"PEANUTS: DELUXE HOLIDAY COLLECTION"
DVD Review
by Kevin Carr
| MOVIE: **** (out of 5 stars)
DVD EXPERIENCE: *** (out of 5 stars) Not Rated Studio: Warner Bros. Back to DVD Review Home |  |
Even though I wasn’t born when the first Peanuts television special was made in 1966, I grew up with them during the holidays. I’m a child of the 70s, so I remember the airing of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” and “A Charlie Brown Christmas” every year during the holidays.
Unlike the youth of today, I grew up without the benefit of DVDs, DVRs or even video recorders. This made these specials even more... well, special. Because if you missed the show when it was broadcast, you had to wait the entire year to see it again. These holiday specials were events among themselves. Neighborhood kids or families would gather together to watch the antics of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the gang. Even the commercials (often well-seeded with Dolly Madison ads) were part of the experience.
While the event nature of these television specials have been lost, the episodes still hold up well on home video. Warner Bros. has now released for the holidays a Deluxe Holiday box set with all three of these end-of-the-year specials on DVD.
“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” was the second special made but the first in this chronological collection. It’s my personal favorite because of my adoration of the Halloween holiday. Like most of the other specials, the jokes and story were mined from Charles Schultz’s strip, featuring Linus desperately trying to get people to believe in the Great Pumpkin will visit him this year.
It also features the first elaborate Red Baron sequence with Snoopy. While a bit divergent from the Great Pumpkin story and how Sally decides to forgo trick-or-treating with the gang in order to hand out in the pumpkin patch with Linus, everything fits together rather nicely. Not as warm-hearted as the other specials, this one captured the Peanuts essence with Charlie Brown only getting rocks in his treat bag and the budding romance between Sally and Linus.
This DVD comes with a less-related TV special, “It’s Magic, Charlie Brown,” which is the best of the three flip-side episodes on these discs. In particular, it features Charlie Brown actually kicking the football, something I remember seeing as a child. There’s also a short behind-the-scenes featurette about how the production team put together this special and the challenges they faced to live up to “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
“A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” is next, telling the story of how Peppermint Patty manages to invite herself (and several other friends) to Chuck’s house for Thanksgiving. Snoopy and Woodstock are left to make the feast, which consists of kids’ food – candy, pretzels and popcorn – rather than turkey and stuffing.
In my memory, and in retrospect after watching this episode, this was the least memorable. The story is cute enough and relatively small in scope compared to telling the Christmas story or Snoopy’s battle with the Red Baron. Like some of the other specials that followed, this relied on the characters interacting with jokes from the comics and less action. Still, the scenes I still remember seeing on television include Linus jumping into a pile of leaves with a wet sucker and Charlie Brown trying in vain to kick Lucy’s football.
The bonus episode is “The Mayflower Voyagers,” which is more of a history lesson about the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving. Were it not for Charlie Brown narrating and the Peanuts populating the Pilgrim village, this could have been another episode of “School House Rock”... without the music. The disc also features a behind-the-scenes featurette about the making of the Thanksgiving special.
But no collection of Peanuts holiday tales would be complete without “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which was the first story brought to television. This story is heartwarming and chock full of the Christmas spirit. It features the kids trying to put on a Christmas pageant and Charlie Brown’s attempt to find the right tree.
I still love this episode, even to this day, and I cannot forget the warmth of spirit as the gang turns the sickly little tree into a fine symbol of Christmas. What can I say about “A Charlie Brown Christmas” that shows it’s spirit more than the fact it made me learn “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” after watching it.
The DVD comes with “It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown,” which is not as high of a concept and more of a string of Peanuts comic strip gags strung together. While lacking in general plot and flow, this second Christmas special is still cute considering it draws directly from the source material.
In addition to a featurette explaining the origins and development of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” there is also a six-song sample CD that features the music from the Christmas special.
While my kids will never experience the event nature of these specials that I did, they will have the DVDs for years to come to watch at their leisure... and that’s okay, too.
