A Peanuts Preview
Blue Sky studios recently gave a press preview presentation for their work-in-progress, Snoopy and Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie. This consisted of a few words from producer Paul Fieg, followed by the director Steve Martino introducing some clips from the film, some of which were still a little rough round the edges.
Like a few others in the audience, I’d gone along with some trepidation. It would be much easier to take a well-loved property like this and mess it up than it would be to get it right. So often, it seems that the people who get to play with cultural icons are the people who should never have been allowed near them, but the almighty dollar has the last word – not only in selecting what gets made by whom but how much it gets mauled in the process to meet some mythical box-office ideal. My main fear was that the whole Peanuts ‘vibe’ might be too out of step with current culture to survive intact. When every Pixar or Dreamworks film seems to be telling kids to follow their dreams and you will succeed, what place is there for that perennial loser, Charlie Brown?
I’m glad to say I came away cautiously optimistic. The plot of the film doesn’t seem to be directly derived from any of Charles Schulz’s own narratives from the strip cartoon, but appears to be making a determined and heartfelt effort to keep to his spirit. The clips do make it appear that the film is pitching for a slightly more upbeat note than the strip typically generated, but also that it sets out to find that tone in the soul of the source material rather than compromising the characters.
My only worry was that the ‘friendship’ between Charlie Brown and Snoopy looked like it might be overplayed – in the strip it’s seldom the ‘warm puppy’ idyll more often portrayed by the merchandising – but Steve Martino was reassuring about this and conceded that the clips may not give a wholly accurate impression. As for the visual style, I thought it worked very well. Despite being very high-end CGI designed to fill a cinema screen in 3D, It seemed to capture the simplicity of a two-inch-high print cartoon remarkably well. It had an interesting retro feel that reminded me of old Viewmaster slides -an aesthetic very reminiscent of the strip’s ‘golden age’ in the 1960s.
Steve Martino clearly ‘gets’ what Peanuts is all about and cares a great deal about getting it right. I’m looking forward to the finished film.
Snoopy and Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie arrives in UK cinemas on December 21st