The Peanuts Movie Review Roundup: A "Love Letter to Charles Schulz"

Famed comic strip characters come to life in promising silver screen adaptation

After reading the reviews, Charlie Brown won't have to sigh out his signature "Oh, brother!" any longer—The Peanuts Movie is a heart-warming hit. 

In the upcoming film adaptation of Charles M. Schulz's iconic comic strip characters, the Peanuts posse is caught in a balancing act between the traditional spirit of the 1950 hand drawn figurines  and the modern marvels of 2015's 3D animation. According to the critics, director Steve Martino and producer Paul Feig find their footing in this tricky middle ground, gracefully combining the classic moments of the nearly bald blockhead and his gang of merry men— including sidekick Snoopy, sister Sally, blanket-wrapped Linus, Peppermint Patty and more—with the digital updates offered by the new medium. 

In the remake, Charlie Brown gets the romantic opportunity of a lifetime when he comes face to face with the mystery Little Red-Haired Girl at school, but fumbles at every opportunity to finally meet her. The plot is mimicked for his beagle best friend, who also has stars in his eyes for dream dog Fifi, voiced by Kristin Chenoweth. 

While most of the critics happily agreed the film plays like a "greatest hits" album, one thing they all equally complained about was that they won't be buying the soundtrack. One reviewer noted that the film featured one of the "most disappointing original songs of any Peanuts property."

While its impossible to offer a personal judgement on any elements of the film until it hits theaters on Nov. 6, here's what the critics said to give us an idea of what is in store for this contemporary creation:

•"Indeed, The Peanuts Movie plays as something like a "greatest hits" of the franchise in all its incarnations, from the beloved holiday television specials to those cute-but-not-hilarious greeting cards that seem to arrive with regularity from an infantilising family member. All the classic moments are there, crammed in as if we might not get another shot at this. It's all very sweet and charming, and we should be thankful this isn't a childhood-ruining disaster. But it's still a 93-minute movie that somehow feels a half-hour too long," wrote The Guardian's Jordan Hoffman. 

"The Peanuts Movie is more of a string of small episodes than a cohesive plot, with some sections working far better than others. Charlie Brown toiling with a Tolstoi book report is a hoot, as is an extended sequence in which the whole school mistakenly thinks he's a genius. While Snoopy and his feathered friend Woodstock are adorable, the Walter Mitty-esque action scenes in which the imaginative pooch pursues the mysterious Red Baron get tiresome with great speed. There is far too little of Lucy van Pelt as tyke psychiatrist for my taste, but I was heartened to hear that Peppermint Patty still calls Charlie Brown 'Chuck' and Marcie still calls Peppermint Patty 'Sir'."

•"All the touchstones are in play, including CB's kite-flying challenges and Lucy's counseling sessions (still 5 cents), as are all the main characters, voiced, for the most part, by actual kids...Similar care has been notably taken with those 3D character renderings which manage to bring warmth into an often soul-less technology by retaining Schulz's deceptively simple, remarkably expressive squiggles depicting eyebrows and smiles rather than attempting to go for deeper visual dimension," The Hollywood Reporter's Michael Rechtshaffen observed. 

"Only Meghan Trainor's bouncy dance-pop contribution 'Better When I'm Dancin' feels a bit out of place in an otherwise caringly organic, affectionately composed love letter to Charles Schulz."

•"Even if you assume that Schulz always wanted his frozen pond reflecting lustrous light and Snoopy frolicking in a lavish Hayao Miyazaki world, the animation steroids injected into the aesthetic here nonetheless shrivel the great melancholy that's so key to the comic's endurance. And also its underdog humor—South Park, which shares DNA with Peanuts, would feel equally false in high gloss," Entertainment Weekly's Joe McGovern noted, offering up a disappointing C+ grading. "It's a shame to see Charlie Brown, one of our culture's most lovable nonconformists, swing for the big leagues and whiff."

"Peanuts is all about simplicity, and what the plot lacks in nuance and complexity is made up for with relatable characters whom people have spent a lifetime watching. The movie is a testament to Charlie Brown's place in pop culture and a showcase for a new generation bound to fall in love with its perennially insecure star," USA Today's Brian Truitt hailed. 

•"It's consistency with the characters' language and personalities that seems to have mattered most to Schulz's heirs, who rightly consider Charlie Brown's long-unrequited romantic obsession with the Little Red-Haired Girl to be the right catalyst to bring his inner optimist to light," said Variety's Peter Debruge. 

"As in his 1969 big-screen debut, Charlie Brown has the opportunity to experience both ends of the popularity spectrum, ranging from class reject to school hero. Early on, Lucy convinces Charlie Brown that if he really wants to impress girls, he has to show them he's a winner — which is easier said than done for someone with a serious case of inadequacy, translating to a clumsily episodic series of minor life challenges, the most promising of which is a school dance. (It should be said that The Peanuts Movie has some of the most disappointing original songs of any Peanuts property.) Still, what better lesson for Charlie Brown, grammar-school Sisyphus that he is, than to turn his loser status on its big round head and prove, as his indefatigable creator did by delivering a strip a day all those years, that it's the courage to continue that counts?"