In my previous entry, I wrote about the planning, strategy development and overall direction a company leader needs to set in order to succeed, and provided an example utilizing an orchestra director’s as an analogy. This thesis can also be applied for filmmaking as well, and I believe most Hollywood directors, producers and script writers should be able to apply it. Today I will explore why I make this suggestion,
A few months ago, audiences all over the world were treated to Star Wars’ revamping into a supposed new universe created by a film called The Force Awakens, which as I reviewed, is a straight forward soft reboot and redefined unimaginative version of the original trilogy. Months later, we face the same path with The Peanuts Movie.
I take issue on this topic because Peanuts is my favorite cartoon.
I skipped this movie on its release because after watching the trailer, I immediately knew it was going to be a soft-reboot and redefined unimaginative product that collected the most well-known jokes of the original Peanuts Specials. I finally watched it a couple of nights ago, and it turned out to be exactly as I predicted.
Let me start by saying that like The Force Awakens, The Peanuts Movie is a good movie, if and only if you remove it from the Peanuts universe. This is: if somehow you magically have all your Peanuts/Charlie Brown/Snoopy memories erased from your brain in a similar mental treatment as the one portrayed in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, then only in that case there would be a definitive lauded appreciation for the movie. It’s funny, it’s witty, it’s romantic, and it’s a good kids film for adults. The thing is, like it happened with The Force Awakens, Peanuts Movie features and uses, the same Peanuts characters and in the same jokes and situations we have known for all our lives.
Original Peanuts Specials were ahead of their time. You never knew what would come next out of their mouths, as jokes were very subtle and sometimes even over the tone of a PG film. Of course, Schulz and Melendez knew how to get away with that. A fine example comes from a scene in which Sally and Charlie Brown are walking home together from a school day, and Sally shares to her older brother that her first grade teacher sent her to the principal’s office because she complained about the difficulty of the assigned class activity, which was to “Draw a Farm.” Sally complained about the absurdity of the task, particularly because she herself hadn’t even seen an actual farm, and went on to dare her classmates to see if anyone could be able to “draw a good cow leg.” At one point in the conversation with Charlie Brown, Sally says: “So I got sent to the principal’s office because I couldn’t draw a cow’s leg. I’ll bet Picasso couldn’t draw a cow’s leg when he was in the first grade. I’ll even bet Bjorn Borg couldn’t draw a cow’s leg!” This shows the subtle tone of the original Peanuts’ humor.
Peanuts Movie begins with the Linus and Lucy theme, a reminiscing memory of the Schultz days. Unfortunately as time goes by, it keeps refurbishing all the same old Peanuts’ jokes:
- Charlie Brown being unable of flying a kite.
- Pig Pen being, well, Pig Pen.
- Lucy taking Linus’ blanket.
- Shroeder playing Beethoven’s 5th.
- Patty and Marcy.
- Lucy as psychiatrist… still charging 5 cents.
- The Red Baron.
- ..and, an inadequate and incorrect interpretation Little Red Haired Girl, a topic that deserves its own separate entry and one I will not be getting into.
How could a few ideas should have been presented in a both funny and respectful way for all fans? Let’s take for instance Lucy’s Psychiatric help. Imagine if Lucy’s fees sign would have now read 50 Dollars instead of 5 Cents, and have Charlie Brown would walk-by, stop in his tracks, look at the sign, look at Lucy and say something like “Wow, last time I was here you charged 5 cents!” and then have Lucy complain or maybe say something about inflation since the last time Charlie Brown visited her, and then have Charlie Brown would glance at himself in disbelief and have no choice but to deposit a $50 bill in Lucy’s can, and have Lucy say something like “I love the sound of Grants Grants, Grants!” Of course, the bill wouldn’t make any sound because it’s paper, but that is the way Peanuts’ jokes work. They are subtle.
When you watch this film as a Peanut lover, you cannot get past the reality that every single joke or scene is something you have already seen before. It’s like the director or the script writer said, “We have to make a Charlie Brown film. Let’s take the most classic jokes, put them inside a blender and whatever comes out, that’s our film!”
Don’t get me wrong. I’m ok with re-using jokes, but not all jokes.
In Bon Voyage Charlie Brown, we see Charlie Brown, Linus, Patty and Marcie, flying to Paris as exchange students. Somehow, Snoopy and Woodstock not only manage to join them, but they become leaders of the trip. They fly on first class, they rent the car, they play a match at Wimbledon’s Centre Court, they go out partying and drinking at night and they manage to save the Chateau from a fire. In this film, not once, not ONE time do we see Charlie Brown flying a kite, PigPen being PigPen (with the exception of the farewell at the airport), Lucy working as a psychiatrist, Snoopy dogfigthing the Red Baron… and so on. Think about it: Bon Voyage only features four of the main characters (plus Snoopy and Woodstock), yet it’s still a very good movie!
I rate all Peanuts specials highly, and Bon Voyage is one of the best. Its humour is original and doesn’t come from old refurbished jokes, but instead comes from the absurdity of seeing infancy being lived as adulthood. Think about it: Snoopy -as ringleader of a group of kids- not only rents, but drives a car in a foreign country! To add more to the absurdity, he causes a major traffic accident by making a complete stop in a highway, the second after he leaves the rental dealership. He even gets road rage, flees the scene and the gang doesn’t feel the slightest contempt for the affected drivers.
To this day, I watch this scene and find myself replaying it dozens of times. This is Peanuts’ humour. Refurbished jokes are not.
Let’s pick another special -the one most people regard as the best- Charlie Brown Christmas. Peanuts fans know and are ok, with Lucy sitting on Shroeder’s piano. This is like a classic must scene of Peanuts, similar to Southpark having the four boys at the bus stop. The beauty of this sequence is that regardless of the context Lucy and Shroeder are in, the specials always manage to do something different in their interaction. We know Schroeder always plays Beethoven when he sits on the piano and we know Lucy hates that. But what happens when he plays something different?
I also couldn’t get why did Snoopy need a narrator most of the time he was onscreen. Since when does Snoopy need a narrator? Did the director forget that Sometimes Peanuts don’t even need to speak to deliver a timeless classic joke because the jokes come from the subtle context where they are set, as in this scene from the Thanksgiving Special:
Or in the one where Snoopy gets drunk on Root Beer? Snoopy, a dog, goes to a local bar to hang out with Woodstock, plays some big band music in the jukebox, and keeps ordering root beer after root beer. I was a kid when I first watched this and I knew he was actually drinking beer, because the glass may have said “Root Beer” but the content didn’t have to be Root Beer, or just Beer for that matter. Either way Charles Schulz wins and one kept wondering whether if Snoopy was really drinking beer or root beer. That is the joke, and not one word is spoken.
Finally, if the Thanksgiving Special had an original unique song, and the Christmas Special had one too, and Bon Voyage had one too, and Life is a Circus had one too… then why did The Peanuts Movie did not have one?
I am completely clueless as of why The Peanuts Movie had no other choice but to compile the most overused and typical jokes from all its history to create a film that cost $99 million dollars, where most of its content was refurbished.
HR