CHICAGO – Excelsior! Comic book legend Stan Lee’s famous exclamation puts a fine point on the third and final play of Mark Pracht’s FOUR COLOR TRILOGY, “The House of Ideas,” presented by and staged at City Lit Theater in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. For tickets/details, click HOUSE OF IDEAS.
Film Review: ‘The Peanuts Movie’ Honors Legacy of Charlie Brown
CHICAGO – They didn’t screw it up, and that is good. Eschewing modern conventions or typical animation pop culture jokes, “The Peanuts Movie” honors its source (Charlie Brown and the gang) and its creator, Charles M. Schultz, in a joyous and nostalgic celebration.
Rating: 3.5/5.0 |
The filmmakers – director Steve Martino (“Horton Hears a Who”) and writers Craig Schultz (Charles’s son), Bryan Schultz (grandson) and Cornelius Uliano – kept a philosophy of “WWCSD” (What would Charles Schultz do?), and produced a animated feature that contains the best of what made “Peanuts” great. The look is as if the comic strip has sprung to life, especially in optional 3D, and the character voices and feel have the same warmth as the familiar TV specials (there are several references along the way to those treats as well). The story was incidental to the subplots that played like mini comic strips, featuring Good Ol’ Charlie Brown, his fantasy-loving dog Snoopy, the fussbudget Lucy, the blanket toting Linus, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Woodstock, Schroeder and even some of the older, more ancillary characters.
The Peanuts gang live their lives in the bucolic suburbs of the American Dream. The center of their togetherness is Charlie Brown (voice of Noah Schnapp), and features his loyal dog Snoopy (Bill Melendez), his neighbors Lucy (Hadley Belle Miller), Linus (Alexander Garfin), Peppermint Patty (Venus Schultheis) and Marcie (Rebecca Bloom), among many others.
Their adventures surround the heart of a love story. Charlie Brown has a crush on the Little Red-Haired Girl (Francesca Capaldi), and tries to get over his shyness to approach her. Meanwhile, Snoopy fights the Red Baron in his dreams, in pursuit of his puppy love Fifi (Kristin Chenoweth). The kids – and trombone sounding adults – rally around it all in the Peanuts universe.
A Boy Named Charlie Brown and His Dog Snoopy in ‘The Peanuts Movie’
Photo credit: 20th Century Fox