As a lifelong "Peanuts" fan, I'd like to honestly say every "Peanuts" special is an animated classic. Unfortunately, "It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown!" proves I can't. Without being too repetitive of the other reviews, the production quality is poor, the plot is extremely thin, and the music pales in comparison to most other "Peanuts" specials. That it was a straight-to-video release is no surprise. The first third of the program is probably the weakest part, as it does essentially nothing to advance the plot and is actually rather difficult to follow. On a positive note, the voice work is solid, especially the singing, and the gags with Snoopy and Woodstock are amusing. If you're a "Peanuts" completist like me you'll still want to watch it, and fortunately as of this writing you can find "It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown!" on YouTube.
6 Reviews
Certainly not up to the standard of earlier specials
Rachel-202 April 2003
I really did not like this video. The music was corny and the characters did not act like themselves. The sole redeeming feature was that they got a child who could actually sing, to do the bit with the singing. By the way, in case you're wondering (I was), I went and looked it up and the name of that song is "O Mio Babbino Caro" -- it's by Puccini.
Don't listen to these people..
geno-young12 June 2023
These people have no taste or class. Ignore the negativity. This video was touching and beautifully served its purpose. I hadn't see it in years but I decided to crack out my old VHS from my childhood. It's coming up to Linus' birthday and he meets a girl singing the most beautiful song and is absolutely smitten by her! It's really cute. Is it the best Peanuts special? No, but is it as charming if not MORE charming as any? ABSOLUTELY by leaps and bounds. See it, you won't forget it. This is Schultz doing what he did best, and in the most fabulous way possible. I also really dig how they updated the characters to 90's dance moves! 🤣 I made a point to watch it on today, my birthday, this year and I'll make a tradition out of it. Love it!
Pretty bad
bjcole-315 June 2016
Warning: Spoilers
My little girl (aged 2) is mildly obsessed with Peanuts and this is one of her favourites...because Linus skates in it. That's the good news.
For anyone who enjoys Peanuts for story and characterisation, well, this special is a real low point.
I've watched it about 10 times now. IMO this special was not completed as intended. Maybe they ran out of money?
They take shortcuts everywhere to pad out the running time: There is the skating scene which is repeated twice, this takes up nearly 6 minutes of running time. So desperate where they to pad out time that they repeat scenes within the repeated scenes...or they must have a lot of banks in that area for Linus to skate past. A party Linus attends, without bringing a present for the host, looks like scenes cobbled together from Linus's birthday party later in the episode. This leads to a glaring continuity error, Charlie Brown is at the early party and dressed like he was at the latter party, but then he asks his sister what the party was like. I didn't realise he was that forgetful! A kitchen in the house Linus has his party keeps from one side of the house to another. Linus is missing his blanket when skating, then has it back again...You get the idea.
Animations in the dancing scenes are directly lifted from 'It's Spring training Charlie Brown', but done about half as well.
The plot is wafer thin. Linus falls in love with a girl who's house he breaks into. In another padded out sequence Linus creeps through the gardens of the girls home like a stalker. She welcomes Linus warmly despite his trespassing and then she starts talking, a lot. In a short time frame we find out she has he voice of an angel, likes to espouse Chinese proverbs and has an encyclopedic understanding of horticulture and it uses in modern medicine. Yes, she's a know it all.
Despite this, Linus then invites her to his birthday. She makes him wait for her arrival, then when she does arrive she doesn't come inside, she drives past and gives him a flower. Yeah, she's definitely a keeper...
Children may love it, but adults will not. There are many far superior Peanuts specials and movies, try those instead.
For anyone who enjoys Peanuts for story and characterisation, well, this special is a real low point.
I've watched it about 10 times now. IMO this special was not completed as intended. Maybe they ran out of money?
They take shortcuts everywhere to pad out the running time: There is the skating scene which is repeated twice, this takes up nearly 6 minutes of running time. So desperate where they to pad out time that they repeat scenes within the repeated scenes...or they must have a lot of banks in that area for Linus to skate past. A party Linus attends, without bringing a present for the host, looks like scenes cobbled together from Linus's birthday party later in the episode. This leads to a glaring continuity error, Charlie Brown is at the early party and dressed like he was at the latter party, but then he asks his sister what the party was like. I didn't realise he was that forgetful! A kitchen in the house Linus has his party keeps from one side of the house to another. Linus is missing his blanket when skating, then has it back again...You get the idea.
Animations in the dancing scenes are directly lifted from 'It's Spring training Charlie Brown', but done about half as well.
The plot is wafer thin. Linus falls in love with a girl who's house he breaks into. In another padded out sequence Linus creeps through the gardens of the girls home like a stalker. She welcomes Linus warmly despite his trespassing and then she starts talking, a lot. In a short time frame we find out she has he voice of an angel, likes to espouse Chinese proverbs and has an encyclopedic understanding of horticulture and it uses in modern medicine. Yes, she's a know it all.
Despite this, Linus then invites her to his birthday. She makes him wait for her arrival, then when she does arrive she doesn't come inside, she drives past and gives him a flower. Yeah, she's definitely a keeper...
Children may love it, but adults will not. There are many far superior Peanuts specials and movies, try those instead.
This was not the best special ever, Charlie Brown
rivercityrandom31 March 2002
Warning: Spoilers
"It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown" is a shallow attempt to restore the fading art of the Peanuts TV specials. Although it hit the mark in cuteness and charm, it failed to present any of the deeper meanings and characterization present in Schulz' comic strip or the other specials. In fact, it doesn't present much of anything at all. Half of the 25-minute cartoon is taken up by an uncharacteristically bold and independent Linus skating through town with hip inline skates. This scene was animated rather well, with nice 3D moving backgrounds and a fairly realistic-moving Linus, who looks rotoscoped. How do you rotoscope the actions of a huge-headed cartoon kid with a real person? You can't, not very well anyway, as the discerning eye will notice Linus' limbs stretching and bending in odd locations. Yet this is the best animation in the special, and the filmmakers know this well as they opt to play the entire sequence twice, with the same music and even the same scenes. The rest of the animation is not even on a par with the substandard low-budget cartooning present in the 60's and 70's Peanuts films. The entire production looks like it was done in Shockwave Flash. Many characters have an anti-aliasing problem which makes them look like they are sticking out of the scenery instead of blending with it. Characters will move towards and away the camera through a simple sprite enlargement technique, which looked pretty high-tech on the Super Nintendo but sticks out like a sore thumb in feature animation. When they want to zoom in the camera, they just crop and enlarge the image, which makes the film very blurry. They might as well have just cut to a close-up shot. The kids at the party run on a loop of about three frames each, as they flap their mouths and clap their hands in unison. Where did Linus get all these many friends anyway? And why are there *gasp* adults in the picture?
All complaints about the animation aside, the story is pretty cute, but not up to par with other Peanuts specials. Linus stumbles into a garden while riding his rollerblades and meets Mimi, an operatic child diva that can actually sing (anyone who heard the kids sing in "Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown" will thank the movie at least for this). Mimi is a gardening prodigy as well, and spends several minutes dispensing encyclopedic botanical wisdom to Linus, such as the fact that digitalis, the heart medicine, is extracted from the foxglove plant. Linus is instantly smitten with the girl, as she is the first girl he's ever met who tolerates him without being abusive or overly clingy. Linus then invites her to his upcoming birthday party, and she tentatively agrees. He then spends the next half of the program agonizing about whether or not Mimi will show up to his party, even though any reason why she can't or wont come is never quit e explained. Nevertheless, the question here is not whether or not she will come, and *** SPOILER SPOILER *** she does (big surprise), but how she will break his heart in the end. Needless to say it was all very anti-climactic, not even reaching the amount of pathos invoked by the Little Red-Haired Girl in "A Charlie Brown Valentine" (2002) and Melody-Melody in "You're In the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown" (1993), or for that matter Linus' own unrequited "love"--the Great Pumpkin, who never fails to disappoint Linus every Halloween. There isn't even any requisite cruelty from Lucy or Peppermint Patty to liven things up. There wasn't even any cool Vince Guaraldi jazz music, having been replaced by some guy on a synthesizer busting out crappy hip-hop beats that should have been buried with Vanilla Ice. I almost expected the Peanuts cast to bust out into a "cool" kiddie rap like those clean-cut child stars in "Camp Cucamonga" (1990)--"Yo, I'm Linus, and I'm here to say/I'm passive-aggressive in a major way..."
In the end, I think I have said more about this half-hour made-for-video cartoon than most people write about Oscar winning movies. Nevertheless, it is worth a rental for kids and for the devoted Peanuts fan. It's not all that bad.
All complaints about the animation aside, the story is pretty cute, but not up to par with other Peanuts specials. Linus stumbles into a garden while riding his rollerblades and meets Mimi, an operatic child diva that can actually sing (anyone who heard the kids sing in "Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown" will thank the movie at least for this). Mimi is a gardening prodigy as well, and spends several minutes dispensing encyclopedic botanical wisdom to Linus, such as the fact that digitalis, the heart medicine, is extracted from the foxglove plant. Linus is instantly smitten with the girl, as she is the first girl he's ever met who tolerates him without being abusive or overly clingy. Linus then invites her to his upcoming birthday party, and she tentatively agrees. He then spends the next half of the program agonizing about whether or not Mimi will show up to his party, even though any reason why she can't or wont come is never quit e explained. Nevertheless, the question here is not whether or not she will come, and *** SPOILER SPOILER *** she does (big surprise), but how she will break his heart in the end. Needless to say it was all very anti-climactic, not even reaching the amount of pathos invoked by the Little Red-Haired Girl in "A Charlie Brown Valentine" (2002) and Melody-Melody in "You're In the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown" (1993), or for that matter Linus' own unrequited "love"--the Great Pumpkin, who never fails to disappoint Linus every Halloween. There isn't even any requisite cruelty from Lucy or Peppermint Patty to liven things up. There wasn't even any cool Vince Guaraldi jazz music, having been replaced by some guy on a synthesizer busting out crappy hip-hop beats that should have been buried with Vanilla Ice. I almost expected the Peanuts cast to bust out into a "cool" kiddie rap like those clean-cut child stars in "Camp Cucamonga" (1990)--"Yo, I'm Linus, and I'm here to say/I'm passive-aggressive in a major way..."
In the end, I think I have said more about this half-hour made-for-video cartoon than most people write about Oscar winning movies. Nevertheless, it is worth a rental for kids and for the devoted Peanuts fan. It's not all that bad.
Bad
JasonLeeSmith2 January 2004
I agree with the other reviewers. This was an extremely bad Peanuts special.
The first seven minutes was taken up entirely with an entirely wordless montage of Linus roller blading, and then Linus at a party. We then see Sally and Charlie Brown have a brief discussion and then another few wordless minutes of Linus skating and exploring a garden. By now about half the special is over.
It is very boring, there are almost no jokes, and the characterization is not well done.
Stick with the specials done up until the early 80s.
The first seven minutes was taken up entirely with an entirely wordless montage of Linus roller blading, and then Linus at a party. We then see Sally and Charlie Brown have a brief discussion and then another few wordless minutes of Linus skating and exploring a garden. By now about half the special is over.
It is very boring, there are almost no jokes, and the characterization is not well done.
Stick with the specials done up until the early 80s.
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