Earlier this week, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce granted a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to Snoopy, Charlie Brown’s loyal beagle from the Peanuts comics and films, ahead of the release of the new Peanuts movie in theaters later this week.
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Even though their parents grew up with “Peanuts”, these 21st century kids also can relate to Charlie’s Brown’s trials and tribulations, which are slower paced than most popular entertainment today.
Mariel Shieets initially tried out to be any voice in the movie and landed the role of Sally. We caught up with Ralph Millero, vice president of animation at Fox, whose involvement in bringing “The Peanuts Movie” to multiplexes this weekend was integral. Her grandfather, older sister and two brothers, aunts, uncles and cousins still live in Spokane. The kids’ faces do look more spherical, but not distractingly so, and the animators take care to render their facial expressions in Schulz-style lines rather than uncanny detail. Though his imagination cooks up enemy planes and an imaginary love interest dog called Fifi (inexplicably non-voiced by Kristin Chenoweth, opposite archival material from the late Bill Melendez as both Snoopy and Woodstock), the World War I Flying Ace’s own plane remains, as ever, his red doghouse.
For the first time in decades, the “Peanuts” gang is returning to the big screen.
Four of the experienced actors he found – Noah Schnapp (Charlie Brown), Hadley Belle Miller (Lucy), Francesca Capaldi (Little Red Haired Girl), and Mar Mar (Franklin) – recently visited The City, excited to promote the movie, which opens Friday. “Charlie Brown teaches us that in the midst of all that, you can pick yourself up and try again”. New 3-D animation gives the Peanuts characters a fresh visual boost that enables the film and characters to seem more modern without losing one bit of the gentle and heartfelt emotions generated by Charles M. Schulz when he was creating his comic strips.
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For those already looking forward to a sequel to the “Peanuts” movie, you may be a bit disappointed. Still, the movie does provide him with a few hilariously Schulz-ish worries: When partnered with a girl for a school assignment, he frets about whether he’s ready for a relationship that might turn into a house, a mortgage, and escrow.
