ANI-MOVIES, *The Peanuts Movie

Being it 35 years since their last animated movie, the Peanuts gang is back in their first film featuring the title of their comic strip. Blue Sky Studios took a break from doing Ice Age sequels to make this 3-D CGI feature-length production and latest animation featuring Chuck and the gang outside of insurance commercials. This acted as a retake of the stories, not acting as a continuation from any previous works.

Charlie Brown is a young balding boy who despite having a decent group of friends and an overly-imaginative beagle named Snoopy, he suffers from low self-esteem. The arrival of a new neighbor/schoolmate referred to as the Little Red-Haired Girl give Charlie Brown the determination to get her to notice him. This goes from trying to win the school talent show, and working with her on a book report. Most of his efforts go fall to either Charlie helping out his sister, or loosing his book report to a model airplane. Snoopy meanwhile tries to write his own story of himself as a WWI flying ace patrolling for the infamous Red Baron who kidnapped his imaginary love interest Fifi(voiced oddly enough by the movie's only celebrity voice actor, Kristen Chenoweth). Charlie Brown does eventually gain the attention of the Little Red-Haired Girl, but just as she's going away for summer camp.

The Peanuts Movie works as a perfect time capsule for the entire print run of the original comic strip, as its could take place during anytime in the last 50 years, not alluding to anything specifically recent or trendy, making it very innocent and open to all-ages, also one of the few G-Rated mainstream movies to come out in a while. The CGI works great and achieves a significant stop-motion look to it. It stands out as a timeless modern day classic for fans of a simple story or something for the whole family.