The Peanuts Movie

THE PEANUTS MOVIE (Steve Martino, 2015)

THE PEANUTS MOVIE takes Charlie Brown and friends from the comics pages and traditional 2D animation to the 3D computer-animated realm, albeit with a look that is not drastically different with what is familiar from Charles Schulz’s work in strip, TV, and film form. The animation has sort of a plush toy quality about it rather than the sleek, hyperrealist plasticity that is often associated with textures in the medium. Those warmer surfaces allow THE PEANUTS MOVIE to be approached as a security blanket rather than some flashy novelty.

The film revisits many of the touchstones found in other PEANUTS properties. Charlie Brown remains a regular, angst-ridden boy who nevertheless sustains eternal hope that his day to be in the spotlight may yet arrive. His loyal dog Snoopy imagines pursuing the Red Baron in his biplane. The other kids view him as unexceptional but good-hearted. He wishes desperately to impress the little red-haired girl who moves in across the street.

The visual style goes hand in hand with the earnest, humane tone the film strikes. THE PEANUTS MOVIE is funny in a gentle way, but it’s also attuned to the fears and insecurities that children and, for that matter, adults carry. Charlie Brown fails and gets embarrassed. He worries about how things might go for him. Through it all, he displays a fundamental decency that others notice, even if they criticize and laugh at him sometimes. THE PEANUTS MOVIE recognizes these crucial aspects of Schulz’s work and renders them in a format considered more accessible to kids today.

3D animation is really the only thing that differentiates this from other PEANUTS ventures. Story-wise it feels like a greatest hits compilation rather than something new, but it’s a modest charmer that benefits from sticking to what we’re used to rather than being modernized.

Grade: B

Ice Age: Continental Drift

ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT (Steve Martino and Mike Thurmeier, 2012)

Woolly mammoth Manny (Ray Romano), sabre-toothed tiger Diego (Denis Leary), and sloths Sid (John Leguizamo), and Granny (Wanda Sykes) embark on an epic journey to return to the herd when Pangaea’s break-up separates them from their makeshift family. ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT sets the ragtag gang on a hunk of ice and sends them out to sea.

After surviving a violent storm, Manny and friends cross paths with an iceberg fashioned into a ship, but rather than this encounter leading to their rescue, it creates another set of problems.  Captain Gutt (Peter Dinklage), an ape so named for what he likes to do with his claws, demands they join his band of pirates or face the consequences.

Back on the mainland, Manny’s teenage daughter Peaches (Keke Palmer) wrestles with peer pressure.  She has a crush on Ethan (Drake) and wants to hang out with the cool crowd, but doing so means rejecting her molehog friend Louis (Josh Gad) and not being true to who she really is.

Directors Steve Martino and Mike Thurmeier keep ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT moving at a steady clip and the various objects comin’ at ya for 3D viewers.  The action and jokes zip by with the speed of processors rendering the digital animation files.  The fourth film in the ICE AGE series is lighter in tone from the past couple entries and busy enough to give the impression that all this activity is a good time.  All that positive energy can’t distract from the fact that the filmmakers are treading water, though.  It’s a hollow simulation of what fun for the whole family looks and sounds like.

Neither the main characters nor the celebrity voice work have been distinguished in the ICE AGE films.  That’s no different this time around, but two newcomers liven things up a bit.  The resonance in Dinklage’s voice makes the villain especially fearsome.  Sykes adds much-needed looniness by imbuing Sid’s grandmother with the kind of sass projected onto the honey badger in internet memes.  

As in previous ICE AGE installments, the funniest parts of CONTINENTAL DRIFT belong to the non-speaking sabre-toothed squirrel Scrat.  Free from having to impart lessons about the importance of family or being true to oneself, Scrat can scamper about on his Sisyphean effort to get those elusive acorns.  While Scrat’s interstitial scenes are beginning to get stale, they still have the cartoon silliness and cleverness found wanting in the main story.

Grade: C