The Peanuts Movie

The Peanuts Movie (2015) covers one school year. Charlie Brown wants to be noticed by the girl who has moved in across the street and every attempt fails. Meanwhile Snoopy is at his typewriter writing his own story, as a First World War pilot chasing the Red Baron. The film exists because of the family. Craig Schulz, son of Charles M. Schulz, put the idea to his own son Bryan, a screenwriter, in 2006. The family kept tight control; Craig described it as staying under his father's legacy and maintaining absolute quality control. Craig and Bryan wrote the screenplay with Cornelius Uliano and all three produced. The animation is the real work. Director Steve Martino spent over a year studying Schulz's line, aiming to carry the warmth of hand drawing into the cool pixel precision of CGI. The characters were animated on twos, meaning each drawing is held for two frames. That gives a feel closer to stop motion than to ordinary computer animation, and the lower frame rate was judged a better fit for Schulz's style. It cost 99 million dollars and grossed 246.2 million worldwide, the seventh highest grossing animated film of 2015. Reviews were positive. Against that, it was said to move away from the strip's darker melancholy, and the amount of screen time given to the Little Red-Haired Girl in particular caused argument among readers. It runs 88 minutes. Good for: Peanuts, family animation, and technically careful adaptation. Less good for: the bitterness of the strip is softened and Charlie Brown's defeats are compensated at the end, which Schulz generally did not do. The Snoopy sections sit apart from the main story. The plot is thin.