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

Yeah, it's been 40+ years since this was released, but it has a soft spot for me, because they would show this around autumn to Christmas time, so a lot of nostalgia to be mined.

I got a chance to watch it kids during a kiddie matinee (actual film print) so I wanted to gauge their reactions.

Overall, the theme of Charlie Brown attempting to learn leadership tends to fall on their deaf ears. They are there to see Snoopy and Woodstock and their physical shenanigans. Which makes the deeper ideas of learning to work together in adverse conditions much more poignant to a slightly older crowd, who aren't that cynical.

Here Charlie Brown and Company decide to go on a camping trip. There he is asked what his purpose of going to camp was. And his answer is to learn to be more of a leader. It speaks more about creator Charles Schulz's send of insecurities and self-esteem. In the flick, Charlie Brown is confronted by a bully gang who challenges him and his friends to the rafting competition (well, really, it's the camp). Through many side adventures, they eventually conclude that Charlie learns that he has the goods when it comes to making decisions when adversity occurs.

This has always been the core of these movies. Pushing through when life gets tough and having faith everything will work out.

The landscape of the camp doesn't have any logical sense (they are in the desert and then in the forest. How long were they on the school bus (?). Things you never think about when (at the time I was 6) you are young. To adults that seems a bit distracting. Or, obviously the rules of the camp contests. Or how some characters pop in and out. The expanded universe of Peppermint Patty, for instance, has only three other girls in it who actually have voting status.

I digress, this movie is for young kids who like to see colors and some loud noises.

As I do get older, I find Snoopy to be a distracting. Not sure why I always hated the humanizing of animals. Snoopy seems to be more human than the humans that own him. He rarely acts like a dog. So it does get puzzling as to some logic flaws with him, as well. It could be frustrating to a lot of older people who discover it later in life.

Either way, it does have a background noise quality to it. It's not like you need to pay close attention to the plot. They kept it simple.

And we should be grateful for that.

Regardless of all the cartoons appearing on television and video in the 1980s, I was always stuck on this delightful Peanuts feature. Wonderful animation and a great story make for the best Peanuts feature ever produced. 10/10

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.

Charlie Brown and the gang head to summer camp, where they run into a group of nasty bullies and their cat (which is the size of a bulldog). They all compete in a big river raft race where our favorites run into lots of obstacles, including sabotage from the bullies. The third Peanuts film is enjoyable enough, but not one of the best. For one thing, the great Vince Guaraldi had passed away before this so this was scored by Ed Bogas. His music choices are uninspired and forgettable. There are a lot of physical gags in this one, especially once the race starts (and it takes up the majority of the film). There are also some funny character bits, such as Peppermint Patty's pushing for a vote for everything. Sally also has a number of cute lines ("I wasn't even born in 1800!"). Snoopy and Woodstock also get some amusing stuff to do but the boy characters, like Charlie Brown and Linus, have few memorable funny moments. Charlie Brown does get to step up and be the hero in the end, and the scene where he stands up to pushy Patty was very awesome, but he doesn't get much in the humor department. Also, the bully villains are pretty one-note. They're very obnoxious and easy to root against but it would've been nice to see them have a sliver of character. They don't even have names. The voice work is decent. The animation is solid with nice colors and well-done action scenes. It's not one of my favorite Peanuts cartoons, full-length or short, because there's really not a lot of meat on the bone here. But it is fun and the characters are quirky and colorful as ever. It's definitely better than most of the Peanuts cartoons put out from the '80s onward, but just not up there with the very best earlier stuff.