The Hollywood moguls are going to make a “Peanuts” animated movie. I wish they wouldn’t.
It is supposed to be released in November of 2015. I was informed of this the other day by our 13-year-old daughter, who showed me the trailer on YouTube using her iPad. She told me because she knows I love Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the gang. And she loves them, too, which can only speak of my superior parenting skills.
But hopefully between now and November 2015 something will happen and the movie will be scrubbed. Maybe a better idea will come along, like another movie about the British kid with the glasses. Except now he’s middle-aged with a pot belly and an ex-wife wife and a couple of kids who resent him and a job he hates. “Harry Potter and the Reality of Life.” It could work.
Just not a Charlie Brown movie. Because what if it doesn’t work?
What if the iPhone generation looks at Charlie, Snoopy, Linus and Lucy and lets out a massive, collective yawn?
What if a 12-year-old looks up from her smart-phone long enough to take in a few seconds of, say, Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie and turns to her dad and says, “This is boring. Can we go now?”
What if the “Peanuts” turn out to be nothing but a bunch of washed-up, old comic-strip characters who can’t entertain kids whose first words were, “What’s the wireless password?”
It wouldn’t be the end of the world, I know, but it would break my heart.
Because I find “Peanuts” extremely funny. Always have. Always will. I grew up reading the comic strip on the funny pages of the newspaper, saw all the old TV shows at Christmas and Halloween, bought about a million greeting cards with the characters on them and now own a book that is a collection of several hundred strips. It’s a book I revisit several times a year. And I always chuckle, at the least, when reading through the strips.
But I also realize it is a quaint humor, old-fashioned and subtle, and not at all transferable to an age when a 45-second video of a construction worker whipping his long hair around like a heavy-metal singer gets 2.5 million views on YouTube (true story, Google it). I mean, this is a comic strip in which a kid playing Beethoven on a miniature piano is funny. There might be a disconnect between what was considered humor in 1970 and what is considered humor today.
I suppose instead of Snoopy being a World War I flying ace, he could fly a dinosaur and kill zombies. And even that might be too 2003.
Perhaps I’m worrying too much. Those “Peanuts” holiday specials still air on TV every year, and the networks wouldn’t do that unless they drew viewers. Hallmark still cranks out a Snoopy card for every occasion. Almost every newspaper in the country prints re-runs of the comic strip (which creator Charles Schulz stopped producing in 2000, shortly before his death). “Peanuts” has sustained its popularity (and profitability) for more than 60 years.
Think, though, about “Peanuts.” The main character is a meek, bumbling kid with zero self-confidence who loses every baseball game he plays and can’t figure out Lucy is going to pull the football away from him before he kicks it. The most popular character is a dog who dances, pretends his dog house is an airplane and sports shades and the nickname “Joe Cool.” The antagonist is a girl who bullies her brother and dispenses wisdom at a sidewalk psychiatrist stand. Her brother is a nerd who sucks his thumb and can’t live without his security blanket.
The strongest word anybody uses is “blockhead.”
There is no edginess, flash or bang. There are no wizards, vampires or superheroes. There are no spaceships, monsters or dinosaurs.
There isn’t even a talking frog and a diva pig.
There is, however, a tree that eats kites. And a bird named after a music festival held in 1969.
How will this work in 2015? For 90 minutes. On the big screen, no less.
And if the movie doesn’t work, does this mean the world has moved beyond the innocence and brilliance of the “Peanuts?”
If that’s the case, only two words can suffice.
Good grief.
(Mike McFeely is a talk-show host on 790 KFGO-AM. His program airs weekdays from 2-5 p.m. Follow him on Twitter @MikeMcFeelyKFGO.)