Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown

This is a positive, enlightening film that, until recently I almost forgot about. It's significantly less static than most other Charlie Brown films and programs such as The Great Pumpkin, even though it has been edited and is less static now. Charlie Brown is actually now a kid who has a solid ego. It is after he discovers the cabin and spends the night is where he develops his most significant leadership qualities. This is not a commonly shown movie and other movies maintain the stereotype that Charlie Brown is a sorry sucker. This is a great movie for kids to watch because of it's character and originality. The movie doesn't a bad soundtrack, either. The songs are lively and pompous. In short I think this is one of the best family/kids movie I have ever seen and I'd recommend it to any fan of Charlie Brown movies.

Says, THE ENDING MAN

The Peanuts gang go away for summer camp and are split into tents to compete against one another. However one tent has won every year and cheap in every event. When the raft race comes each tent is out to win no matter what.

I like Peanuts the strip even if it is more melancholy than funny at times. However the animated films often lose much of what makes Charlie Brown Charlie Brown. The plot is quite simple and doesn't matter or make sense (why does the motorised raft seem to struggle to catch the others? Where's the supervision? Etc) but that is only to be expected.

What is important is that the Peanuts characters are true to form and most are just as you imagine them to be. The humour is a little more visual and slapstick than the comic strip and this takes some of the familiarity out of the film. However the themes of Charlie Brown being forever the loser is one that's well held to. The voices are pretty much as you'd expect them to be but the animation seems very basic at times and doesn't seem too large a step away from the strip.

Laughs are few but the overall feel of the film is similar to the feel of the strip. Overall this will please kids but maybe not those who are fans of the strip. Snoopy has plenty of good bits and the characters are all there but they have nothing out of the ordinary to do.

If there were common themes uniting the four Peanuts movies, I would most readily point out two of them: a going-against-the-odds theme and an adventurous spirit. For the other three movies, those themes were accompanied by a theme of darkness. In fact, one couldn't help but feel lonely as Charlie Brown spent the night studying in a big city in "A Boy Named Charlie Brown"; as Snoopy got kicked out of place after place in "Snoopy Come Home"; or as Charlie Brown and Linus encountered a dark, daunting chateau in "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown."

And so it was great to see that for this movie, they decided to lighten it up. The result is bright and delightful! Part of the way the mood is set in the other movies is the use night and isolation; that can create the scene for adventure, but there is always a scary side there. Although there is a little of that in this movie, one remembers it more for the scenes of the Peanuts gang interacting and encountering fun/peril on the rapids or making the best of a bad situation while lost in the woods. This one has more comedy and action than any of the other Peanuts movies, and it all makes for an enjoyable ride.

Perhaps the best part of the movie is that fact that you finally get to see all the major members of the Peanuts gang play off of each other (the other movies each concentrated on a few of the characters). They antagonize a lot, and then learn to stick it out together in the spirit of teamwork. Few things are as fun as taking a group of extreme and different personalities, forcing them together, and watching them go. Some of the funniest scenes are when the girls' team wrangle over the strategies involved in the raft race. It's hilarious!

This is easily my favorite of the Peanuts movies, and, for me, one of the great examples of what kinds of great comedic/dramatic situations one can draw from a diverse cast of characters. Not nearly as dark in mood as the others, Race For Your Life is punctuated with gags and back-dropped against the sun and nature. Perhaps one of the only major drawbacks of the movie is the evident proof of Schulz's own claim that he can't draw cats!

Typically cute, charming - if not inspired - Peanuts feature film sees the gang go to summer camp and participate in a sometimes hazardous raft race. Charlie Brown (voice of Duncan Watson) is immediately targeted by a swaggering trio of bullies who won the race the past two years, but seemingly can't succeed without cheating.

You can never really go wrong with Charles M. Schulz and his characters. There are enough pleasant and funny moments here to make "Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown" quite agreeable. Now, not all of the humor quite worked for this viewer - the running gag about the girls always voting on things wears thin - but the traditional hand drawn animation is engaging, the subplot about Snoopy and Woodstock getting separated is rather touching, and it's nice to see Charlie Brown actually stand up for himself and, in general, be a stronger character than usual.

One thing you definitely miss is the jazz style music that Vince Guaraldi would have provided, but his untimely death put the kibosh on that approach. The music by a man named Ed Bogas is a little more traditional, and it's not quite the same. There are some very annoying songs that pop up, but they're over appreciably quickly.

A straightforward story (with an endearing ending), a theme of people working together for the common good, decent laughs and thrills, and a funny gag involving Charlie Brown having to hitch a ride with Snoopy on the latters' motorcycle all help to make this nice entertainment for Peanuts fans.

Seven out of 10.

Definitely the best Charlie Brown film ever. Chuck and the whole peanuts gang are off to summer camp. Superb animation sequence with Snoopy and Woodstock arriving by motorcycle. As usual Peppermint Patty wants to be in control of everything, but this is a movie were everyone gets to do their bit. Linus standing up to the bullies is particularly funny. ( amazing what he does with that blanket). The music is brilliant and the songs will have your kids singing along. I don't want to give to much of the plot away but suffice to say Chuck really saves the day. He's what we all know he really is "a hero". Your children, like mine, will watch this film over and over again. DELIGHTFUL. Will be buying DVD version when released.