The Peanuts Movie

Peanuts would never have been any good without the grief. When Charles Schulz’s daily comic strip debuted in 1950, it offered cute jokes about neighborhood kids and their dog, but as Schulz began to find his characters in the late ’50s and early ’60s—the depressed Charlie Brown, the hardened Lucy, the insecure Linus, the monomaniacal Snoopy—Peanuts developed an emotional depth that made it hilariously funny and revolutionized the art form. Last week The Peanuts Movie brought Schulz’s cast of characters back to the big screen for the first time in 35 years, adding the modern technology of 3-D animation to give the characters physical depth. But emotional depth is another matter—this is a G-rated movie, and in America we try to protect children from not only sex and violence but also unhappiness. Continue reading >>