A Charlie Brown Valentine

Buy This Item A Charlie Brown Valentine by Paramount  Available from Amazon  $12.99  on 11-29-2008     Love fills the air as Valentine's Day approaches--but it's mostly unrequited love for the Peanuts gang, in <I>A Charlie Brown Valentine</I>. The first new Peanuts feature to be created after cartoonist Charles M. Schulz's death in 2000, this 25-minute show looks and sounds like earlier Charlie Brown fare: vividly animated round-faced kids (penned by the king of the uberpopular newspaper comic strip, himself) and a skippy piano score. Chuck still can't attract the little red-headed girl, Peppermint Patty can't sway his affections, and Schroeder ignores Lucy's blatant request for kisses and chocolate. But this story lacks the heart of Charlie Brown's Halloween and Christmas specials, in which characters occasionally step away from their ponderings to skate, dance, or just act like kids. Instead, chronic whining hogs nearly all the action. When Chuck finally dons a tuxedo for his date at the school Valentine's Day dance, the payoff feels too little, too late. (Ages 5 and older) <I>--Liane Thomas</I> Reader Reviews Here's another triple shot of Peanuts on DVD. There are three complete Peanuts specials on this disc and the quality of the three varies greatly. First up is "A Charlie Brown Valentine" from 2002. This is not to be confused with the more entertaining "Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown" from 1975 which is on another DVD collection. "A Charlie Brown Valentine" was produced after Charles Schulz' death and like most of the latter day Peanuts specials, it's not much to get excited about. It's not really bad, like "The Pied Piper" or "It Was My Best Birthday" though. There's really no story line other than that it's near Valentines day. All of the little "skits" contained in this half hour cartoon are lifted straight from the Peanuts comic strip, a la "The Charlie Brown & Snoopy Show" TV series from the 1980s. Since a lot of the strips that it represents were good, it doesn't fall flat on it's face, but it's still pretty lame compared to the shows from the glory days. I'd give it 2 stars. The second offering on this disc is much, much better, as it was produced during the first decade of Peanuts specials. While it's no "Charlie Brown Christmas" or "Great Pumpkin", this 1973 cartoon, "There's No Time For Love, Charlie Brown" is a keeper. It has a lot of the "classic" Peanuts bits like Marcie calling Peppermint Patty "sir" and a Snoopy segment that includes his "Joe Cool" theme song. Like "A Charlie Brown Valentine" the first several minutes of "No Time For Love" is a lot of gags lifted from the comic pages, this time dealing with school. "No Time For Love" was produced shortly before "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" and is of the same quality. I'd give it a strong 4 stars. Up next is a 1981 effort called "Someday You'll Find Her, Charlie Brown". It's an interesting story but isn't executed very well. Like most of the 80s and 90s Peanuts specials this one suffers a lot. The charm of the earlier specials is absent here and the story seems to move rather slowly. In this one, Charlie Brown ends up a loser, whereas in "No Time For Love" he winds up winning, scoring a kiss from Marcie and an "A" on a school paper. Here, Linus steals his dreamgirl. I'd almost give this one 3 stars for effort but it doesn't quite make it, so 2 stars. So that's 2 plus 4 plus 2 divided by 3 equaling a DVD worthy of 2.6 stars. Since I like "There's No Time For Love" so much, I'll bump it up to 3.

A Charlie Brown Valentine Available from Amazon Price: $12.99 Updated on 11-29-2008.

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