The Peanuts Movie (2015)

(In French, Video on Demand, March 2016) Part of me was dreading the idea of a CGI adaptation of Peanuts. There is such an iconic charm to Shultz’s penmanship that anything looking like the glossy plastic perfection of CGI felt sacrilegious. But it looks as if everyone involved in the film shared the same concerns, because The Peanuts Movie turns out to be warm, respectful and even innovative in the way it combines volumetric 3D animation with 2D comics-inspired overlays to produce something that looks and feels like the comic strip, but brought in a modern context. The story is simple but fit to hang a number of classic Peanuts vignettes, from Snoopy’s flights of fancy to a number of humiliations for Charlie Brown. The humour is often laugh out loud funny, and the charm of the source material shines through all the way to the classic music. While The Peanuts Movie may not have done blockbuster business, there’s a sense that it will endure as a family classic by sheer mastery of execution. This is one that both the kids and the adults will enjoy.