Happy New Year, Charlie Brown (1986)

First they have to read "Crime and Punishment" and next up is "War and Peace"? And that at their ages? these teachers need to be fired. Anyway, "Happy New Year, Charlie Brown" is another half-hour television special and it was made roughly 30 years ago. Melendez, Jaimes and Schulz worked on this together as they did so many more times. And even if this one here did not manage to get Emmy.nominated like they usually did, it's still one of the better Charlie Brown films in my opinion. All the crushes are funny, everybody seems to have in interest in somebody, but nobody is getting who he wants. Kinda tragic actually, especially how Charlie is sleeping when the cute little red-haired girl does actually appear at the party. And even the segments with the dog and the birdie are funny this time, like when he gets the signs in order so that it says Happy New Year. All in all, a good and entertaining cartoon and superior to pretty much all other Charlie Brown short films. Recommended.

Peppermint Patty and Marcie are throwing a New Year's Eve party and Patty invites Charlie Brown. But Chuck has a school assignment to read "War and Peace" and he hasn't even started it. Decent Peanuts holiday special. Better than the more recent stuff but nowhere near as good as the '60s and '70s stuff. The voicework is OK although Jeremy Miller made Linus a little more annoying than he's supposed to be, I think. The music, including the songs "Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick" and the terrible musical chairs one, makes me miss Vince Guaraldi. There's one central idea here that really isn't very funny or interesting (Charlie Brown having to read "War and Peace") and everything else seems to be padding to fill time. They could have done a more amusing cartoon with more focus on the party. More Peppermint Patty is never a bad thing. As it is, the whole thing feels like one long obvious lesson to kids about procrastination. At least I think that was the point. The problem is this isn't a very funny cartoon and the central problem facing Charlie here isn't interesting. It's lacking the wit, heart, and charm that made the classic specials so endearing.

This is a good show and I don't understand why it hasn't been put on DVD like the other Holiday Charlie Brown Shows. Poor Charlie Brown the worst he can think of always seems to happen to him, like when he gets his hand caught trying to deliver an invitation to the red hair girl.Then when she does show up for the party he's not there to bring in the New Year.It's funny how much time Peppermint Patty spends trying to get Chuck to notice her.Great Show!

"No book report has ever been finished by just reading the dust jacket." The history of Charlie Brown is a timeline of things that happened while he was looking the other way. Everyone has that story of how they left the ballgame early and missed the greatest play in sports history. Poor Charlie Brown lives every day like that. You can keep your Willie Loma and John Procter. The greatest tragic hero in American literature is a boy named Charlie Brown.This is a very good special, and it includes the famous "Pig-Pen" Hoedown scene.