It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)

(On TV, October 2021) It’s a good thing that It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown has a considerable amount of good-natured nostalgic charm because, by modern animation standards, it is rough. Sure, it was made for TV at a time where colour was something new—but its cheapness would be unacceptable these days as a new production, and it does distract from the rest of the film. Even in its dialogues and overall scripting, this is often a slapdash affair—the tone is not always obvious (or consistent) and we’ve grown used to much smoother writing. Still, and this is the aspect that can’t be ignored, there’s an earnestness here that stems directly from Charles Schulz’s source material—kids being kids in their down-to-earth way, albeit with flights of fancy (literally, considering that there’s quite a bit about Snoopy imagining himself dogfighting against the Red Baron) and some pointed humanist moments. That’s the part that hasn’t aged as badly, and one that pulls viewers beyond direct nostalgia. Still, compared to that other Peanuts Christmas classic, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown feels like something that’s progressively losing its appeal by the decade. I wonder if it will ever be remade: Keep the audio, just redo the animation based on the keyframes.