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 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.

'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.

'Toon Reviews 8: Peanuts 1970s Specials Part 4

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Of all the Peanuts specials released in this decade, this is probably the most well-known. It revolves around one of the three major year-ending holidays, the other two already having specials which were released the previous decade. Also, it’s advertised a lot around the Thanksgiving season, and it’s one of the few Peanuts specials to win an Emmy award.  While it’s not as strong or thought-provoking as the holiday specials that came before it, it’s still worthy of its classic status. 
Peppermint Patty invites herself, Marcie, and Franklin over to Charlie Brown’s place for Thanksgiving. Since she’s too absent-minded to know that these actions aren’t socially appropriate and that Charlie Brown can’t bring himself to object, the plans are set in stone.  The problem is Charlie Brown and his family already have plans to visit their grandmother for Thanksgiving. To Charlie Brown, it’s impossible to explain things to Peppermint Patty. 
The way around this problem is a clever one that nicely ties into his capabilities.  He, along with Linus, Snoopy, and Woodstock put together a dinner for their friends before the big one at grandma’s. The catch is that the dinner consists of food that’s incredibly easy to prepare such as toast, popcorn, pretzels, and jelly beans.  It’s a unique and charming Thanksgiving dinner to say the least.  In fact, I actually recall some Thanksgivings where I had some of that food along with our own traditional Thanksgiving menu out of intrigue (usually toast and popcorn).  Basically, the scenes of the dinner preparations have that distinguishable childlike charm of Peanuts to add to the appeal and are also pretty fun scenes to make up the plot.  Plus, there’s a fun and entertaining feel from the many comedy moments with Snoopy and Woodstock as they work to set up the dinner, making this special great for a couple of laughs. 
However, the preparation of this dinner is not just great for fun, it also ties into the overall message of the holiday.  When Peppermint Patty and company finally arrive and dinner is served, Peppermint Patty completely lambasts it. Doing so, she shows a mindset that the only proper Thanksgiving dinners are traditional ones.  It’s certainly a way harsh moment from her on account that Charlie Brown took so much time to prepare it for her, and that it was forced onto him. 
Thankfully, her behavior doesn’t harm the special’s quality since Peppermint Patty is soon called out for it by Marcie and feels bad.  She also lets Charlie Brown know that she regrets her behavior and is fine with the dinner by having Marcie, someone who’s better at socializing, do the talking.  This part of the special really shows that despite her faults, Peppermint Patty means well and has friendly intentions at heart, making her a strong addition to the cast.  It also effectively shows that Thanksgiving is about being thankful for what you have and being together with others, not having what you feel you’re expected to have. 
In fact, the whole ending sells the message.  Charlie Brown decides to take everyone with him to his grandmother’s dinner while Snoopy and Woodstock are left at home to dine on their own turkey dinner.  The fact that Snoopy COULD make a turkey all along without anyone knowing is especially a nice implication of how everyone has grown to be more thankful for what's present. That said, does this scene have Woodstock turn out to be a cannibal? Good Grief! 
With strong comedy, great character moments, effective ways of showing Thanksgiving's meaning, and Peanuts’ childlike charm,  this special is one of the essential holiday traditions.

Highly 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

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next special where Woodstock takes up the starring role for the first time in "It's a Mystery 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.