Classic Movie Review: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)

This Halloween season I thought it would be fun to sit down and review a few Halloween classics. Typically on this blog I stick with reviewing newer movies in theaters. That's not to say I think new releases are the only movies worth watching. I'm a strong advocate of going back and watching older films. That's just the niche I've established on this blog. But I have had a desire to find an excuse to go back and review some older movies, so I thought that this Halloween season would be a good excuse to do so. And if people reading my blog decide that they enjoy these older reviews, maybe I'll do more of them. Call this an experimental phase here. Now this is not the first series of older reviews I've done. I wrote detailed reviews of all six episodic "Star Wars" movies leading up to "The Force Awakens." But this is the first time I've used the label "Classic Movie Review." With this label, I use the word "classic" to mean vintage, seasoned or old. A way to differentiate between my typical theatrical movie reviews and these older movie reviews. Not "classic" as in perfect quality. Because I still plan on being completely honest. I sometimes get annoyed with the idea that no flaws exist in these older films just because they're old. So get ready for some honest reviews of some classic films!

When I announced my intentions of doing this on my facebook page last month, I asked for requests as to what Halloween-themed movies people would want to see me review so I can get a good combination of movies I want to review with movies that others want to see me review. When I did that, I was surprised to see that the first and most popular request was this little 1966 Charlie Brown TV special. It's not really a movie, as its only a 25 minute long TV special, and there's not much to it. Just Charlie Brown and company doing Halloween things. But OK. I'll talk about Charlie Brown. Because we all love Charlie Brown, right? One of the great things about Charlie Brown is how relatable he is to so many people. He's very ordinary and plain. He has a lot of ambition and desire, but it seems like he fails at everything he does, thus his self-confidence is super low, which is not helped by the fact that he has people like Lucy giving him non-stop insults. I think that's often how a lot of us see ourselves. We look at everyone else around us and see how amazing, attractive and successful they all are while looking ourselves and seeing how plain and ordinary we are. Thus it's easy to have low self-confidence. I'm just me, right? There's nothing special about me.

The beauty of it all is something that I think was expressed so beautifully in 2015's Blue Sky production of "The Peanuts Movie." Spoilers for that movie if you haven't seen it, but Charlie Brown spends the whole movie crushing after the cute, little red-headed girl. Every situation in the movie is him trying to impress her, but seemingly failing in true Charlie Brown fashion. Thus he's shocked at the end when she has an honest desire to be his pen pal. In a moment of pure confusion and almost self-loathing, he asks her why she wants to spend any time as his pen pal. He's just Charlie Brown. But she turns around and flips things over by going over each situation we've seen in the movie and telling Charlie Brown how those situations honestly impressed her. Charlie Brown has no self-confidence in his abilities, but he should. And the little red-headed girl genuinely detailed why he should in fact love himself and be proud of who he is. That moment floored me and nearly brought me to tears because I saw myself in that and it honestly opened my eyes just like it did for Charlie Brown. And I think that's a great message for all of us. If ever you're down about yourself, remember the story of Charlie Brown. Because, like him, you are special and important.

I think that's why we all love Charlie Brown and why we're willing to sit down and watch TV specials or read comic strips that aren't necessarily elaborate or deep. We love these characters. We relate with them. We have fun watching them. Thus when we have a TV special that's been playing on TV every year for the last 51 years, we're all willing to sit down and watch it again, even though we've seen it so many times. Which, by the way, ABC will be playing it on Thursday, October 19, so mark your calendars! Or just go ask one of your friends if you can borrow it, because a lot of people own it. Or search for it on YouTube, because it's there as well. Yes, I've watched it plenty of times, but as I sat down last night to re-watch it in preparation for this review, I wanted to specifically know what set this 25-minute TV special apart from everything else Peanuts related. If there exists a person on Earth that has never seen this special, what would they take from this that would cause them to remember it? If you have a young child that has not been exposed to anything Peanuts related, could you choose to sit them down and show them this and have them instantly converted to Peanuts because of something spectacular that this did? Or is this something elevated by nostalgia?

Keeping those questions in mind, I watched this. Then I spent the night and morning pondering about it. Then I watched it again. Perhaps those critical lenses is the wrong way to watch this, but holiday-themed nostalgia is a real powerful thing. There's a lot of movies out there that hit theaters for the first time and are duds because the quality isn't super high. But because they gain a cult following due to the holiday theme, they become classics where anyone who says anything bad will be burnt at the stake. I personally try to resist and figure out which holiday movies are worth watching because they are genuinely good movies and which ones are nostalgia-boosted movies. After careful evaluation, I have determined that "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" rides that line pretty well. This is a perfectly harmless bit of 25-minute entertainment, full of Peanuts characters doing exactly what you want Peanuts characters to be doing, thus it's really hard to watch this without coming away with a big smile on your face. And if you want to put yourself into the Halloween mood, watching these characters hunting down and carving pumpkins, putting on costumes, going trick-or-treating and spending time at a Halloween party is definitely going to put you into the mood.

On the flip-side to that, if you're looking for something deep, profound and emotional from this, you're not going to get it. It's simply Peanuts characters doing Peanuts characters things. You can call them cliche if you want. Lucy insulting Charlie and Linus. The gag where Charlie tries to kick the football. Snoopy hunting down the Red Baron. All of the side characters and their gags. This is not a Peanuts special that really branches out and does anything different. Maybe that's because it was made in 1966 where all of that wasn't as common or played out. So you give it a pass. But then you go watch everything else Peanuts related and come back to this, it might lose its charm a bit. Perhaps you can say it doesn't quite hold the test of time when you look at it honestly. Which is then made up for by the fact that we've all watched it so many times that the nostalgia aspect is very strong. Re-watching it is not going to affect me in the same way "The Peanuts Movie" did or still does. I may not sit down and watch it on my own when I'm bored during October, but if it becomes the showing of someone's choosing at a movie night, I'm not going to complain. It still brings a smile to my face as I sit down and watch it, especially when I have family and friends around with me.

You might be angry at me for looking at this special with such harsh critical lenses, but so be it. However, in doing so, I did pick up on one other potentially interesting aspect that I don't know if I caught before. In between all the Peanuts gags, there is a thru story here and that has to do with Linus and the Great Pumpkin. The Great Pumpkin is an attempted folklore that hasn't really made it into our culture like Santa, the Easter Bunny or Cupid has. But in this instance, Linus believes in the Great Pumpkin and decides to valiantly sit in his pumpkin patch at night waiting for it to come. He even gets Sally to sit with him. The subtle brilliance of this is that the Great Pumpkin never comes and he ends up wasting his time when he could've been with his friends. I think there's a lot of cartoons or shows that would have Santa, the Easter Bunny or the Great Pumpkin show up to please kids and audiences. But this chooses not to. I can see a lot of various ways that this can be interpreted thematically if you make it a discussion point among friends, the biggest one in my mind being that the show is telling us that it's most important to spend time with family and friends on holidays instead of focusing too much on fictional folklore that often flood our holiday seasons.

That last bit I find super interesting, especially when I attempt to critically analyze it and figure out what it means. There's also quite a bit of subtlety like that thrown in the smaller moments that may have been overlooked by myself and possibly some of you out there reading this that I think makes this genius. But even with that, I don't know if this specific Peanuts special has quite as much to say as many other Peanuts specials, comic strips and movies have. But does it need to? Perhaps not. I think for most people, the fun of this special is sitting down and watching our beloved characters celebrating Halloween in a very classic Peanuts way. Nostalgia and tradition definitely play a big role in this and I don't think that has to be a bad thing. Since this has been playing every year on TV since it premiered in 1966, a lot of people out there have fond memories of watching this with family and friends, so continuing that tradition will bring back those memories and thus make you happy. That's the best thing about holidays, right? Traditions. Memories. Family. But from my own critical lens, this isn't necessarily the Peanuts special that I would claim as a flawless masterpiece that I have to watch every Halloween. Thus my grade for "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" is an 8/10.