Snoopy: The Musical

I have made a promise to myself that this will be one of the first 3 musicals to direct in my lifetime as I love this very much.

The songs, the story, taken from the on-stage musical, jumbled a bit to fit it under an hour to get on tv, are well done, good actors were cast for this animated version. The finale song "Just One Person" is one of the biggest tearjerker songs of all time, and a perfect way to close out the show. I've always wanted to play the role of Linus and I will someday soon.

Those of you who also love the animated version, try and find the CD to the on-stage perfromance to hear the wonderful music.

Like "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," "Snoopy: The Musical" is a stage-to-screen translation, or rather a comic strip-to-stage-to-screen translation. Based, of course, on Peanuts by Charles Schulz, adapted into a Broadway musical, and then later adapted by Schulz and animation director Bill Melendez into an animated TV special. Being as unfamiliar with the stage as I am, I knew nothing about the play until I saw this feature. But now having seen it, if I ever get the chance, I will jump at the chance to see the stage version, just so I can hear those wonderful, enamoring songs again.

There's not really much as far as a story is concerned here. Mostly, it's just a day in the life for the Peanuts gang, only with a lot of songs thrown in. And usually, I criticize productions that take this approach, even if they are musicals. But this a real exception, for not only did I enjoy it tremendously, I award it my highest honor of ten out of ten. Why? Because the songs, and there are many, are just so beautiful, so wonderfully-written, and the voices are spectacular. Every song is instantly memorable. Each character gets their own specific song. A favorite of mine is "I Know Now" which is sung by Lucy, Sally, and Peppermint Patty (and almost by Snoopy until Lucy tells him to go home). There's also a great number by Linus as he sings about the Great Pumpkin, Peppermint Patty has a sweet romantic song, and of course Snoopy has his share. But just like before, the best is saved for last and the final number in "Snoopy: The Musical" is utterly breathtaking. It is "If Just One Person", the song we typically associate with Jim Henson and the Muppets. Not only are the songs so great and the music so enthralling, but Melendez's animation team have done it again with smooth movement, a bright color palette, and a drawing style that effectively captures Schulz's. Now some people have their reservations of Snoopy being able to talk (even in just a voice-over) but that doesn't bother me. Sure, I was questionable just as I was about "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown" but in the end, because it was a musical, I bought it.

This is a very, very good TV special worth seeing many times. It's been several hours since I saw it and I am still humming the notes for "Just One Person" and many other numbers because they struck a chord instantly. At a brief fifty minutes, "Snoopy: The Musical" goes by rather fast and it leaves you wanting more. Just like its predecessor, it's only flaw is that it isn't quite long enough. It's so well-done that we want more. A wonderful musical and I look forward to seeing a well-deserved restoration and DVD release.

While not as memorable as "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown," this musical still has a few memorable moments and melodies, including the unforgettable "Just One Person" which was a favorite of the late Jim Henson. When Warner Bros released "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown" on DVD in 2010, I was hoping that they would include this second Peanuts musical as a bonus feature, but they didn't. But I'm not losing hope. If Warner Bros plans to release the first one on Blu-Ray, this second musical should be included as well.

Plot In A Nutshell: Lacking an actual theme or story, Charlie and the Peanuts gang feature here in a bevy of unrelated and forgettable song and dance routines.

Why I Rated It A '4': This Peanuts special is strictly for the "I love musicals and don't care if there's no actual story being told" crowd. And judging by the meager number of votes this has garnered as I write this (less than 400), it can safely be labeled as somewhat obscure and not very popular.

A reviewer here gushed that these songs are instantly memorable and I could not disagree more. I found them mostly tedious and tiresome. Another drawback is that some of the animation in this special was lifted from earlier shows. I recognized clips from "Arbor Day" and "It's Your First Kiss" to name two, and there were others. So that felt lazy. There is a "Great Pumpkin" segment in here, where Linus sings a song. But the dialogue in the segment outside of the song is directly lifted from that earlier program. Word-for-word copy. And for those not aware, Snoopy 'talks' in this one, or rather, you hear his voice as he thinks. A bit jarring for those not expecting that, and as someone else noted here, the voice actor used for Snoopy doesn't feel right.

In one of the segments, several of the children are shown together in the same classroom, including the much younger Sally. Anyone who knows Peanuts knows Sally should not be in the same class as the older kids, so that was weird and felt wrong. They were all singing an irritating song about a dreaded Edgar Allan Poe assignment...frankly this should have been left on the cutting room floor.

In the 1980s the Peanuts world expanded to include a Saturday morning show, and the demands from that clearly drained Charles Schulz of his creativity. Both this program and "You're a Good Man" from 1985 were independent musicals Schulz repurposed and made into TV shows. Watching this, it's obvious the charm one might remember from "Charlie Brown Christmas" and "Great Pumpkin" is just not here. Schulz spread himself too thin.

4/10. Would I watch again (Y/N)?: I don't think so.

Having never seen the award-winning stage musical from which this particular special was derived, I'm probably not the best person to comment upon how much justice it does to its source (I do know, however, that they had to cut around two hours worth of material down to 50 minutes, so it probably feels rather rushed in comparison). In terms of just how much justice it does to Charles Schulz's delightful creation as a whole…well, it's something of a mixed bag. The whole thing its undeniably sweet and so full of colour and energy that it's damned near impossible to dislike, but in capturing the charm and enigma and sets 'Peanuts' apart from your average family-friendly cartoon it's only partially successful. Unlike most of the TV specials, it lacks a coherent, overriding storyline, consisting instead of several all-singing, all-dancing vignettes that, while frequently enjoyable on their own, fail to make up a satisfying whole. And while a fair serving of the trademark downbeat humour has survived, perhaps most evident in the scene where Charlie Brown (falsely) believes that the Little Red-Haired Girl has slipped a note into his pocket, it's largely substituted for a range of happy, upbeat tunes and lyrics about what a wonderful place the world can be, making it just a tad more sugary than most adult fans may be able to stand. It doesn't help matters that, when most of the child characters perform their numbers, they have an unfortunate tendency to sing off-key.

But heck, you can slap Snoopy and Charlie Brown's likeness upon almost anything, and chances are I'll warm to it. It would probably be irrelevant to complain about this special's 'bonus feature' that, instead of his usual cat/hyena yowl, Snoopy gets proper vocal representation this time round (after all, that was exactly how it was in the original comic trip). I'm not really sure just how well the voice actually matches the character, but the fact remains that he's easily the most agreeable singer of the cast, with his solo performances being the most effective. 'The Great Writer' and 'the Big Bow Wow' are fun, catchy tunes, and the final number 'Believe in You', even though it entails those pesky kid-singers, is perfectly pleasant, as is Linus's melody about the Great Pumpkin. Whatever else you can say about them, the songs here definitely haven't aged quite as prominently as those of another musically-orientated special, 'It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown'.

In short, it's charming enough, but personally I much prefer the regular 'Peanuts' specials, in which you get a substantial narrative coupled with lots of melancholic exchanges, and where Snoopy doesn't need a twenty-something human voice to convey what's on his mind.