Movie Review: A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

I can't say that I've ever laughed at a Peanuts comic strip. They're just not funny. So most of my contact with the Peanuts characters is from the two Charlie Brown holiday specials I regularly watched while growing up: A Charlie Brown Christmas and A Charlie Brown Valentine. Despite it's popularity I've never seen It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (the Hallowe'en special) and until last Thanksgiving [1] I'd never seen this one, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. In fact, I'm not even sure I knew it existed until I saw it was going to come on television and decided to record it. The version I watched was followed up by a tour of the history of Thanksgiving featuring some of the Peanuts characters.

My verdict: I wasn't missing much. The plot wasn't very engaging and the humor generally fell flat. I've never been fond of the Peppermint Patty character—she sounds like she was voiced by a boy and in this holiday special she's particularly pushy and rude. They try to finish up with a good moral at the end, but it gets lost in the preposterous initial premise. Many of the events in the Charlie Brown specials and the Peanuts comic strip are a result of the unique role that adults play, or rather, don't play. Not only are they unintelligible, but the adults in Charlie Brown are generally absent. Thus the most responsible and capable character is usually the dog, Snoopy, with his sidekick Woodstock.[2]

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Notes:

[1] See my post Our Little Thanksgiving.

[2] Woodstock is Leann's favorite character.

Image attributions:

Turkey Bird is Tango7174 and is available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crete MoniPreveli2 tango7174.jpg.