Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales (2002)

How sad is this?

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The first must-see film of the year.

It's 18 minutes. It's a series of Christmas theme vignettes without a continuous story. It's disjointed but it's still watchable. In the end, this is like a TV version of the newspaper comic strips. It has its charms but it doesn't last like the classic Christmas special. The most notable things are the side characters. Linus meets a mysterious girl who calls herself Jezebel and then proceeds to keep changing her name. I think that character has lots of potential. On the other hand, Sally has a fight with an angry kid over a small Christmas tree. The kid is off-putting and doesn't really fit the Peanuts style. It also pales in comparison with the iconic Charlie Brown tree. This is a functional Christmas special but it's nowhere near the classic.

Sorry but this is the pits. Where is the charm? Where is the humor? I suppose there were attempts at laughs here but it all just fell flat. I didn't laugh or smile once. Don't even get me started on the voicework. Not one character sounded like they had a genuine personality. They all sounded fake. Especially the newer kids. The classic ones felt like pale imitations of the characters I grew up with. I appreciate the effort to bring Peanuts to a new generation. But half-hearted efforts like this do more harm than good. The Peanuts specials from the '60s and '70s hold up pretty darn well, if you ask me. They certainly outclass dreck like this by a mile.

A series of Noel vignettes with the Peanuts gang: Snoopy works as a bell-ringer to raise money and tries to make peace with the ferocious cat who lives next door, Linus develops a crush on a weird classmate in school and makes faltering efforts to write an appropriate letter to Santa Claus, Lucy attempts to be nice, but still tries to convince everyone to buy her presents for Christmas, and Charlie Brown and his sister Sally stay up late to see Santa Claus. Granted, this show doesn't have the warmth or resonance of the classic 1965 TV special, but it does possess a certain sweet charm and an innocuous sense of good-natured humor that's impossible to either resist or dislike. Best gags: Sally takes a Christmas tree from a local kid's yard after it falls down (she doesn't know how to cut said tree down!) and Snoopy making off with a plate full of cookies while dressed as Santa Claus. The smooth animation does the trick while the pleasantly bouncy and melodic light jazz score by Vince Guaraldi and David Benoit keeps things bubbling along throughout. A nice lightweight diversion.

I have loads of trouble believing that Charles "Sparky" Schultz signed off on this let ALONE wrote it! For those of us who grew up on Peanuts characters, both the specials and the comic strip, this bears very little resemblance other than the characters look relatively the same. You need look not further than some of the quotations posted on the quotations page for this show.Lucy Van Pelt (to Schroeder): You know why I don't want you to get me anything for Christmas? Because I know you hate me.Lucy Van Pelt (to Linus): You have to give me a Christmas present. It says so in the Bible.In one scene, Sally steals a tree out of another kids yard. When he confronts her and they have words, she calls him "ugly". Then she later returns the tree, dismissing her theft as a "misunderstanding".Please do not "misunderstand" ME here. I realise this is not 1965 any longer. And no, people don't like their icons being messed with. I get that. But the original Christmas special is a classic because it addresses issues we all contend with during the holidays, from commercialism, to greed, to loneliness and disaffection, to matters of spirituality. And it does so in a way that both children and adults can understand. When someone is mean to Charlie Brown, you feel the despair he feels. There are no actual arguments, and other than the term "blockhead" (which I have never heard anyone use even in real life), no one says anything mean. Words like "hate" are never used. No one ever "steals" ANYTHING. And it certainly never perverts the Biblical message.Children (and most adults) parrot what they see on TV. Are these the values that we wish to be teaching our children? That it's okay to steal and then call people names? That, if you don't hate me then you should be buying me something to prove that you don't hate me? I know our values as a society have gone askew, but is THIS the they way we wish to teach our children to behave? Do we not have nearly enough negative images for those who are very impressionable to sink their teeth into? To this I can only say, "OH GOOD GRIEF!!!!!!!!"