A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Instant Favorite.

Best movie ever!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The beloved Peanuts characters created by Charles M. Schulz make a very endearing feature film debut here. The story has Charlie Brown feeling more despondent than ever due to the fact that his destiny seems to be failing at everything. This isn't helped by the fact that Lucy has actually created a slide show detailing every one of his supposed faults! However, hope is generated when Charlie Brown decides to try out competitive spelling, and has success right off the bat. (In an appropriate touch, this is because some of the first words that he gets are tailored to his personality, like "insecure".) He even goes to compete in the National Spelling Bee.There's some material here that could be seen as padding, but overall it's an effective means of stretching out a Peanuts story to a feature length of approximately an hour and a half. The animation is slick and there is a wealth of interesting visuals. Rod McKuens' handful of songs are admittedly pretty silly, but they're not long enough or frequent enough to become a true detriment.The verbal jokes and visual gags are just as funny as they've ever been, and the characters are all well defined in their classic way. Snoopy, as usual, is the biggest cut-up. One example of this: Linus handed over his precious security blanket to Charlie Brown to serve as a good luck charm, and suffers enough withdrawals to seek out Charlie Brown and demand the blanket back. Then, every time Linus keels over, Snoopy fills a glass of water, and you think it's for Linus, but he ends up drinking it himself.As a bonus, "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" features a catchy way of listing various spelling rules; watching this wouldn't be a bad way for kids to learn some of them! Poor Charlie Brown ends up so stressed out and weary that he automatically spells words that he speaks or are spoken to him.You do feel bad for Charlie, but in the end, you can always leave it to Linus to put everything into perspective for him and the audience.Many genuine laughs, a solid story, some real heart, and a typically excellent jazz soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi (including some variations on the standard "Linus and Lucy") help to make this a winner.Eight out of 10.

This late 60's gem is a terrific showcase for everything there is to love about the Peanuts gang. Many themes and ideas from the legendary comic strip are woven together into this feature length story about Charlie Brown and his world. Unlike the less-successful Snoopy Come Home, this film is a better blend of the emotional highs and lows that a little boy can experience. Snoopy Come Home is almost like an extended wake by comparison.Much of A Boy Named Charlie Brown deals with him entering a school spelling bee, doing surprisingly well, and then heading to NYC for a national competition. But we also see plenty of other Peanuts themes play out along the way. We see Charlie Brown and his team get demolished in a baseball game, we see Lucy pull the football away when he attempts to kick it, we see Snoopy have some interesting adventures, we see Lucy flirt with Schroeder, Sally flirt with Linus.... all the things we'd expect from a Peanuts strip. And Charlie Brown also cannot fly a kite to save his life. Plenty of funny moments abound. Perhaps my favorite is where Schroeder, who plays catcher for the baseball team, walks out to the pitcher's mound to go over the signs for the days game. He says to Charlie Brown, "One finger will mean the high straight ball, two fingers will mean the low straight ball." Charlie Brown is miffed. "What about my curve? Or my slider..." and other pitches he doesn't really know how to throw. Schroeder simply repeats, "One finger will mean the high straight ball, two fingers will mean the low straight ball." Good Stuff.Does Charlie Brown win the national spelling bee? Does he finally get to kick the football?? This is a feel-good story, but its still a movie about Charlie Brown. In addition to the funny moments, the film strikes gold with its innovative (for the time) art design, and some truly wonderful musical bits. The instrumental bits actually work much better than Rod Mckuen's lyrical ones. Vince Guaraldi's jazz score is outstanding. The music we hear when Snoopy is skating at Rockefeller Center was used briefly in the 1965 Christmas Special. It still works. And anyone who insists that Charles Schulz didn't believe in God needs to pay attention during Schroeder's piano solo and re-evaluate their thinking on the matter. 9 of 10 stars.The Hound.

Charlie Brown (Peter Robbins) as we all know is the caricature of an average person. Charlie always seems to be down on his luck. His only friend is the philosophical Linus Van Pelt (Glenn Glinger). To make matters worse he is constantly tormented by Linus's mean and rather dumb sister Lucy Van Pelt (Pamelyn Ferdin). To show Lucy and her gang of equally mean friends that he is worth something, good old Charlie gets involved in a spelling bee. But when it turns out that he does so well that he moves on to a bigger competition everything goes downhill for Charlie. What I love about this movie is pretty much everything. The scene when Charlie is at the contest sweating because of intense pressure from Lucy is great. And all scenes with Charlie's famous dog Snoopy are of course fantastic. The child actors all put on terrific performances especially Ferdin. I highly recommend this.

"A Boy Named Charlie Brown" is the first of 4 Peanuts specials and also the first full-length Peanuts movie. It is the movie that made Charlie Brown and his friends movie stars.As the movie's title suggests, it is about a boy named Charlie Brown, the main character of Peanuts. Here, more than in any other movie or episode, Charlie Brown shows his emotions at the maximum: when he's shy or nervous, when he's sad and depressed, when he's angry, when he's hopeful or desperate, when he feels that nothing seems to be going well in his life and so on...Charlie Brown is a lovable loser. He's the kind of character that wins our hearts with his losing ways. And yet, he is also a funny little guy.This movie has some of the best known scenes of Charlie Brown's lack of luck: his failures on the baseball games and the infamous trick that Lucy always does to Charlie Brown whenever he is about to kick the football - she pulls it away!Charlie Brown even asks for help on Lucy's Psychiatry Booth in this film. She claims that her method is "unique" and what does she do? With a slide projector and a screen, she shows all of Charlie's faults, which only makes poor Charlie feel more miserable than ever.An interesting and distinguish detail about this film is that Charlie Brown often spells the letters of the words he is saying, something called «spelling bee». The spelling bee is going fine (even the most difficult words) until he has to spell the word "Beagle" (Snoopy's breed). Unfortunately, he misspells it as "B-E-A-G-E-L". I believe it is because of the nerves - after all, it was an easy word for him to say. But the screams given by him and the whole gang are hilarious, as well as Charlie's face when he realizes he misspelled the word.Funnily, Linus borrows Charlie Brown his blue blanket to wish him good luck. Not much later, Linus feels miserable without his blue blanket. He just keeps passing out! I guess one could say «What would Linus be without his blanket?». A funny scene related to this is that, when Charlie Brown is shining his shoes, Linus stares in shock because the cloth he's using is Linus' blanket - Linus yells "Arrrgh!" and quickly grabs it and holds it. The blanket even seems to win a life of its own.The kite sequence, for some reason, reminds me about the kite scenes in "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" and "Mary Poppins", especially the one in the first movie I mentioned because they both deal with a kite's failed attempt.Surprisingly, there are 2 characters that do not appear in this movie: Woodstock and Marcie. Peppermint Patty (aka «Sir») practically doesn't appear either, but if you look carefully, you'll clearly see her appearing twice, although very briefly.The movie's major downside is, in my opinion, some bizarre and strange sequences that I hardly can explain. All I can say is that they remind me about the segment "Night on Bald Mountain" from Walt Disney's "Fantasia", which is my least favorite part of that great Disney classic. But at least those scenes have the touch of Beethoven's classical music as background. As for the rest of the soundtrack, it is nothing special, but I like the songs "I before E Except after C" and "A Boy Named Charlie Brown".The artwork here is quite simple, typically Peanuts. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a critic, just an honest evaluation. However, the movies "Race for your life, Charlie Brown" and "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown" have far superior artwork. Nevertheless, "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" is an okay movie, even if not as unique or distinguish as "Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown".