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Synopsis: I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown! centers on ReRun, the lovable but ever-skeptical younger brother of Linus and Lucy. It’s Christmas vacation and, as usual, ReRun’s big sister is stressing him out, so he decides to turn to his best friend, Snoopy, for amusement and holiday cheer. However his faithful but unpredictable beagle companion has plans of his own, giving ReRun reason to ask Snoopy to invite his canine brother Spike for a visit. When Spike shows up, it looks like ReRun will have a dog for Christmas after all… but then the real trouble begins. A feast of fun, friendship and warmth awaits as your family shares this Peanuts yuletide perennial in a Remastered Deluxe Edition with Improved Picture and Audio.
Review: This holiday season, Warner Bros DVD and Blu-Ray present two cartoon Christmas special sequels of sorts to much-beloved classics from the Sixties and Seventies. One is a lovely tribute to its source material, almost perfectly recapturing the magic of the original and introducing a new generation to its candy-colored world of joy and merriment, whereas the other may look a great deal like earlier incarnations of the series but is lacking in the essential spirit that made it so special and enduring in the first place. Sadly, I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown is the latter, since I am much more emotionally attached to the Peanuts characters than to those of the other special, which I will discuss in Part II of Christmas Deja Vu.
I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown initially provides an interesting twist on the average Peanuts cartoon, in that it doesn’t center on the main characters. The protagonist of this special, instead, is Rerun van Pelt, the oft-overlooked younger brother of Lucy and Linus. While, at first, it is an unusual novelty to see the world of Peanuts through the eyes of an outsider, this special ultimately spends too much time with a character we don’t know particularly well and not enough time with those we do. The bigger problem, however, is that those other characters don’t seem right, either. Whereas the key to Peanuts’ success has always been the simplicity and honesty of Charles Schultz’s creation, Dog‘s humor is often too broad and exaggerated and its characters often too jaded or borderline cruel. For example, the main joke in the Lucy/Schroeder relationship has always been that he is so absorbed by his piano that he hardly notices Lucy’s lovestruck bids for attention. He doesn’t actively dislike her, per se, except for the fact that she is a distraction from his music. In this episode, however, he is actively hostile towards her, repeatedly telling her how much he hates her.
Snoopy is, oddly, rather mean, too. Snoopy has always been playful, inquisitive, and mischievous. He never has and should not, however, be taking repeated pleasure at the displeasure of others, as he does here. With Peanuts, less has always been more. The writers of this special, however, don’t seem to understand the restraint that has always typified the series. In the old cartoons, when Snoopy was particularly animated, he might make a few squeaky noises and laughs, but this was on rare occasions, in order to make the moments when he did all the more meaningful. In Dog, however, Snoopy is constantly making noises, to the point of distraction, as if the special doesn’t trust us to be able to interpret a silent character, without vocalizations underlining his every intent.
Linus isn’t nearly as smart as he should be, either. It often seems that, because Rerun and Linus are so similar–both physically and intellectually (they both overanalyze the world around them on a constant basis)–the writers of this special aren’t sure what to do with Linus. Rerun gets all of the philosophizing often assigned to Linus, who is in turned stripped of all that makes him unique, with the exception of a few obligatory nods to his ever-present blanket. And that is the major problem with the special. It goes through the motions of a Peanuts episodes, inserting copious references to classic occurrences of the past, but almost consistently failing to miss the point. The characters also, unfortunately, make far too many references to their parents. While this might be necessary due to Rerun’s classic rides on the back of his mother’s bike, Peanuts is generally set in a world devoid of parents, and their repeated intrusion in Dog comes across as rather jarring.
The DVD comes with a second feature, Happy New Year, Charlie Brown, a special from the mid-80s that distinguishes itself by being marginally more entertaining than I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown. Centering on Peppermint Patty’s attempts to get Charlie Brown or “Chuck” to attend her New Year’s party, it is a relatively bland Peanuts special, compared to the true classics, like A Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and the film, A Boy Named Charlie Brown. At least, however, the characters are in character, and the tone remains intact and unscathed.
Considering how many problems I have with the special itself, I was surprised by how insightful I found the accompanying documentary, “Sibling Rivalry: Growing Up Van Pelt,” to be. Including interviews with Bill Melendez, who directed all of the Peanuts cartoons, Charles Schultz’s widow, Jean, and others, “Sibling Rivalry” delves into Rerun as a character–why Schultz originally decided to include him, how he functioned in the strip, his evolution–and actually makes him a far more understandable character than the film is capable of doing. It was particularly informative to see how the writers of the special used actual Peanuts strip in developing the story. If only they had been able to recreate the heart of the series as well as they replicated the plots.
And now, to see an example of a children’s special that gets it right, check out Part II of Christmas Deja Vu…
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Related posts:
- “You’re Groovy, Charlie Brown”: Peanuts 1970′s Collection, Vol. 2
- “Good Grief”: You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown
- Christmas Deja Vu II: A Miser Brothers’ Christmas
- DVD Discovery: Charlie Bartlett
- Christmas Flashback: It’s a Wonderful Life
