You're in Love, Charlie Brown

source: You're in Love, Charlie Brown

Moviecut—You're in Love, Charlie Brown

'You're in Love, Charlie Brown' is pretty good and pretty cute. Given it was released in the 1960s it is still finding itself with some of the characters, but this special is a pretty good tone setter for decades to come. Bringing the comic strip characters to life is no easy feat but this special succeeds with charm. Charlie Brown is in love with the Little Red Haired Girl and after realizing it he must get the courage to talk to her even when faced with outside actors not making it easy. To put it simply, this special is lovable and too endearing to not feel for Charlie Brown. This was the first special to deal with love and certainly sets the standard for the Peanuts and poor ol' Charlie Brown. Its cute! Its a classic! Give it a watch!

Really he is really in love with the nameless little red headed girl there. But is insecure and does not know how to approach her there. How that everybody is making fun of him and in the not lending a hand there. He suffers over in emotional and mental turmoil there. And how that crabby Lucy needs to be shaken the you know what on her there. The lady you love to dislike there.

Fourth animated special based on the Charles M. Schulz cartoon strips is a non-holiday tale about how poor lovesick Charlie Brown becomes enamored of the Little Red-Haired girl in his class that he doesn't have the courage to talk to. His friends Linus and Peppermint Patty try to help, but only make his embarrassment worse. Meanwhile, the school term is ending, and Charlie has only one more day to tell her before the long summer, assuming he doesn't botch it of course! OK story isn't one of the best, but does feature the debut of both Peppermint Patty and the Little Red-Haired girl, and is amiable enough to keep the viewer interested. Stay with it until the end.

The eternally hapless and bumbling Charlie Brown tries to muster up the courage to talk to a little red-haired girl who he has developed a massive crush on. The precocious Linus and scrappy tomboy Peppermint Patty try to help Charlie out, but only compound the severity of an already dire situation. Charles M. Schulz's sharp script astutely nails the bittersweet angst of unrequited love and shows in a realistic, yet humorous and lighthearted manner just how mean or nice kids can be to each other. Charlie's Brown's anguish and awkwardness about confronting the little red-haired girl is funny, touching, and totally relatable. It's this latter element of universal pathos which in turn makes this particular show so sweet and special. Who hasn't had a crush on someone, but was afraid to talk to that person out of the fear that you would make a fool of ourself? Schulz had an uncanny knack for tapping into stuff that we all immediately know and understand in a way that was humane, amusing, and engaging. Of course, we also get several nice gags (for example, Peppermint Patty is blithely oblivious to the fact that Snoopy is really a dog!), but it's Schulz's trademark wit and warmth which makes this show and the other Peanuts TV specials so effective and enjoyable. Kudos are also in order for Vince Guaraldi's jaunty jazz score. And the lovely upbeat conclusion is a joy to behold. Essential viewing for Peanuts fans.

The fact it was a prank is more obvious in the comic strip storyline that sequence was based upon, but the dead giveaway in the TV special was the fact that the author ID'd herself in the note as "The Little Red-Haired Girl" (it would be 10 years before her name was revealed as Heather) and that the ending theme which plays over the credits is the same song which the mean girls at the school were using to mock Charlie Brown from earlier. What made YOU'RE IN LOVE, CHARLIE BROWN so shocking (to the extent that it was never again aired on CBS after its 1967 debut) was the emotionally sadistic ruthlessness which Charlie Brown is subjected to. No other PEANUTS special is so brutally faithful to the psychotic self-loathing of Charles Schulz's 1960-70s PEANUTS strips when his chronic depression was at its worst -- and his artistry the best. This remains one of the great artistic triumphs in US TV animation, because it teaches you something about the artist who made it.

It's springtime, and love is in the air, as Charlie Brown tries to muster up the courage to talk to the Little Red-Haired Girl. This video is a laugh riot, due to physical humor and several good scenes. Lucy, told by Charlie Brown how the Little Red-Haired Girl's pretty face makes him nervous, goes on a tirade: "Why doesn't MY face make you nervous? I have a pretty face! Wasn't I the Christmas queen? You haven't answered me!" Also funny is an odd "tryst" between Lucy and Charlie Brown: Peppermint Patty, hearing Charlie Brown's frustrations over love, arranges a meeting between the two, mistakenly thinking she's Charlie Brown's object of affection. Upon seeing each other, the two, shocked, in unison, yell "YOU?! BLECCCH!!" (It actually seems as if this subplot was made just to write Peppermint Patty into the special, in her animated debut). Though some (unintended) humor comes from odd animation: in one scene with children boarding a school bus, several characters can be seen boarding twice. More bizarre is a scene of Linus walking, as if he were a ghost, through 3 girls swinging in their schoolyard. I guess the animator though no one would notice. At times the story takes strange turns, like with the previously mentioned Charlie Brown-Lucy tryst. Were it not for some sloppy animation, this would probably rank as a classic. Overall, though, this 1967 special, well scored by Vince Guaraldi, is cute, watchable, and often uproarious. I can't remember the last time a Peanuts cartoon made me laugh out loud!

"You're in Love, Charlie Brown" is a pretty early Peanuts short movie, from the 1960s already, and soon it is going to have its 50-year anniversary. The director is Bill Melendez and the writer is Charles M. Schulz as always. The title actually gives this one away already. This time Charlie is the protagonist and he is in love. Of course, his object of desire the little red-hair girl as always and he is simply too shy to come up with the courage to talk to her. There are a couple entertaining moments, but as a whole it is basically what I described and that is not enough for 25 minutes, especially as the other Peanut characters get hardly no screen time in this one. My major criticism is about the ending. I hate it when filmmakers sacrifice realism for feel-good factor and that is exactly what happened here with the final plot twist. Sadly, this really leaves me disappointed watching this short movie. Not recommended. Not among the Peanuts' best and the 3 Emmy nominations are quite a joke.

Charlie is in love with 'the little red-headed girl', the very one he fancied in 'Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown'. But he's not got the courage to talk to her and frequently makes a laughing stock of himself with every attempt. Plus, everybody is making fun of him and Snoopy is not lending a sympathetic ear, as usual. The emotional turmoil Charlie suffers is alarmingly true. Everybody remembers their first crush and how awkward it made them feel. It's little touches of reality like this in the far-fetched but wonderful world of Peanuts that make it so timeless. Though it was made in 1967 there is nothing in this TV special that dates it in any way.