We began our Into Film Festival attendance, this year, with Snoopy and Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie. It’s a 3D computer-animated movie, based on Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic.

Film Review

When the Little Red-Haired Girl moves into town, and joins his school, Charlie Brown becomes totally enamoured with her, and tries to find a way to win her attention. Alas for Charlie, his various attempts continually go awry. However, the Little Red-Haired Girl notices his strength of character, despite his perceived failures, and likes him for himself.

There’s also multiple segues featuring Snoopy as a WWI flying ace – fighting the Red Baron, and rescuing Fifi, with the help of Woodstock. An interesting reference for this time of year, and a nostalgic inclusion for Peanuts comic-strip fans.

The Peanuts comic translates better to 3D animation than I expected, and it didn’t take long to get into the film. All your favourite characters are there – including Snoopy, Woodstock, Schroeder, Pig-Pen, and Linus. In keeping with previous animations, Snoopy doesn’t verbalise any dialogue and the adult voices are all conveyed via amusing trombone sounds. The entire film feels comfortingly familiar. I wasn’t sure if the Red Baron sequences went over young viewers’ heads but my younger child said Snoopy was pretending to be in the Royal Air Force, which is good enough for me.

We loved the song at the end, Better When I’m Dancin’ by Meghan Trainor. We almost danced out of the movie theatre, with our happy memories. The perfect end to a fun film.

Themed Activities

We used a Film Review Writing Template to explore our movie experience. Both kids rated it 5 out of 5 stars, and would definitely recommend it to other people.

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Film Review Writing Templates.

I found some great Peanuts Movie themed lesson plans on the Young Minds Inspired Educator Network, covering grades K-12. We used the second and third activities from the K-2 and 3-5 teaching kits, to explore character traits, and big dreams, at differentiated levels.

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Dream Big with Charlie Brown and the Peanuts Gang! language arts worksheets.

Snoopy and Charlie Brown: The Peanuts Movie was released on November 2015. It is available on DVD* at £5.99 GBP and Blu-ray* at £8.99 in the Amazon store. (Prices correct at time of writing.)