicity of the stories bring to mind the original Charles Schultz comic strips.  They even us a jazzier soundtrack to make the specials feel as wholesome as the older specials.  It’s not the same as hearing something performed by Vince Guaraldi himself, but David Benoit puts a pretty good spin on his covers of the old compositions.  When you look at “It’s Christmastime Again” that way, you can easily like it for what it is.

Even if there is merit to this setup, it’s still not the best route to take with an actual TV special.  I can picture a bunch of little stories working fine in a compilation of Peanuts Christmas comic strips.  Heck, it can even work as an episode of The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show whose segments were direct adaptations of the original strips.  The fact is this special doesn’t have the same structure that made those mediums work.  It just jumps from one Christmas activity to another without proper transitions as if to say we’re supposed to look at this as one cohesive story.  However, each segment is so different it’s impossible to view the special as that.  We could start with characters playing in the snow and then suddenly shift to segments about selling wreaths, writing to Santa Claus, buying gifts, and a Christmas play.  One segment near the beginning even covers all of Christmas vacation, ending with the kids back in school in the New Year after the holiday.  Some could argue Peanuts specials have always had random moments haphazardly spread throughout the runtime.  In actuality, from my experience, while the moments were random, all standalone specials had one specific plot point for all of them to revolve around.  True there were times when certain moments went nowhere, but since every special’s story left an impact in some way, they hardly mattered.  For “It’s Christmastime Again,” there is no central plot point.  Each segment exists as its own thing and no attempt is made to make them come together as a cohesive special.  Maybe if there was a framing device or title cards signaling each different part it would work better, but it’s sadly not the case.  On another note, remember how the message of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was to spread love and goodness through simple means instead of overt commercialism?  Well, that message seems to be contradicted with a special of nothing but Peanuts characters in scenes the general public associates with Christmas.  It’s like the special is going the commercial route instead of telling a wholesome story.  This wouldn’t be such an issue if the push for love and simplicity wasn’t vital to not just an earlier special in this franchise but one of the most iconic Christmas specials ever.  For these reasons, I’m sorry to say this, but it makes too much sense that “It’s Christmastime Again” isn’t as valued as what came before it.

With all this said, are the segments themselves weak?  Well, for the most part, they’re not weak at all.  They still feature the same iconic Peanuts characters known the world over. Their approaches to what Christmas has to offer are interesting, entertaining, or both.  Most of the entertainment comes from certain antics in certain activities.  Some of them come in short gag scenes of Linus trying to sled down a hill in a box or Snoopy snagging candy canes off a tree and getting attention as a salvation Santa. 

Other segments have a lot of fun interactions between characters.  We have moments like Sally writing a report on Christmas and a letter to Santa and his wife “Mary Christmas” with humorous results despite Charlie Brown’s assistance. 

They also have distinctive approaches to selling Christmas wreaths with Charlie Brown being honest and upfront and Sally spouting wild claims with every sale.  Working in antics from Snoopy is a plus too as uses a more active sales approach. 

Peppermint Patty and Marcie work off each other well in a segment involving approaches to their Christmas vacation book report.  If you know they’re dynamic, you shouldn’t be surprised that Peppermint Patty constantly trying to work around it is funnier. 

The last segment is also a strong one to go out on with many antics occurring during a Christmas play.  There’s hilarious banter of Peppermint Patty complaining about Marcie playing Mary instead of her while in a silly-looking sheep costume.  It builds to a grand finale where she flubs her one line of “baa” with any random sound or line on her mind.  Sally also has a humorous bit of making a note to say her one line, “Hark” as effectively as possible.  This also has a grand punchline where she instead says something completely unprecedented, “hockey stick.”  Despite her embarrassment, the payoff doesn’t stop there when her claims of someone called Harold Angel appearing leads to something.  After the play, he shows up at her doorstep much to the shock of Charlie Brown as well as the audience who should be used to Sally constantly getting facts mixed up.  This whole segment comes out the strongest for its use of characters and many of their special approaches to the Christmas play.  It’s a great one to save for last. 

Now, not all segments are as strong as others.  The wreath sales, while featuring a fun dynamic does get repetitive with Charlie Brown getting the same response to his sales with every house he tries.  It gets to the point where you question why he’s even selling wreaths if it’s not even Thanksgiving.  There’s also a particularly long segment of Charlie Brown trying to raise enough money to buy gloves as a gift to a girl he met at camp.  It’s fine on its own, but nothing really stands out about it, and it doesn’t even feel like it needs to be a Christmas story.  Also, what about his interest in the Little Red-Haired Girl?  Still they’re not bad.  Other segments just leave a better impression as Peanuts Christmas tales.  As long as the majority is good, that’s what matters.

This special doesn’t have the best setup to be a highly regarded Christmas work, and that’s disappointing since this franchise has brought one of the best ones ever.  However, if you’re in the right mood and want to really see a Peanuts comic strip come to life, this special will turn out enjoyable.  They still star the iconic Peanuts characters and you still get a lot of what make them so fun to watch.  It may not be one worth making a tradition of watching, but it’s solid Peanuts entertainment to see if you’re interested.

Recommended

That’s it for this ‘Toon Reviews Shorty. Until the next one:

Stay Animated Folks,

And Merry CHRISTMAS!

'Toon Reviews 8: Peanuts 1970s Specials Part 9

It’s Arbor Day Charlie Brown

Everyone knows that Peanuts has a lot of holiday specials in their repertoire, but it’s pretty interesting to note that they have one for a holiday as obscure as Arbor Day.  It’s a holiday that very few people talk about, it’s barely commercialized, and there aren’t any widely known ways to celebrate the day.  It’s basically one of those holidays that people treat like an ordinary day, so the thought of making a TV special on it feels like the crew of these specials were desperate to come up with a holiday they could make a special out of that they hadn’t tackled yet.  Still, this is a good special, but not one that will most likely be looked at as one of the stronger ones.  The major premise of the special exemplifies how much of an obscure holiday Arbor Day is.  It features Sally needing to do a report on the holiday, and it’s presented in a manner that doesn’t make it different from her needing to do a report on an ordinary day of the year.  That said, we do get into more of the spirit of the day when Sally becomes inspired by her research to plant trees and other plants in any available field.  Ultimately, she gets most of the gang to plant a whole garden of crops.  The only catch is that they plant them all over Charlie Brown’s baseball field.  For this part of the special, I’m kind of mixed regarding how to feel.  Most of my apprehension comes from how absolutely no one thinks it’s a bad idea to plant crops on a field made especially for baseball games.  It’s pretty idiotic for them to not realize that crops can easily get in the way of games.  While we do have Linus be the only one to have doubts about the plan, the doubts just get shot down every time.  The idiotic tone carries into the actual baseball game portion of the special when the team actually gets a major advantage at victory because of the crops making the game difficult for the opposing team.  It really gets you to beg the question why the opposing team never demands the plants to be taken down or that the game be played at a different field.  Not to mention, the game gets so much focus in the second half, it’s easy forget that this is an Arbor Day special.  Now, even with the idiotic tone of the story, what we see is still pretty enjoyable.  Charlie Brown gives an appropriate reaction to the plants all over the baseball field, the gags that get his team points are fun to watch, there’s some amusing character dynamics throughout, and it’s great to watch Charlie Brown’s team have a good chance at victory since they’re known to always lose.  It makes you feel bad for them when the game is ultimately rained out when they’re so close to securing the win, and one against a team led by Peppermint Patty at that.  Well, at least the mention of the plants still being there prevents the end from being a total downer, even if it was stupid to plant them on the field in the first place.  While the stupid plot-driving decisions to this story are hard to ignore and Arbor Day is shown as prominently as it is in real life, the charm of Peanuts with the character interactions, comedy, and unique childlike approaches to life make it a fine viewing experience, even if it’s not one of the best.

Recommended

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
9. It’s Arbor Day Charlie Brown

As I close this review, I should point out that this special is the last one to feature original music from Vince Guaraldi.  In a shocking turn of events, he died of a heart attack just hours after completing the score for this special.  I bring this up because, as I stated in the post on the 1960s Peanuts specials, his music was a major driving force in the Peanuts specials being as great as they are.  The smooth, easy-going jazz compositions just seemed to fit perfectly with the down-to-earth writing, the simple animation, and the fact that kids were the core cast of characters thus creating an atmosphere that helped the Peanuts specials stand out from other forms of media, and it was true for the specials of this decade too.  Once he was gone however, new musicians were brought in to work for specials to come.  While their music was very good for the most part, it wasn’t as memorable or fitting to Peanuts as what was offered before.  Plus, considering that “It’s Arbor Day” was really not as well-written as previous ones, this is a good sign that the specials were about to become unsure of their identity with many stories varying in quality.  Some were as good as the older specials, some were decent but not very memorable, and others…well you’ll find out soon in the review of the next 1970s special.

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

'Toon Reviews 8: Peanuts 1970s Specials Part 5

It’s a Mystery Charlie Brown

What most people may not know is that this decade is where we first saw the duo of Snoopy and his little bird friend, Woodstock, in action.  In the previous decade, it was just the beagle who did all the comedic antics while the kids would go about their day, and it wouldn’t be until the 1970s when he would get a sidekick to work off of.  Woodstock’s first animated appearance was in the 1972 feature film Snoopy Come Home where he served as Snoopy’s travel companion and typed his thoughts on a typewriter.  As for TV specials, he was first shown helping Snoopy make campaign signs in “You’re Not Elected” and got into a big number of comedic antics in the Thanksgiving special we just covered.  The Snoopy and Woodstock pairing is a nice addition to the Peanuts special aesthetics where even though they’re very different from each other, mostly size-wise, they’re always there for each other no matter how difficult helping them may be.  It also gives Snoopy a friendly layer to his overall off-the-wall character.  I bring all this up because the Snoopy and Woodstock pairing is a major factor of this particular special.  It has Woodstock’s newly-built nest get stolen, so as is common for him to do when his little friend needs help, Snoopy goes to great lengths to retrieve the nest by turning detective in an attempt to track down the thief.  So, who took Woodstock’s nest is the mystery, but it’s honestly not hard to figure out since there’s a scene of Sally complaining about needing to find something from nature for her science class right before Woodstock finds that his is nest gone.  Because of this, there’s not much suspense when Snoopy and Woodstock spend much of the special tracking the nest thief down.  We do thankfully get a lot of enjoyable moments where they interrogate different kids, most of the comedy coming from them not understanding what’s going on.  However, shortly after these scenes, Snoopy and Woodstock come across a trail of footprints that lead to the nest right back at Woodstock’s tree where they started the search, making all that time they spent interrogating the kids, enjoyable as it was, pointless.  So, they uncover the nest from the science lab at school, and in the very next scene we learn that Sally took the nest for her science project; big shock, I know.  That said, Sally’s rant of being robbed is pretty hilarious, not to mention one that sets up what resolves this issue of who should get the nest.  The resolution is a trial, the typical way to settle issues in real life, with Lucy acting as the judge.  The setup of the trial is nice and amusing featuring Sally stating her case with the weak “finders keepers” argument, and Snoopy, as Woodstock’s representative, giving files that over-state Woodstock’s case mostly with legal terms that Linus, posing as the stenographer, can’t seem to get.  Heck, I’ve never been able to get the terms even to this day.  Ultimately, while both sides don’t offer anything compelling to the argument, Lucy amusingly concludes that Woodstock should get the nest.  It’s a good concluding point for Woodstock, but since Sally’s problem is a reasonable one, especially if you’re a student with a history of doing projects, it’s nice that things end well for her too when she begrudgingly accepts Snoopy’s help for a different science project.  Basically, the special’s conclusion is satisfying.  The mystery portion may not be strong and the story may not have a lot of substantial moments, but there’s plenty of strong comedy, amusing character interactions, and a nice display of Snoopy and Woodstock together in action to make this special a good one to watch.

Recommended

The Ranking

1. There’s No Time for Love Charlie Brown
2. You’re Not Elected Charlie Brown
3. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
4. Play it Again Charlie Brown
5. It’s a Mystery Charlie Brown

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next special, "It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown" big on memorable moments from the characters as well as featuring a more positive side to the message of an earlier special.

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