Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown (2011)

I love the Peanuts but this one was way too mean spirited. And one reviewer says, no Peppermint Patty and Marcie as they were like Charlie despite annoying him but all in good fun. And kids are not perfect.And Linus really needed support and only got it from Charlie Brown and the blanket. Violet and Patty the original characters that have since been disappearing except in the recent Peanuts movie in 2015. And Lucy of course crabby Lucy. Were all three mean to Charlie, Linus, and Pig-Pen the dirty kid.Those three girls needed a good spanking or sent to attitude adjustment school. Girls seem indeed mean girls. Feel bad for their parents as well for them raising them out to be that way.At least in the end, Charlie Brown did apologize to Pig-Pen for the kids picking on him. Linus did become angry and that he was made fun of. And should others insecurities. Like his blanket and his grandmother giving him a hard time. Hope he gave her that talking though off camera I hope.But still Lucy brags on poor Schroeder. This was just way too mean spirited and really the girls were portrayed as witches here. Skip this as Charles Schulz would roll in his grave over this!

The lucy charactr was mean and rude. At some point the rudeness of the characters made me put the show on mute. We are living in a mean spirited age where writers think its okay to speak like this. If Mr. Schultz was living he wouldn't approve. I hope my granddaughter wasn't watching.In the past the characters seemed to Show a sense of concern and caring.for the producers to make this a hour long show was staggering. Thank you the characters remained in tack. I guess because of the copy right rstrictions nothing could be done to change this. I did get a feeling by the nature of the voices that this was an updatesbversion and when insaw 2011 i knew something was amiss. Even my oldest grand said she didn't care for this version. Please don't mess with perfection.

Let me say first off that I am a huge Peanuts fan. I've followed them since early childhood and it is still deeply rooted into my character. But there was a lot of strange elements about this special that really irked me.My biggest problem was Linus himself. He didn't seem like the intelligent, spiritually-savvy kid he had been throughout the comics and many of the specials. Instead he seemed very angry, rather short tempered and seemed different in a very non-refreshing way. But out of all of the things that made me cringe about him, the biggest was towards the end where he exclaimed: "DO YOU WANT ME TO END UP LIKE CHARLIE BROWN?!?"Ouch.Which brings up another point of mine: Charlie Brown himself. It seemed that the Peanuts Gang was being especially rude and cold-hearted to good old Chuck. I felt genuinely bad for him, which detracted a lot from the main premise of the feature.Now, all that out of the way, I must add in some of the pros, because there were many. I think that the art in this special shone. There was one scene where Linus was standing in a field looking up at the sky for his blanket (which had been turned into a kite and flew away) while the sun set. It gave me the chills. Linus is my favorite character and it displayed him as the philosophical and wise character we all know. The art direction really suggested a back-to-basics sort of feel, very retro, and very different...and very cool.I especially enjoyed the usage of Charles M. Schultz's comics. They were engraved into some of the writing, and the majority of the plot.All in all, it turned out to be a very mediocre hour for me. Part of it screamed "THIS IS GREAT" but the other, "Yikes."In the words of Linus: "It has its drawbacks."

First, I'll get all the good stuff out of the way. I love the animation. They retain most of the elements that make the Peanuts specials look the way they do. They enhance the style with a few things that are truly spectacular. There are far more shots the utilize a greater sense of perspective. The animation for talking is much more realistic, and Snoopy has some really great animations, making him a little less human, and a bit more dog. This makes him more endearing. Seeing the Peanuts universe in widescreen adds a lot of depth to the experience. Combined with the absence of adults (none of the story takes place at school) there's a greater sense of the world that the kids live in. There are some very enjoyable gags recreated for the story, including the first strip. The story seems a little more adult. While there's a whole lot of jumping around from vignette to vignette, the overall story deals with security, and Linus has a spectacular monologue near the end where he points out the reliance of most of the other characters on their crutches. While this is not of much interest to kids, it seemed surprisingly powerful material for adults.The negative elements, and there are a few, but they aren't deal-breakers. The voices aren't quite right. For most of the characters, it doesn't seem too bad. Lucy seemed notably off, though. Lucy seems more cruel than usual. A little less passively mean than she usually was, and a little more outwardly so. The special is more scattered than it should be. Most of the time, I don't mind this, but one instance really was annoying; we see Lucy playing checkers with Violet. Then the action follows Linus outside. We see Lucy skipping rope past him. Then the shot switches back to Lucy being back inside, still playing checkers.I have doubts that this special will be of as much interest to children as it will to adults. But I don't think that's a bad thing. The depth of the program will make it more suitable for children who are growing up.