To stave off any questions about the movie: no, I haven’t seen it. I’ve only seen a minute or two of footage that was not in any of the standard promo material. I was not asked to the premiere this weekend (never been to any film premiere, really; one can live in the LA area and still not be in on such things1)

The reviews are starting to come in, from both fans and big time review outlets, and they are looking good.

Anyway, I’ll be a the first regularly showing available, and I suspect I’ll see something will succeed both in being a good movie (i.e., something that someone who has never heard of Peanuts, should such an odd beast exist, would enjoy) and good Peanuts (something that is not too much at odds with the material we’ve come to love from the strip and the screen before.) I will be happy with getting either, thrilled if we get both.

And while I hear many people trying to channel Schulz on what he would think of this, and have my doubts about anyone’s ability to be on the nose with that, I will cast my biggest doubts on those who think he would not have accepted something that is visually so different from what went before. During his lifetime, we saw multiple Peanuts-mixing-with-live-action efforts, we saw an all-live-action movie get optioned (though never made), and we saw CGI Peanuts material (in foreign ads.) The Melendez animation was a great way to look at Peanuts, but it was not the source material, and not the only way to look at it.

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