When I heard a year ago that Peanuts was finally being done as feature, I was immediately happy and afraid. I was happy because it’s one few franchises left that hasn’t been bastardized with remakes, reboot and being updated for 21^st century sensibilities. At the same time, I was afraid for all of those reasons.

I can now declare, that until Star Wars: The Force Awakes releases, that Peanuts is the best film I have seen this year.

I will explain why in a moment but here is a rundown of what this movie is about. It’s the Peanuts gang being the Peanuts gang. Charlie Brown is the wishy washy loveable blockhead, Lucy being the diva, Sally in love with Linus and so on. The actual plot is however, Charlie Brown trying to get out of his own way so that he can do a school project with the Little Red-Haired Girl who has just moved to the neighborhood. We spend a major portion of the film watching him show his qualities as he bumbles his way to the inevitable conclusion. Meanwhile, Charlie Brown’s best friend Snoopy, is off on a World War I adventure to battle the Red Baron and save his love Fifi from the Baron’s clutches.

Director, Steve Martino had just one job and that was to get this right.   What pleased me the most is that Martino stuck to the tone of creator, Charles Schulz’ works. Creating a timeless classic in which kids were just kids.   At no time were the Peanuts gang boggled down with new technology, (check out what kind of phones they used here!) trying on new slang words or anything that said that this movie was being pandered to a new audience. The cadence and tone of the dialogue to me while not quite perfect, has been reminiscent of many of the classic strips and TV cartoons that I have viewed over the years. I even enjoyed that fact that there is a nuance to the Little Red-Haired Girl in that for the majority of the film we either don’t see her 100% full on or don’t see her at all until key moments of the movie. The Peanuts Movie is a movie that, if you are an adult fan with kids or grandkids, it will tug at those strings to make you remember what being a kid was while watching these cartoons.

The only things that were inaccurate was Sally being in class with her big brother as well as Peppermint Patty and Marcie who from what I remember, lived in different neighborhoods. But…WHO CARES?   This movie has something that has been lost in Jem, GI Joe, Transformers and so many other classics brought to film. It stayed true to the formula of what makes this franchise work. It’s accessible to all ages and doesn’t try too hard to be something that it’s not.   Ardent fans will get to see major and minor moments that they have been familiar with for years. We even get a big-screen answer as to whether Charlie Brown kicks that darned football!

All in all, this is a can’t miss film for all ages that I strongly encourage to see. You don’t even need to see it in 3D and in fact, I would advise against it.   Enjoy it in regular 2D and soak in what this is. The return of a classic in classic form

5 Blockheads out of 5